Tag Archives: Google Ads

It’s now free to sell on Google

The retail sector has faced many threats over the years, which have only intensified during the coronavirus pandemic. With physical stores shuttered, digital commerce has become a lifeline for retailers. And as consumers increasingly shop online, they're searching not just for essentials but also things like toys, apparel, and home goods. While this presents an opportunity for struggling businesses to reconnect with consumers, many cannot afford to do so at scale.

In light of these challenges, we’re advancing our plans to make it free for merchants to sell on Google. Beginning next week, search results on the Google Shopping tab will consist primarily of free product listings, helping merchants better connect with consumers, regardless of whether they advertise on Google. With hundreds of millions of shopping searches on Google each day, we know that many retailers have the items people need in stock and ready to ship, but are less discoverable online.

For retailers, this change means free exposure to millions of people who come to Google every day for their shopping needs. For shoppers, it means more products from more stores, discoverable through the Google Shopping tab. For advertisers, this means paid campaigns can now be augmented with free listings. If you’re an existing user of Merchant Center and Shopping Ads, you don't have to do anything to take advantage of the free listings, and for new users of Merchant Center, we'll continue working to streamline the onboarding process over the coming weeks and months.

Update to Google Shopping

These changes will take effect in the U.S. before the end of April, and we aim to expand this globally before the end of the year. Our help center has more details on how to participate in free product listings and Shopping ads.

We’re also kicking off a new partnership with PayPal to allow merchants to link their accounts. This will speed up our onboarding process and ensure we’re surfacing the highest quality results for our users. And we’re continuing to work closely with many of our existing partners that help merchants manage their products and inventory, including Shopify, WooCommerce, and BigCommerce, to make digital commerce more accessible for businesses of all sizes.  

Solutions during this crisis will not be fast or easy, but we hope to provide a measure of relief for businesses and lay the groundwork for a healthier retail ecosystem in the future.

It’s faster and easier to use Ads Data Hub

Advertisers tell us that understanding the business impact of their marketing is more important than ever. But they also report that it’s becoming more difficult as the industry—in response to growing concerns about privacy—changes its practices around how data is collected and used. Ads Data Hub enables customized analysis of your Google ad campaigns while protecting user privacy and upholding Google’s high standards of data security.

Today, we’re providing an update on improvements to Ads Data Hub that help you analyze data more quickly and easily, better understand the way that people interact with your ads, and use insights from your data to reach the right customers. With these updates, you can tailor your measurement to your unique business needs, understand how your marketing is performing, and drive the greatest business impact.

Improvements to help you analyze your data faster and easier

Over the past year, we’ve been investing in the infrastructure that underlies Ads Data Hub to make it available to a larger number of customers and simplify the process of writing queries. Over 200 brands, agencies and measurement partners are actively using Ads Data Hub today. And usage continues to increase, with successful queries up over 145 percent in 2019 compared to 2018. But we’ve heard from customers that we need to make it faster and easier to run analysis.

In the coming weeks, we’ll add self-service account linking for Google Ads, Campaign Manager, and Display & Video 360, so you can more easily access your Google ad campaign data across multiple products in a secure, privacy-centric environment. This includes allowing you to create multi-tier account structures, which adds flexibility to how brands and agencies can configure ads data within Ads Data Hub to address unique account hierarchies and user access requirements.

Link request.png

Link your Google Ads, Campaign Manager, and Display & Video 360 accounts to Ads Data Hub

We’re making it easier to run analysis with a Sandbox environment, which recently rolled out to all customers. This environment includes a test dataset and can be used to experiment with data and query development, which can help make execution faster by giving you a better understanding of the types of queries you can write and insights you can get in Ads Data Hub.

We’ve also launched a new query library that gives you access to over 20 templates for the most common types of analysis run in Ads Data Hub. For example, the All events template can be used to get impressions, clicks, conversions and Active View stats for a specific account. Ads Data Hub users can also suggest new templates directly via the in-product feedback form.

