Google Shopping Ads

What are shopping ads

 What are shopping ads
 What is Merchant Center?
 Creating Shopping feed
 Optimize product feed data
 Product group attributes
 Creating Shopping campaign
 Measure Shopping campaign performance
 Improving Shopping Bids & performance
 Shopping ads Compliance
 Merchant Promotions
 Prioritize Shopping Campaigns
 Preemptive item disapproval
 Showcase shopping ads
 Local inventory ads
 Optimize shopping campaigns for mobiles – Best practices
What are shopping ads

 A type of ad that features detailed information about specific products that

you sell. Shopping ads can refer to Product Shopping ads, which feature
just one product, or Showcase Shopping ads, which feature several related
products.

 Showcase Shopping ads are available in Australia, Canada, Germany,

France, Hong Kong, Ireland, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the
Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, the UK,
and the US.

 To create Shopping ads, you'll set up your product information in Google

Merchant Center and create Shopping campaigns in Google Ads.
Where do Shopping ads appear?

 Within the “Shopping” section under the Search box.

 Within the “Images” section under the Search box.
 On partner sites, like YouTube (make sure you enable
Search Partners to show up here)
 In the “Shopping results” box to the right of Google Search
results 
Benefits of Shopping campaigns
 Qualified leads - Shopping ads show shoppers exactly what a company has
for sale before they even reach your site, which makes them more likely to
click on your ad, make a purchase, and increase your ROI.

 CPC cost model - With Shopping ads, you're charged only if someone clicks
the ad and lands on your website. Many businesses experience significantly
higher clickthrough rates (CTR)with Shopping ads compared to text ads
shown in the same location for shopping-related searches. In some cases,
advertisers have experienced double- or triple-standard clickthrough rates.

 Global reach - You can use your Shopping campaign to run Shopping ads on
Google and around the web where potential customers can see what any
company is selling. If relevant, a Shopping ad and a text ad can also appear
at the same time. This means your reach with shoppers for a single search
could double.
Benefits of Shopping campaigns

 Identify insights and growth opportunities - See how your

products are performing at any level of granularity you want.
For example, you can see how many clicks a particular
brand of kids’ shirts got just by filtering your products view —
no new product groups needed. You can also use
benchmarking data to get insights into your competitive
landscape, and identify growth opportunities with impression
share data and the Bid Simulator tool.
Starting with Shopping Ads
 Broadly divided into 4 parts.
 Create a merchant center account.
 Verify your website.
 Submit product feed.
 Create shopping campaign.
What is Merchant Center?
 The Merchant Center is where retailers, like Sports Gear,
can upload and store product data with feeds. Feeds contain
all the information on the inventory they want to sell, such as
product title, image, and website URL.
Creating Shopping feed
 Use correct format - Data feeds are supported in two general
formats: text (.txt) and XML (.xml). For most small merchants, .txt
format is recommended because it requires the least technical
knowledge. You can easily create a .txt data feed using a
spreadsheet editor. If you use Google Sheets, a spreadsheet can
be generated from a template that you fill out, or you can upload
an existing spreadsheet. Regardless of format, you’ll have the
option to create test feeds to check and fix feed formatting errors.

 Include attributes - Providing all required attributes and any

available optional attributes delivers relevant product information
to your customers who search for your products. For example,
price and availability are required attributes.
Creating Shopping feed
 Adhere to policies - Google Shopping strives to create a safe and positive
experience for users. Feedback and concerns from users about the types of
ads they see are heard! Google also regularly reviews industry norms and
regulations. It's important that you familiarize yourself with and keep up-to-
date on these regulations and how they pertain to your business. When
content that violates these regulations is found, it could be blocked. There
are four broad categories of this type of content:
 Prohibited content: Content you're not allowed to promote on the Google
Network

 Prohibited practices: Things you can't do if you want to advertise with

Google Shopping

 Restricted content: Content you can advertise, but with limitations

 Editorial and technical: Quality standards for your ads and website 

Creating Shopping feed
 Adhere to landing page requirements - There are
requirements in your product data for each target country
and language, as well as specific attributes used to submit
landing pages. For example, the price must match what is on
your landing page with appropriate taxes added, if
applicable. This ensures your customers see the same price
on your Shopping ad as on the landing page.
   
