What Are Google Shopping Ads?
A Google Shopping ad is a type of Google Ads that focuses more on the visual side. The use of text is very minimal and limited to only the most necessary information.
So, a Google Shopping ad consists of:
- Picture of your product
- Ad title
- Price
- Name of your store
How to set up a Google Shopping ad?
The first step is to send Google data about the product you’d like to display through the Merchant Center feature, and then create your Google Ads campaigns.
After you do that, Google will use the data you’ve provided to create its own campaigns and show them to potential clients. This way, not only will you get better leads, but you can also raise brand awareness.
I also recommend you to check the guide How to Optimize Google Ads Campaigns.
How Do Google Shopping Ads Work?
Shopping Ads are PPC ads. This means that they participate in the ad auction, and Shopping ads will be charged using either CPC (cost-per-click) or CPE (cost-per-engagement). Usually, you can decide how much you want to spend on click or engagement when creating your campaigns.
These ads are managed using Shopping campaigns. These campaigns help you organize the product inventory you have in the Merchant Center, and they also give potential customers the relevant information we mentioned previously.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you sell dresses.
Mary has an event, and she is looking online for an evening dress, which makes her a potential customer. Once she types in her keyword, her search results will appear, and above them will be the Shopping ads. Your Shopping ad will have not only a picture of one of the evening dresses you sell but also a descriptive title, like ‘Black, Strapless Evening Dress,’ and the price. Additional information can also appear here.
By now, Mary knows how your product looks, some of its features, and the price.
Google Shopping Ad Categories
Before we start with Google Shopping Ads optimization talk it’s also important to know that Shopping ads come in three categories: Product Shopping ads, Showcase Shopping ads, and Local Inventory Ads.
Product Shopping
Product Shopping are made with the data that you’ve introduced in the Merchant Centre.
Showcase Shopping ads
Showcase Shopping ads are made by grouping similar products together.
Local Inventory Ads
Local Inventory Ads use data from the local inventory ads to engage Google Display Network users.
These ads can be found all over Google. Be it on the Shopping tab, Google search, the Google Display Network, and even on Google’s partner websites, once Google creates a shopping ad, it will start showing it around.
How To Set Up a Shopping Campaign
It’s important to note that there are certain requirements that you need to meet to create Shopping campaigns. These requirements include having accounts for Merchant Center and Google Ads, complying with the Shopping ads policies, and regularly updating your product data.
Once you meet these requirements, you can create your Shopping campaign:
- Log into your Google Ads account
- Go to the ‘Campaigns’ section
- Create a new campaign and select ‘Shopping.’
Congratulations, now you have a Google Shopping campaign!
But after this step, you need to customize your preferences:
- Campaign name
- Merchant
- Country of sale
- Inventory filter
- Bidding
- Daily budget
- Campaign priority
- Networks
- Devices
- Location
- Local inventory ads
After you save your preferences, you can choose your ad group. You can have:
- Product Shopping
- Showcase Shopping ad group
While creating your ad group, you will have customizable features, such as the ad group name and bid.
Optimize Google Shopping Campaigns
The most important thing about Google Shopping Ads optimization is to know that they don’t use keywords. Instead, they use the existing product data that they get from the Merchant Center, and that’s how they decide when and where they will place your ads.
But even though Google Shopping campaigns don’t have keywords, they still have negative keywords, and it would be a good idea to use that feature. You can select your negative keywords by checking out the search queries for your ads. These queries will appear in the Google Search Terms report.
The keywords that you should avoid are the ones that are irrelevant to your business or products, keywords related to competitors, and generic keywords.
Google Shopping Campaign: Bidding Tips
Another way of optimizing your Shopping ads is by keeping your campaigns and your ad groups organized. You can do this by having an organized campaign structure.
For example, one of the most popular structures is having one campaign with an ad group and a product group that includes all the products. Of course, there are many other structures that you can experiment with.
Bids are also significant. In case you don’t know your way around bids, you can use the bid simulator. The simulator will show you possible advertising results, and they will help you understand how different product group bids affect your traffic.
All in all, Google will offer you a lot of useful data and features that can help you. You can also check out the Product’s group page, the auction insight reports, and the product page. Make sure you use all these features to the fullest.
Save Time: Automatically Optimize and Manage Ad Campaigns
Although Shopping ads and campaigns are quite easy to create and manage, they can still eat up your time. How so? You need to create these campaigns and get accustomed to them to make the most out of them.
But Adspert can spare you the hassle and save you time and money by automated Google Shopping Ads optimization and management.
It uses a proprietary mathematical statistics software to adjust bids for your keywords, products, and placements; and it does this several times a day. This way, not only your Google, but also Microsoft, eBay and Amazon campaigns are always optimized.
Your business goal might be to improve your ROI, get better cost management, or maximize your profits. But no matter what it is, Adspert will help you achieve it.
Final Thoughts
In conclusion, Google Shopping ads are a type of Google Ads that use minimal text and focus on the visual aspect to showcase products to potential customers.
To optimize your Google Shopping ads, it is important to keep your campaigns and ad groups organized, use negative keywords, and experiment with bid strategies.
Overall, Google Shopping ads can be a valuable tool to increase brand awareness and attract potential customers.