  • E02547721-Google-GMP-Resize-Blogpost-Screenshot-Mar20_GoogleAds_v2.png

                                                              Query templates help you write and run queries for the most common types of analysis


  • E02547721-Google-GMP-Resize-Blogpost-Screenshot-Mar20_CampaignManager_v2.png

                                                              Query templates help you write and run queries for the most common types of analysis


  • E02547721-Google-GMP-Resize-Blogpost-Screenshot-Mar20_DisplayVideo_v2.png

                                                              Query templates help you write and run queries for the most common types of analysis


  • E02547721-Google-GMP-Resize-Blogpost-Screenshot-Mar20_YoutubeReserve_v2.png

                                                              Query templates help you write and run queries for the most common types of analysis


A frequent request we’ve heard from customers is to be able to access and analyze ad data closer to real-time. To address this, we’ve brought latency down from 24-48 hours to 6 hours for display and YouTube ads data from Google Ads, as well as for data from YouTube ads bought via Display & Video 360. That means, if an impression was served at 8am, you can query data associated with that impression from 2pm on the same day.

New ways to understand the consumer journey

Manually stitching together event-level data from Campaign Manager and Display & Video 360 to reconstruct the path to purchase is possible today in Ads Data Hub, but it can be time-consuming and difficult. That’s why we’ve introduced consumer journey paths, a set of pre-processed data that automatically join impression, click, and conversion events together if they’re part of a single journey. This will help advertisers get valuable insights about the consumer journey faster and with higher quality output than manual approaches, and is available to all Ads Data Hub customers that have Campaign Manager and Display & Video 360 data enabled in their account.

To cover more of the ways people interact with media and your brand, we’re expanding beyond computer, mobile and tablet device measurement to include TV screens. This includes coverage for connected TV and gaming consoles. These devices are becoming a bigger part of many media plans, so understanding their role in delivering value for your business is also becoming more important.

Today, Ads Data Hub includes key advertising metrics such as viewability, impressions, clicks, and conversions from display and video ads in Google Ads, Campaign Manager, and Display & Video 360. And in the coming months we’re enabling more measurement use cases by adding advanced Active View metrics for YouTube—including viewability and audibility metrics—that allow you to uncover deep insights into creative performance and user attention.

Reach the right customers with customized audience list creation

Beyond measurement, one of biggest pieces of feedback we’ve heard from customers is that they’d like to take action on the insights they uncover in Ads Data Hub, while protecting user privacy. We’ve begun a test to allow a limited group of customers to build audience lists based on clicks or conversions from Google Ads, Campaign Manager, and Display & Video 360, and use these audience lists to inform who sees display ads in Google Ads and Display & Video 360. For example, you could create an audience list in Ads Data Hub of users that have already purchased your product, then use that as an exclusion list to ensure you don’t continue to show them your ads served via Google Ads and Display & Video 360.

User privacy protections are deeply embedded across all of these features, and—as always—there’s an aggregation requirement of at least 50 users for output of any data from Ads Data Hub. Over time, we'll continue to evolve the capabilities of Ads Data Hub by providing access to additional ads datasets and developing deeper integrations across our ad platforms.

Source: Google Ads


Video creation is fast, easy and free with YouTube Video Builder

Given the current environment, many businesses are shifting how they're communicating and interacting with their customers and are turning to videos to make and maintain connections.


For businesses who don’t have resources to create videos from scratch, Video Builder can help. It’s a free beta tool that animates static assets—images, text and logos—with music from our library. You can choose from a variety of layouts based on your message and goals, customize colors and font and quickly generate a short YouTube video (6 seconds or 15 seconds). 


Because businesses of all sizes are strapped for time and resources and in-person video shoots are no longer practical in many countries, we are accelerating the next stage of Video Builder availability. With this tool, any business who needs a video can create one that helps connect with their customers and keep them informed—whether through an advertising campaign, website or email. 


You may be surprised by what you can create from your laptop in a few short minutes. To see how it works, watch this video or read this guide.
Video Builder Mock 2.png

Mock of a Video Builder layout

Video Builder Mock 1.png

Mock of a Video Builder layout

Different businesses have different creative needs. A restaurant may want to communicate changing hours or promotions, while a supermarket may highlight new services like curbside pickup. For brands or agencies with existing video resources, Video Builder can help bring agility and experimentation to the creation process by generating supplemental, lightweight videos. For smaller businesses and those with less creative experience, it can provide an efficient, low-resource way to create videos, perhaps even for the first time.

Havenly, an online platform offering affordable interior design services, has been using Video Builder to support their team’s video creation needs. "Video is an integral part of our media strategy because our business demands visual context,” says Stang Gappa, Senior Manager of Growth. “Historically, video development has been a slow and labor intensive process. With Video Builder, our small team is able to spin out high quality creative with increased velocity. Given the current situation, where many of us are sheltering in place, free tools like this can help us continue to keep in touch with our customers.”