Creating Shopping feed
 Register your data feed — you’ll need to submit your data
feed for review to ensure everything is right. Go
to Products in your Merchant Center account and
select Feeds from the page menu. Click the plus button (+)
to get started. Provide the requested information in
the Register a new feed section to continue. When you're
done specifying your feed settings, click Save.  
 If rejected, review to see what problem areas were flagged.
 Once approved, your products will be eligible to serve.
Optimize product data
 Images - High-quality product images are key to a good clickthrough
rate (CTR). Get high-quality images (at least 800x800 pixels) that
match the product sold.

 Titles - Titles are crucial pieces of information that match search

queries to ads. While limited to 150 characters, only the first 70 are
visible in the ad.

 Description - A great description gives his client’s customers the

information they need to make an informed decision.

 Category - makes sure to accurately categorize each product into the

correct product type or Google product category. This is an important
step in structuring and organizing his client’s Shopping campaign.
Product group attributes
 Item ID - The identifier (ID) for each product
 Brand - The manufacturer of a product
 Category - An attribute based on the Google product taxonomy. A
category string that Jaime uses might be: “Apparel & Accessories >
Clothing > Outerwear.”
 Product type - An attribute assigned based on Jaime’s client’s
categorization
 Custom labels - Jaime can create up to five custom labels in his
product data, such as “seasonal” or “bestseller.”
 Condition - The state of a product (new, used, and refurbished)
 Channel - Where products are sold, either "Local" in a physical
store or "Online" through an e-commerce store
 Channel exclusivity - Whether products are sold locally, online, or
through both channels
Creating Shopping campaign
 Here are step-by-step instructions for creating a Shopping campaign:
 Sign in to your AdWords account.
 Click the Campaigns tab. Then, click + Campaign and select Shopping.
 On the “Select campaign settings” page, give your campaign a name. If you
want to use the same campaign settings as another Shopping campaign, go
to “or load settings from” and select the campaign from the “Existing
campaigns” drop-down menu.
 Provide a merchant identifier by clicking the Select account drop-down menu
and choosing the Merchant ID. The ID should be the Google Merchant
Center account associated with the products being advertised in this
Shopping campaign.
 From the drop-down menu next to “Country of Sale” select the country where
the products in this campaign are sold. This setting defines which products
from your Merchant Center inventory are advertised in this campaign. It
filters products based on the target country associated with the products.
Creating Shopping campaign
 If you want to use the optional “campaign priority” and “inventory filter”
settings or advertise local products, click Shopping settings (advanced).
 Use the optional “campaign priority” setting when you have multiple
Shopping campaigns advertising the same product and you want to
determine which campaign (and its associated bid) will be used when ads for
these products show. By default, all Shopping campaigns are set to “Low”
campaign priority. To change, select “Medium” or “High,” depending upon
how you choose to prioritize this campaign over other Shopping campaigns
with the same products.
 Use the optional “inventory filter” to limit the products you want to advertise
in your Shopping campaign based on the Merchant Center product attributes
you choose. By default, the inventory filter is set to “None - Use all products
in country of sale (recommended).” To change, select Create custom filter.
 In the two drop-down menus under “Matches all of the following,” select the
attribute and corresponding value of the products you want to include in your
Shopping campaign.
 To add an additional filter, click + and make your selections as above. You
are limited to 7 attribute filters.
Creating Shopping campaign
 Next to “Locations,” choose the geographical areas where you want the
Shopping ads in this campaign to appear. You can choose to include or
exclude specific locations.
 By default, Shopping campaigns show ads on the Google Search Network
 and on Google search partnerwebsites. The Google Search Network
includes Google.com and Google.com/shopping. Search partners include
third-party websites that display and link to products for sale. Including
search partners can help you reach more shoppers, increase your visibility,
and improve traffic to your products. You can deselect the “Include search
partners” check box if you don’t want to include them in your campaign.
 Your “bid strategy” defaults to “I’ll manually set my bids for clicks,” which
means you’ll set your own maximum cost-per-click bid (max. CPC). You’ll
do this in the next step.
 If you use conversion tracking, "Enable Enhanced CPC" is automatically
selected. Enhanced cost-per-click (Enhanced CPC) automatically adjusts
your manual bids to try to maximize conversions you receive while keeping
