Google has updated its search ads with a raft of new features, including ‘Showcase Shopping’, a new ad format letting retailers create a more visual experience in search ads.
The new ad format is designed for broader shopping search terms like “women’s athletic clothing” or “living room furniture,” where just presenting users with a single product might not be the best result. Instead, merchants can create a gallery of related products.
According to Google, more than 40 percent of shopping-related queries on Google are for broad terms, such as “summer dress,” “women’s athletic clothing,” or “living room furniture.”
‘Showcase shopping’ lets retailers choose to have a certain series of images appear in search results related to various search queries and keywords.
If a user clicks an image, they’ll be brought to another page with additional information about the products.
According to research from Google, 44% of people mentioned using images to find ideas while shopping online, illustrating the role that images play in online shopping.
Speaking in a blog post, Jonathan Alferness, Google’s VP of shopping and travel, said: “This is a different ad format for shopping that will put the retailer first and really help people explore and discover what they want to buy and where to buy it.”
The new Showcase Shopping ads will be available in the coming weeks to all merchants running campaigns in the US, UK and Australia.
Shopping search ads get boost
Google has also updated its ‘True View’ shopping ads on YouTube, letting advertisers add a companion banner ad below the video to highlight more products, as well as a ‘product picker’ that will allow them to select the specific products featured in an ad, rather than just going with Google’s automatic choices.
Meanwhile, Google has also made tweaks to cross-border searches and purchases. Google is testing tools that will automatically convert prices into the searcher’s local currency. So if a user is buying a product from another country, they don’t have to wonder what it will really cost you.
Then on the travel side, Google says it’s adding “smart filters,” where users can filter their hotel results based on specific factors (such as like pricing or ratings) with a single tap. It will also support more complex searches like “pet friendly hotels in San Francisco for under $170.”
Google is also adding ‘Deal’ labels to hotel results to help searchers spot unusually low prices, tips for how travellers can get those lower prices (like changing their travel dates slightly) and notifications when there are significant price changes to flights that you’re tracking.
These new features were announced at a New York City press event this morning, and then outlined in an AdWords blog post.
According to Alferness, the number of advertisers using the TrueView product has increased by 50 percent from January 2015 to January 2016, with one in three advertisers using the product on a weekly basis. While he wouldn’t provide a benchmark for the growth, Alferness said Google is seeing “really, really great momentum.”
“We’re trying to find ways to better infuse the unique aspects of the retailer into the ad formats to really help that retailer come first to the consumer as a choice,” he said.
With referral traffic from social media rising to be on a par with search engines for many web publishers, Google is under pressure to innovate.
Google’s is looking to capitalise on the growth of global ecommerce and travel searches. The new formats and features give Google further reach further along the shopper’s journey.