If you’re interested in trying the Video Builder beta, sign up for access here. We’ll process requests as soon as we are able given tool capacity and email you once your access is granted. If you have a Google team, please request access through them. 


Through tools, insights and resources, we are committed to helping you navigate change and uncertainty.

Grow your games business with a player-first approach

As an avid gamer, every year I look forward to spending time with developers at GDC to celebrate together and learn from their successes. We are all disappointed that this year's conference was postponed, but we applaud the organizers for taking steps to protect our global community. 

Although we won’t be gathering in person this year, the Google team is hosting the Google for Games Developer Summit, a free, digital-only experience where developers can watch the announcements and session content that was planned for GDC. We still wanted to share these updates with you because we think these new products will help developers succeed and are a direct response to feedback from our developer community. 

As we study emerging gaming trends one of the most consistent things we've noticed over the years is that those who build a strong games business always put players first. That means deeply understanding players at every stage of their app journey. Today, we’re announcing new solutions that help you launch a game people love, improve it based on player insights, and earn more during the time that someone is engaged with your game. 

Launch a game players love with scaled user testing

Appealing to players at launch is essential to the success of your game. Based on recent Google internal data, more than half of installs come within the first 8 weeks of an app’s release. To make the most of this influx of users, leading developers like Big Fish Games test their apps in beta before releasing them publicly.  That’s why last year we introduced open testing in the Google Play Console to help you get early feedback from real users before your full release. 

To get even more testers into your app, you’ll soon be able to promote Android games with open testing in Google Ads as well. By running open testing ads in App campaigns, you can drive early users to your app to test things like app stability, user retention, monetization, and effectiveness of ad creatives—then use the learning to improve your results when you launch. 

In one example, Chinese developer NetEase used open testing ads to reach more beta users that helped them optimize in-app purchase behavior based on open testing data.  For their new game, Dawn of Isles, Netease was able to double in-app purchases which ultimately led to higher lifetime value (LTV) at launch.

E02526911 Google Ads PAM Mobile Phone Mock GIF Feb20-GDC_v03.gif

Improve your game by learning from your players

Many developers use Google Analytics to understand how people are playing their game. Now, we’re taking it a step further by introducing a gaming-specific Analytics experience to help you get relevant insights even faster. Starting today, App + Web properties in Google Analytics will proactively surface gaming-specific user funnel metrics like acquisition, retention, engagement, and monetization in one place.


Engagement_report_w_laptop@2x.png

With games reporting, you can see how players move through the lifecycle. Then, you can use that insight to improve the game experience and drive more revenue using both ads and IAPs. For example, you could group the players that have dropped off after one week in your game and share that audience to Google Ads to re-engage them with a tailored message and offer. There’s no extra work to set up games reporting in your Google Analytics App + Web property. Learn more to get started.  


In addition to Google Analytics games reporting, coming soon are a few other new ways for you to use Google tools to unlock more valuable insights about your players. 

  • Updated Google Ads asset report: Understand how your App campaign creatives are resonating with new users and optimize campaign performance more easily. 

  • AdMob cohort report: Understand the LTV of your players across their user journey.

  • AdMob mobile app:Quickly access ads monetization reports on the go via a new mobile app.

Earn more from your game

In addition to using player insights, another way to earn more from your game is with AdMob mediation. Leading developers like GameHouse, Playdots, and StickyHands, who use AdMob mediation have seen revenue increases of up to 30%—and now they can earn even more. 

We’re introducing a new tool called Mediation A/B testing, so you can test and refine your ads monetization setups directly in your AdMob account. For example, you’ll soon be able to run a test to see how much more you could earn by using Open Bidding compared to waterfall mediation. 

mediation ab testing.jpg

Disclaimer: revenue results may vary. 

Using Google’s internal A/B testing engine, mediation A/B testing will split your traffic to run on your control group and the variant at the same time. This approach provides unbiased results that can help you maximize the value of every ad you show to players. 

To learn more about how these solutions will help you build a strong games business, tune into our broadcast keynote of the Google for Games Developer Summit on Monday March 23 9AM PT. Get all the details on the digital event at g.co/gamedevsummit. 

Join us for the digital Google for Games Developer Summit

Last month, Game Developers Conference (GDC) organizers made the difficult decision to postpone the conference. We understand this decision, as we have to prioritize the health and safety of our community. GDC is one of our most anticipated times of the year to connect with the gaming industry. Though we won’t be bringing the news in-person this year, we’re hosting the Google for Games Developer Summit, a free, digital-only experience where developers can watch the announcements and session content that was planned for GDC.  