your total cost the same.
Creating Shopping campaign
 Enter your max. CPC bid next to “Default bid.” This bid will apply to the first
ad group and product group you create in your campaign. You can adjust
your bids later from the "Product groups” tab.
 Next to “Budget,” select if you would like to use an “individual budget” for this
campaign or apply a budget from a shared library. For an individual budget,
enter the amount you would like to spend per day for this campaign (keep in
mind, the actual amount may vary).
 Click Save and continue.
 You'll arrive on the Create ad groups page. In the “Ad group creation” section
you'll need to make some decisions about how to organize your
campaign. How you organize your settings depends on your goals for your
campaign. Remember that you can always change the organization of your
campaign later if you need to. 
Useful links
 https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6324436?hl=en
Measure Shopping campaign
performance
 Your company is a specialty retailer of handmade soaps and lotions.
You just launched your Shopping campaign to promote your entire
inventory of products. What part of your campaign should you
investigate to see how it’s performing?
 Product Groups - You’ll definitely want to see how your campaign is
performing across your product groups — “soaps” and “lotions”.
This helps you determine if you need to subdivide your product
groups further (like dividing your soaps between “floral scented” and
“other scents”) or adjust your bids.
 Products - Google Shopping gives you the tools to dive deep and
gain insight on the performance of individual products. Now you can
see that your special butter lotion is a big seller and deserves your
attention!
Measure Shopping campaign
performance
 Other Shopping specific columns
 Click share is the clicks you've received on the Search Network
divided by the estimated maximum number of clicks that you could
have received. The maximum number of clicks depends on both the
prominence of your ads and the number of ads you show for a
search query. These are influenced by several factors, including
your bid and the overall quality and relevance of your ads.
 The % approved column shows you the current number of
approved products in your product group divided by the current
number of products submitted for that product group. Use this
column to understand how your product disapprovals affect the
performance of your product group. If a large number of your
products are not approved, refer to the Diagnostics tab in Merchant
Center to troubleshoot and make corrections.
Measure Shopping campaign
performance
 Other Shopping specific columns
 The % active column is the current number of active products in
your product group divided by the current number of products
submitted for that product group. Use this column to understand
how your product data and your campaign settings affect the
performance of your product group. To be active, the product must
be approved in your Merchant Center account and the product's
campaign and ad group must be enabled and its product group not
excluded. If a product isn't active, it isn't available to be shown and
you might be losing traffic.
Measure Shopping campaign
performance
 Other Shopping specific columns
 % ready to serve is the current number of products that are ready to
serve in your product group divided by the current number of
products submitted for that product group. Use this column to
understand how your product data and your campaign settings
affect the performance of your product group.
 To be ready to serve, a product must be:
 Approved in your Merchant Center account
 Active — the product's campaign and ad group are enabled and its
product group is not excluded
 In stock
Improving Shopping Bids &
performance
 Auction insights report - The Auction Insights report compares your
performance with other advertisers who are participating in the same
auctions that you are. This information can help you make strategic
decisions about bidding and budgeting choices by showing you where you’re
succeeding and where you may be missing opportunities.

 Bid Simulator - Want to increase or decrease your bids, but not sure how it
might affect your campaign’s performance? The Bid Simulator estimates
your advertising results over the previous seven days if you’d set different
bids. This can bring clarity to how different product group bids might
potentially affect your traffic and conversions.

 Improve performance- Shopping ads are generated based on the product

data you set up in your Merchant Center account. While you can define
product groups within campaigns, performance is tightly linked to the data
you provided in Merchant Center. This data is much like the keywords used
in a search campaign — it’s how your ads are matched to user searches. So
make sure your product data is accurate and up-to-date!
Improving Shopping Bids &
performance
 Add negative keywords - Negative keywords can be an effective
tool to avoid showing your products to the wrong shopper. Brian
pulls a Search terms report in order to see which searches his
campaign appears in.

 Mobile device optimization – check out data as per device type to

get better understanding of how your campaign is performing on
different devices.
Automatic item updates through structured data
markup
 You can enable automatic item updates, so no mismatches between
your site and your Shopping ads occur. Mismatches cause
disapprovals and prevent your products from showing on Google
Shopping.

 What is structured data markup?

 https://youtu.be/A8Cuy0beJgY
Compliance
 Prohibited content - Google does not allow dangerous products,
such as drugs, weapons, explosives, or tobacco products. Offensive
or inappropriate content is not allowed as well.
 Prohibited practices - Google does not allow abuse of the ad
network, such as malicious content or merchants who attempt to
bypass Google’s review processes. Google wants users to trust that
information about them will be respected and handled with care.
 Restricted content - Some content may be legally or culturally
sensitive. Google does not want to show ads if they are ever
inappropriate. For example, adult-oriented content, copyrighted
content, or healthcare-related content may not be appropriate. 
 Editorial and technical requirements - Google has editorial
requirements to keep your ads appealing to his client’s customers.
Technical requirements will help you get the most out of the variety
of ad formats that Google offers. 
Diagnose crawl issues
 If your Shopping ads aren’t running, check Merchant Center's
"Diagnostics" section, found under the “Products” page. You’ll be
able to find all issues that would prevent your product(s) from
serving.
 Page not found (404) error - There was a mistake in the URL, so the
page returned a “Page not found (404)” error. Please check that the
URL is correct and your website is live.
 Server’s robots.txt disallows errors - You have robotted your page
by adding a “robots.txt” file to your server and prohibited crawl
access. We do not crawl robotted pages. Please resolve this by
configuring the “robots.txt” file to allow our crawl.
 Invalid Url - Your URL contains invalid characters or does not have
the format of a valid link.
Diagnose crawl issues
 What are some other common errors you can look out for to avoid
other issues? 
 Private IP: Your website is hosted behind a firewall or router and we
were unable to access it.
 Malformed HTTP response: The response from your server was
garbled.
 Page requires authentication: The URL provided is protected by
some sort of authentication protocol that prevents Google from
accessing the content.
 Timeout reading page: The server took too long returning the page
and we abandoned the crawl of that product.
Merchant Promotions
 Since Maria launched her Google Shopping campaign, the sales of
her products have gone through the roof. There’s just one problem:
with spring almost here, Maria will soon be getting a shipment with
some fresh styles of sunglasses.
 Is there a way for Maria to clear out her inventory of last season’s
sunglasses before they bury her? Using Google Shopping Merchant
Promotions, Maria can discount her old merchandise and possibly
even find some new customers.
Merchant Promotions
 Offers you can give in merchant promotions.
 Discounts - Discounts are a great place for Maria to start. She can
keep it simple and offer her customers a dollar amount or
percentage off at checkout. Since she’s trying to clear out her
inventory, she might also consider a “buy one, get one” promotion to
encourage customers to buy more than one pair of sunglasses.
 Free gifts - Free gifts are another potential option for Maria. For
instance, she can offer a free pair of last season’s sunglasses with
every purchase.
 Shipping - Free or reduced shipping is another option for Maria to
entice customers. If she chooses to go this route, she’d have to
ensure that customers use a valid redemption code in order to get
the discount.
Merchant Promotions
 Offers you can give in merchant promotions.
 Discounts - Discounts are a great place for Maria to start. She can
keep it simple and offer her customers a dollar amount or
percentage off at checkout. Since she’s trying to clear out her
inventory, she might also consider a “buy one, get one” promotion to
encourage customers to buy more than one pair of sunglasses.
 Free gifts - Free gifts are another potential option for Maria. For
instance, she can offer a free pair of last season’s sunglasses with
every purchase.
 Shipping - Free or reduced shipping is another option for Maria to
entice customers. If she chooses to go this route, she’d have to
ensure that customers use a valid redemption code in order to get
the discount.
Merchant Promotions
 Lets watch the video.
 https://youtu.be/MwtviZHARIw