Google for Games Developer Summit

The Developer Summit kicks off on March 23rd at 9:00AM PT with our broadcasted keynote. Immediately following, we’ll be releasing a full lineup of developer sessions with over 10 hours of content to help take your games to the next level. 

Here are some types of sessions to expect:

  • Success stories from industry leaders on how they’ve conquered game testing, built backend infrastructure, and launched great games across all platforms. 
  • New announcements like Android development and profiling tools that can help deploy large APKs to devices faster, fine tune graphic performance, and analyze device memory more effectively.
  • Updates on products like Game Servers (currently in alpha)—a fully managed offering of Agones, letting developers easily deploy and manage containerized game servers around the globe.

Sign up to stay informed at g.co/gamedevsummit. 

Support for the game developer community

We recognize every developer is impacted differently by this situation. We’re coordinating with the GDC Relief Fund to sponsor and assist developers who’ve invested in this moment to further grow their games.

We also understand many developers were looking forward to sharing their content with peers. To help with this, developers can use YouTube to stream events from small to large using tools like Live Streaming andPremieres. 

We can’t wait to share what we have in store for gaming. Discover the solutions our teams have been building to support the success of this community for years to come.

Source: Google Ads


Google for Games Developer Summit is coming to GDC 2020

We’re excited to see you at the upcoming Game Developers Conference (GDC) from March 16-20 in San Francisco. If you can’t make it in person, sign up to keep up to date with our announcements and view the livestream. You’ll learn about new products and solutions from Google that will help developers for all platforms take their game to the next level. 

Everything kicks off with the Google for Games Developer Summit Keynote on Monday, March 16th where product leaders from across Google will share the biggest announcements for game developers. After the keynote, join in on two days of developer sessions to learn how to use Google solutions to create great games, connect with more players, and scale your business. Check out the agenda today.

Starting Wednesday, March 18th, visit our booth in the GDC Expo to experience demos and meet one-on-one with Google product experts. 

If you can’t attend GDC in-person, you can still watch the Keynote and other Developer Summit sessions via the live stream at g.co/gdc2020.

We’ll be sharing more details about what we have planned at GDC in the coming weeks—be sure to sign up to be among the first to hear the latest updates. On-site events are part of the official Game Developers Conference and require a pass to attend.

See you there!

One year, three highlights: Google for Nonprofits looks back

Imagine ending homelessness, solving climate change, or guaranteeing a sustainable future for the world. Nonprofits work hard to make these goals a reality. They tackle the most urgent issues facing society, and Google products help make their missions more visible and far-reaching. Let’s look at three ways the nonprofit community thrived in 2019 with the support of Google for Nonprofits and partner teams.

1. Staying in the know

Followers of Google for Nonprofits’ monthly newsletters and livestreams enjoyed a steady stream of news and tips about Google products. They learned how to spread their messages on YouTube, how to make a bigger impact with Google Earth and Maps, and gained insights from Google Analytics. 

Nonprofits also learned from each other. Thrive DC shared their mission to end homelessness in Washington, D.C., and how Google for Nonprofits helped them drastically improve their efficiency and productivity. GoVolunteer described how Google helps them grow and develop inclusion programs for immigrants and refugees in Germany.

Along with hearing these inspiring stories, nonprofits asked questions and supported each other on the newly launched Google for Nonprofits community forum. And they discovered an updated Google for Nonprofits site that’s more useful for everyone, including visitors with accessibility needs.

Thrive DC culinary arts

Thrive DC clients attend Culinary Arts, a program to teach culinary skills and provide new job opportunities to vulnerable populations.

2. Connecting with the community

Sixty-five nonprofits attended a day-long workshop that Google for Nonprofits held at Google’s Community Space in San Francisco. They received training on using YouTube to spread awareness and heard Invisible People speak about building empathy and support for those affected by homelessness.

In April, attendees of Google Cloud Next listened to the Google for Nonprofits team discuss how G Suite empowers nonprofits to collaborate and communicate more effectively. Two nonprofits also shared their experiences and best practices (watch the recording).

3. Putting themselves (and trees) on the map

In 2019, around 2,000 nonprofits across 59 countries used Google Maps Platform credits to raise their profiles and encourage others to join their mission.

Worldwide Opportunities on Organic Farms USA, which helps travelers find and work on organic farms, added Maps to their site so visitors could zoom in on any area in the U.S., see all the available farms and filter their search to narrow in on the right farms for them. After the switch to Google Maps Platform, WWOOF-USA’s page views increased to 8 million and the number of paying members nearly tripled since May 2018. 

EcoFarm Florida

A cow in an WWOOF-USA eco farm.

People also relied on YouTube to get more eyes on fundraising campaigns. In October, YouTube creator Mr. Beast vowed to get 20 million trees planted by the end of the year. The campaign, #TeamTrees, engaged other YouTube creators to promote the effort. More than 200 creators either posted videos about #TeamTrees or promoted it by using YouTube Giving.

We’re looking forward to more partnerships and stories in 2020. To stay up to date on all the latest nonprofit news, you can subscribe to our newsletter and YouTube channel, and join us at the Nonprofit Technology Conference in Maryland this March where we’ll be a platinum sponsor.

Balance your spend across YouTube and TV with Reach Planner

YouTube is focused on helping brands reach their audiences and drive business impact. That’s why we launched Reach Planner in April 2018 to give advertisers a better way to plan their YouTube and video media. To help make it even easier for users to for users to discover the optimal mix of TV and YouTube to maximize the reach of a video based media plan, today we’re launching  Nielsen TV Data in Reach Planner. Now you can see how different distributions of spend on TV and YouTube can affect your reach.

Using this together with Nielsen Total Ad Ratings (TAR), you can compare YouTube and TV reach from the planning stages through to post campaign reporting.


With audiences shifting to digital, it’s important to plan TV and digital together

With audiences shifting to digital, it’s important to plan across channels. According to Nielsen, there are thirty one percent fewer available weekly 18-49 GRPs across broadcast and cable television compared to just five years ago. TV’s decline in reach to 18-49 year olds now requires a forty six percent increase in frequency for marketers to achieve the same GRP levels.1
ASI graph blog post_v01 (1).jpg

Advertisers can offset this decline and grow their business by adding YouTube to their overall video plan. Across the 20 Total Ad Ratings (TAR) studies we’ve commissioned with Nielsen, YouTube has consistently driven incremental reach at a more balanced frequency compared to TV.2


Get started in Reach Planner

By adding Nielsen TV data to Reach Planner, advertisers can optimize their mix of TV and online video to maximize reach, balance frequency, and reduce waste.  Advertisers can also change the mix of YouTube formats to see the effect on the overall campaign.

TV Data in Reach Planner is available to all users of Reach Planner in the US. This feature will be available in more countries in 2020.

To get started, reach out to your Google team to get TV Data in Reach Planner enabled for your planning team.

1. Nielsen, NTI, U.S., Npower Reach & Frequency Report, Sept. 30, 2013–Oct. 27, 2013 vs. Oct. 1, 2018–Oct. 28, 2018.

2. "Nielsen Total Ad Ratings (TAR) Meta Analysis, including all 20 TAR US studies inclusive of YouTube in-app traffic commissioned by Google running from January 2018 to March 2019 across desktop, mobile and TV. Incremental Reach Value calculated as YouTube’s on-target incremental reach / YouTube’s Total on-target Reach. Standard Deviation 22%. On Target Frequency calculated as On Target Impressions / On Target Reach. Standard Deviation 6.5

2019 holiday checklist: help shoppers find local stores

The holidays are a critical time of year for your stores, as shoppers stop in to get an item quickly or see it in person. Online research to find local stores continues to surge—search interest in local shops hit a record high last year, and we’re seeing 350 times more search interest in "local" + "near me" than there was 10 years ago. 

When holiday shoppers are deciding where to shop–to buy items for multiple people or for last-minute gifts after shipping cutoffs have passed–how can you help them find your store? 


You can do it in two ways:

  • Local campaigns help businesses with physical locations drive more visits to retail stores, restaurants, auto dealerships, and more. They also include new ways to promote your business on Google Maps.

  • If you’re a retailer, Shopping campaigns help you promote your entire ecommerce and local product inventory to drive sales across both your website and stores. Retailers should use Local campaigns to maximize store traffic and combine them with Shopping campaigns, which help you increase omnichannel reach and sales.

See our latest solutions to help advertisers with a physical presence, from big retail chains to small businesses, showcase your stores and give holiday shoppers more convenient ways to buy.