 Merchant promotion form

 https://services.google.com/fb/forms/merchantpromotionsform/
Prioritize Shopping Campaigns
 For products that are in multiple Shopping campaigns, prioritizing
which campaign should participate in the auction is necessary.
 Lets understand with an example
 Tom, marketing manager at Sports Gear, is advertising his sports
jerseys in multiple campaigns.
 Tom, marketing manager at Sports Gear, is advertising his sports
jerseys in multiple campaigns. Tom is starting a new campaign
launching the latest line of jerseys for the fall sports season. The
products also show up in his general campaign for sports jerseys.
 Tom has a specific budget for fall sports jerseys. Whenever a sports
jersey is shown in October, he wants the bid to come from the fall
campaign, not the sports jersey campaign. How can he manage his
Shopping campaigns so his ad dollars go exactly where he wants?
Let’s follow along and see how he does it with campaign priorities.
Prioritize Shopping Campaigns
 What is a campaign priority?
 Because Tom has the same product in multiple Shopping
campaigns, he can determine which campaign should participate in
the auction with the campaign priority. His campaigns already have
a priority of “Low,” but he can change this priority to “Medium” or
“High.” These priorities determine the bid for any product that the
campaigns share.
 If one campaign has a higher priority than the others, the campaign
with the higher priority bids. For example, if Tom’s fall campaign has
a “High” priority, and the general sports jersey campaign has a
“Medium” priority, the bid from the “High” priority campaign is
chosen, even if the bid in the “Medium” priority campaign is set to a
larger amount.
Prioritize Shopping Campaigns
 If the campaign with the highest priority runs out of budget, the next
lower priority campaign will place the bid. Continuing with the
previous example, when the budget for the “High” priority campaign
(fall jerseys) is used up, the bid from the “Medium” priority campaign
(sports jerseys) will be used.
 If multiple campaigns all have the same priority, the campaign with
the highest bid for that product participates in the auction. For
example, if three campaigns share the same product and have a
“Low” priority, the highest bid from any of the three campaigns is
used.
 Preemptive item disapproval
 Preemptive item disapproval 
 If you don't remove the violating items within a certain timeframe, other items
could be disapproved as well. This is known as a "preemptive item
disapproval." Google always errs on the side of caution.
 Account suspension 
 Egregious or repeat violations may still lead to account suspension rather
than preemptive item disapprovals. Violations of multiple policies can result
in different instances of preemptive item disapproval occurring at the same
time.
 Email 
 If an item is disapproved, Google will notify you via email. This email will ask
you to remove the item and any other items that violate a policy from your
product data. 
 Shopping policies 
 All items need to adhere to Shopping policies or they could be disapproved.
Even worse, Google could suspend your account in severe cases.
Showcase shopping ads
 How Showcase Shopping ads work
 Showcase Shopping ads are highly visual, mobile-only ads that help brands
reach customers . Let’s take a closer look at why you should consider them
for a campaign and how they differ from Shopping ads.

 Connect with shoppers early - Many searches on Google Shopping use

broad search terms like "women’s dresses" or "lighting". This usually means
a shopper is trying to figure out what to buy. Showcase Shopping ads reach
these potential customers and get them thinking about your brand and
products while they're still trying to make a decision.

 Control - You can tailor your ad to highlight what your potential customers
want. For example, you might choose your best sellers or seasonal picks,
and Google picks the most relevant products to match search queries.

 Measurements - Thanks to comprehensive reporting tools in Google Ads,

you can track the performance of your ads in real time.
Showcase shopping ads
 How to set up showcase shopping ads?
 You can use both to improve your reach. (Product and showcase)
 Creating a Showcase Shopping ad isn’t much different from creating a
Product Shopping ad. Simply select Showcase Shopping when choosing
your ad group type.  
 When creating your ad, you’ll want to highlight what makes you unique in the
headline and description, so you can capture the attention of customers. For
example, you could include details that help you stand out from the
competition like free shipping, easy returns, great selection, or outstanding
customer service.
 Choose multiple product groups that together contain at least 100 products
to showcase with your ad.
 The products in the ad are used to help match customer’s search term to a
Showcase Shopping ad, so including more products allows the ad to appear
for more searches.
Showcase shopping pricing
 Showcase Shopping ads are cost-
per-engagement (CPE), which
means the advertiser is only
charged when Ellie clicks on their
Showcase Shopping ad from
Google Search and then either
clicks any of the links shown within
the ad, or spends more than ten
seconds on the expanded ad.
Local inventory ads
 Local inventory ads promote your products and store information to
nearby shoppers searching with Google. 
 Lets understand with an example
 Cait’s Caps has a brick-and-mortar store and she sells products
online. Her Shopping ads have increased her online orders of winter
hats, but some of her local customers aren’t aware that she sells
these hats at a store nearby.
 Cait wants to increase traffic to her store and make her local
customers aware of her products. If a customer searches for sports
stocking hats and is located nearby, can those customers be
directed toward Cait’s store if they want to try on the hats?
 Cait needs a way to alert local customers that the products they
search are available nearby. She can do that with local inventory
ads.
Local inventory ads
 Local inventory ads (LIAs) will showcase Cait’s sports stocking hats and her
store information to nearby shoppers (within ~30 miles) searching with
Google.
 When shoppers click on her ad, they arrive on a Google-hosted page for her
store, called the local storefront. Shoppers use the local storefront to view in-
store inventory, get store hours, find directions, or continue to shop online at
the merchant’s site.
 By surfacing local information, LIAs help omnichannel retailers differentiate
their ads from online Shopping ads. While LIAs are effective at driving online
purchases as well, in comparison to online ads, they’re better suited to drive
consumers to brick-and-mortar stores to complete a purchase.
Local inventory ads
 Set up
 Need a Google Merchant center account
 Need Google my business verified address
 Uploaded local inventory feeds
 A Google representative works to schedule inventory verification visits to
your store.
Optimize shopping campaigns for
mobiles – Best practices
 Allow checkout without registration
 Mobile customers use devices with smaller screens and are often on the go.
By making it easier for these customers, they’re more likely to follow through
on their purchases!

 Target users near your store

 By reaching more users near your location (and also using local inventory
ads with Google Shopping), you can drive more shoppers into your shoe
store.

 Compare mobile with desktop

 By comparing your performance by device, you can get a clearer picture on
how your campaign is performing overall, and if you need to make changes
to reach more users on mobile devices. In this course, we’ll show you how!
Optimize shopping campaigns for
mobiles – Best practices
 Allow checkout without registration
 Mobile customers use devices with smaller screens and are often on the go.
By making it easier for these customers, they’re more likely to follow through
on their purchases!

 Target users near your store

 By reaching more users near your location (and also using local inventory
ads with Google Shopping), you can drive more shoppers into your shoe
store.

 Compare mobile with desktop

 By comparing your performance by device, you can get a clearer picture on
how your campaign is performing overall, and if you need to make changes
to reach more users on mobile devices. In this course, we’ll show you how!
Optimize shopping campaigns for
mobiles – Best practices
 Analyze your mobile campaigns
 Compare your desktop and mobile impression share (IS). If your IS on
mobile is lower it probably means that your bids on mobile are less
competitive and you should consider raising your bids.
 Mobile Shopping ads in the top positions can see clickthrough rate (CTR)
increases up to 3X higher than their competition! A low mobile click share but
high impression share may mean your ads are missing out on clicks due to
not having a high enough ad placement.
 Want to increase or decrease your bids, but not sure how it might affect your
campaign’s performance? Leverage the Mobile Bid Adjustment Simulator (in
the Settings tab in Google Ads) to see how an adjustment to mobile bid
modifiers can impact your campaign
 Want to reach customers near your store? The combination of strong mobile
and location bid adjustments means you'll get your ads in front of mobile
users who are near your stores, and drive mobile foot traffic to them.