New ways to promote your locations with Local campaigns

Local campaigns are specifically designed to help businesses drive visits to your physical locations. We’re also making Local campaigns available for smaller businesses by allowing you to optimize for other local actions like calls or directions, even if you don’t have store visits reporting. To help you dial up foot traffic for the holidays, we’re introducing new ways to showcase your locations across Google Maps and other channels.

Whether people want to visit a neighborhood park, museum, local store, or restaurant, Google Maps connects them with the places they’re interested in. In fact, people tap on location pins in Maps hundreds of millions of times per week to explore and get information about the physical world around them. In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to feature your locations as users get directions to a destination. In just a few taps, they can add you as a convenient stop along their route to grab lunch, stop in for shopping, and more. 

Direction planning ad (Maps).gif

You can also promote your locations as shoppers browse content across over 3 million websites and apps in our Display network. They can now explore a curated selection of the products your store carries in a visual, catalog-like experience.

Local catalog ad on Display (Local campaigns).gif


Saks Fifth Avenue logo.jpg


Saks Fifth Avenue is a luxury retailer increasingly using digital to achieve its in-store performance goals. The brand has successfully leveraged other Google solutions like local inventory ads to drive foot traffic. As a result, it was eager to become an early adopter of Local campaigns last holiday season to focus specifically on store visits. Using a randomized controlled geo-experiment, Saks Fifth Avenue saw a statistically significant, incremental lift in store sales and an incremental offline return-on-ad-spend of 7.7x. It’s now expanding Local campaigns to promote more of its store locations.

Fun toy retailer logo.png

Fun, a toy retailer in Belgium, also relied on Local campaigns last holiday season to bring more shoppers into its 29 locations. Local campaigns drove 24,000 additional store visits on top of its existing Google Ads campaigns at a strong 19x ROI. This helped lift total store sales and completely reversed a year-to-date decline.

Sephora logo.png

Sephora, a multinational retail chain, knows that customers who browse and buy in-store are more valuable. With a randomized controlled geo-experiment, the brand found that Local campaigns helped drive a statistically significant, incremental lift in store sales. For every dollar invested, Sephora generated a positive incremental return-on-ad-spend.

More flexible ways to buy and pick up purchases with Shopping campaigns

Shopping campaigns–which include both Shopping ads and local inventory ads–help you increase sales both online and offline, and highlight details about all of your product inventory. Through local inventory ads, we have over 2 billion offers mapped to physical stores across 12 countries. We’ve recently expanded to Sweden, Norway and Denmark to help more shoppers see which products are in stock at nearby locations. 


Now, we’re also giving consumers more flexible ways to collect the products they find through local inventory ads. 45 percent of global shoppers have used “buy online, pick up in store” to get their items from a local store. To make this process easier, we’re expanding store pickup on Google and showing consumers what fulfillment options you offer from your ad:


  • Pick up today:show which products are available for immediate store pickup, with the option of paying online first.

  • Pick up later: promote products that may not be available in store now, but can be quickly shipped to a nearby store within a few days. Reach out to your account team if you’d like to join the beta. 

BOPIS ad mock.png

Local inventory ad in the U.S. highlighting the “Pick up today” option

We have other stocking stuffers for retailers. In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to pick the Shopping campaigns where you’d like to include store visits as a conversion goal alongside online sales. If you have products that are especially effective at driving consumers to stores—such as high-consideration products like furniture or luggage—you can add store visits bidding to your Standard or Smart Shopping campaigns. Store visits in Smart Bidding is also fully available for Search campaigns to help you maximize conversion value across your website and stores.

Whether you’re a small business or a major retail chain, holiday shoppers will be looking for nearby stores with the most compelling offers and products. We look forward to helping you capture the local holiday spirit to drive success during the biggest shopping season of the year.

Source: Google Ads


2019 holiday checklist: Inspire shoppers with gift-giving ideas

Whether they’re shopping for themselves or for others, 48 percent of today's shoppers say they're open to buying from new retailers during the holiday season. And increasingly, they’re leaning into videos and inspirational imagery to help them decide. Below, we’ll dive into how Google solutions can help you tap into and create shopping intent, and capture the attention of those undecided shoppers with richer, more interactive experiences

Make YouTube more shoppable 

Video has also become a favorite research tool for holiday shoppers. Nearly two-thirds of shoppers say online video has given them ideas and inspiration for their purchase. And more than 90% of these folks say that they’ve discovered new products and brands via YouTube. To tap into this shopping intent, we’re introducingShopping ads to the YouTube home feed and YouTube search results, making YouTube more shoppable and extending the reach of your Shopping campaigns. 

Shopping ads on the YouTube home feed


Shopping ads on YouTube search results

Shopping ads on the YouTube home feed (top) and YouTube search results (bottom)

Retailers like PUMA are excited to reach new customers on YouTube in advance of the holiday season to help them continue the shopping journey. “Consumers are continuing to watch more content on the YouTube platform and we want to be where they are, to reach and engage them,” said Rick Almeida, Vice President of eCommerce at PUMA Group. “This new opportunity will enable PUMA to extend our shopping strategy into a new property and inspire consumers.”

Now, people coming to YouTube to browse and research products may see visual Shopping ads, based on their interest. This means if a consumer expresses an interest in running, they could see ads from retailers that offer running apparel, like PUMA, highlighting different products and prices.  If you’re already using standard Shopping campaigns today and are opted-into YouTube on Display Network, you are eligible for this experience.

In addition, we’ve made YouTube video ads more interactive, giving viewers useful and actionable information like store location, interest forms and additional calls-to-actions to help you drive more conversions.  In the coming months, sitelink extensions will become available for TrueView for action ads. This makes it easy for viewers to navigate to additional landing pages like your holiday catalogs, your store hours, and more. In a beta test with 30 advertisers, adding sitelinks showed a 23% increase inconversions1.

YouTube Ads Sitelink Extensions

Example of how Sitelink extensions will work under your TrueView for action video

You can get started with these new extensions by heading to the extensions tab in Google Ads, and clicking on the extension you’d like to get started with. You can learn about these YouTube updates and more here.


Inspire more customers with rich imagery

In a recent Google / Ipsos study, we found that 85 percent of consumers will take action within 24 hours of discovering a product: reading reviews, comparing prices or purchasing the product—sometimes all at once! We offer multiple solutions to help you convert digital window shoppers into satisfied customers. 

Showcase Shopping ads, for example, are expanding to Google Images -- helping shoppers explore your brand and product selection. When people search for broader terms like “holiday party dresses”, they’ll see Showcase Shopping ads that group related products together, displaying a diverse range of offerings. They’re great for attracting new customers; on average, we see that about 85 percent of traffic from Showcase Shopping ads to retailer websites come from new visitors. In addition, these ads are now expanding to new search categories like beauty and electronics, when they’ve mainly appeared for apparel and furniture-related searches previously. 


UO logo.png


Urban Outfitters is one example of a retailer using Showcase Shopping ads to get into the consideration set and inspire those new to their brand. Urban Outfitters expanded their Showcase Shopping ads to 50 key categories across apparel, home decor, and beauty. Overall, they saw a 241 percent CTR lift across campaigns running Showcase Shopping ads, with 52 percent of those customers being new. Moreover, Urban Outfitters saw a 186 percent increase in sales from new customers via Showcase Shopping ads (compared to reactivated customers).

Urban Outfitters Showcase Shopping ad for beauty

Urban Outfitters Showcase Shopping ad for beauty

Scrolling through personalized feeds like news, video and social is a bigger part of today's consumer journey. And with Discovery ads (beta), you now have a new canvas to inspire hundreds of millions of people with your products as they explore their interests  across the feeds in Discover, YouTube and Gmail. 

nectar logo.png

Nectar is one brand updating its Discovery ads with holiday-focused creatives to show off its mattress line and special offers, like its free 365-Night Trial and Forever Warranty™. To drive engagement, Nectar used a variety of high-resolution image assets featuring its mattress in well-lit, realistic settings, while also highlighting promotions in its ad text. Nectar has used custom intent audiences to connect with the right customers, like consumers in the market for bedroom furniture or interested in adjustable bed frames. And during testing, the brand saw an 8% lift in total sales at a 70% lower cost-per-acquisition compared to its paid social campaigns. As a result, Nectar’s parent company, Resident, plans to roll out Discovery ads across its full portfolio of home retail brands.

Reach out to your Google account team to join the global Discovery ads beta.

Discovery Ad Nectar

A Discovery ad for Nectar by Resident as shown on Discover, YouTube, and Gmail

Ready for more tips? Tune in next week to learn how you can drive more shoppers into your local stores.

1. Compared to the same ad without sitelinks. Source: Google data, US, June 2019. Beta experiment with n=30 TrueView for Action advertisers

Source: Google Ads