Tag Archives: insights

How Canadians are shopping this holiday season

Are you a last-minute shopper? Well, you’re not alone. With only 10 days until the holidays, a new study tells us that Canadians have completed less than half of their holiday shopping!1 But these last-minute shoppers aren’t panicking.


We partnered with Ipsos to survey Canadians on how they’ve used technology to shop this holiday season, and we found that holiday shoppers are using their smartphones, search and online video to be savvier than ever. This year, 34 percent of Canadian shoppers say they always do research or check digital sources before going to the store. Canadians may be last-minute shoppers, but they certainly have a game plan for when they hit the mall.


Today we’re sharing three trends that surfaced during Canada’s peak shopping season:


Smartphones are the ultimate shopping companion

The smartphone is a ubiquitous part of Canada's shopping experience, and when Canadians incorporated smartphone searches into their holiday shopping activities it resulted in a purchase 49 percent of the time. Savvy shoppers are turning to their smartphones to make purchases. Of the transactions that were made online this holiday season, 33 percent were purchased via smartphone.


While more people are willing to buy on mobile, we know that mobile is still used as a personal research assistant in and out of the store. This year, 38 percent of Canadian shoppers that bought in-store used their smartphone to search for products and services, and 74 percent used mobile apps as part of their holiday shopping experience.


Digital research influences purchases

Digital tools like smartphones and online search are friends, not foes, to in-store shopping. Canadian shoppers are conducting online research before they hit the mall to determine what they want to buy, the best products in a given category and which stores to visit to find that they need. We’ve seen mobile searches related to “best” products in the top retail categories grow by more than 44 percent in the last year.2


This year, shoppers are prepared, as one in five Canadian holiday shoppers say they’ve checked prices online before going in store. Almost half (43%), wish retail stores would do a better job of sharing inventory information.


YouTube is the new gift guide

Whether it’s watching a product review or learning how to bake gingerbread cookies, Canadian shoppers look to video in countless moments throughout to the day to help get things done. And this includes shopping. This holiday season, shoppers will turn to devices to learn more, make a decision or purchase a product. This year, 26 percent of holiday shoppers used online video to look at products and services


Whether you’re a last-minute shopper or you’ve checked off your whole list, have a happy holiday!


Posted by Sarah Bradley and Naumi Haque, Research and Market Insights Managers, Google Canada.


1 Google/Ipsos, 2016 Holiday Shopping Study, Nov 17 to Dec 9, 2016, with n=1,387 Canadian shoppers

2 Google internal data, Canada searches related to apparel, home & garden, beauty & personal care, computer & electronics, and gift (excluding terms “best buy,” “best man,” and “best friends”). Jan-March 2015 vs. Jan-March 2016

How to win on Black Friday: insights into store traffic trends

This holiday season, shoppers will turn to their most important shopping assistant — their smartphone — to research, browse and compare products in countless moments throughout the day. This is especially true as shoppers head into stores for one of the biggest shopping weeks of the year. In fact, mobile searches per user were 11% higher in electronics stores and 8% higher in department stores on Black Friday last year compared to other weekends during the holiday season.1

To help you understand where shoppers will be and what to expect, we looked at foot traffic patterns in stores across the U.S. during Black Friday last year. We uncovered some surprising findings that should enable you to better connect with shoppers in and near your stores.

Black Friday shoppers don’t exactly rise and shine
Contrary to the notion that most people head to stores in the morning, we found that Black Friday store traffic tends to peak in the afternoon, typically between 2-4 pm.2 Additionally, since some stores now open on Thanksgiving Day, we also saw an increase in foot traffic on Thursday evening. In fact, department stores now see their peak traffic on Thanksgiving evening between 6-7pm.
Tip for retailers: Allocate enough budget across campaigns to support the increase in traffic as shoppers head to stores. During the afternoon, when store traffic is heaviest, consider increasing your mobile bids. Use the mobile bid adjustment simulator to size your overall mobile opportunity and adjust your bids accordingly.

Black Friday isn’t the holy grail for all stores
For categories like electronics and cellphone stores, it should come as no surprise that Black Friday drives more foot traffic compared to any other weekend during the holiday season; in fact, store traffic is 2x higher in electronics stores and 1.6x higher in cellphone stores on Black Friday.3

However, there are many stores that don’t see their biggest crowds on Black Friday. Shopping malls, superstores & discount stores, and department stores have the highest store traffic on the Saturday before Christmas, while dollar stores have the most foot traffic on Christmas Eve — perhaps due to last minute stocking stuffers.
Tip for retailers: Use location extension targeting to encourage shoppers, who are near your stores, to  choose you. If you already run local inventory ads, which trigger if your product is in-stock at a store nearby, you can add location extension targeting and reach customers who are anywhere from 0.4 to 40 miles from your store.

For more tips and tricks this holiday season, check out our Holiday Shopping Readiness guide and Holiday Shopping Survival guide.

Elizabeth Fabiani, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping
1 Google Data, U.S., Aggregated anonymized internal data from a sample of US users that have turned on Location History, from the period November 1 2014 - December 25, 2014.  Queries were considered in-store if they occurred within 20 minutes of a user visit to the store.
2 Google Data, U.S., Aggregated anonymized internal data from a sample of US users that have turned on Location History, from November 28, 2014, Eastern Standard Time 
3 Google Data, U.S., Aggregated anonymized internal data from a sample of US users that have turned on Location History, from the period November 1 2014 - December 25 2014.

Source: Inside AdWords


Capture more holiday traffic with click share for Google Shopping

More shoppers are turning to online shopping with each holiday season, increasing the opportunity for you to attract shoppers to your online store. Today we’re launching click share to better help you identify when you’re missing out on traffic. Click share is a new metric that shows the percentage of total possible clicks received by your Shopping ads.
Click share metric for product groups
Let’s walk through an example of how to use click share to identify product groups with potential for more traffic to ensure your ads show prominently enough to maximize traffic to your site on Black Friday. First, add the click share column on the Product groups tab. In this example, you see “winter coats” with a click share of 30%. This means that you only got 30 out of every 100 possible clicks on your “winter coats” ads. Second, take this opportunity to adjust your bids for “winter coats” to make your ads more prominent. Third, make sure to check back frequently, especially for your most popular products, to closely monitor click share and continue to optimize bids.

There is more you can do to ensure holiday success. In addition to driving traffic, you’ll want to fine-tune your campaigns to reach new shoppers and drive sales. We’ve created two holiday checklists to help you manage your campaigns over the coming weeks and through the new year:

  • Holiday Readiness Checklist: Get your Shopping campaigns Black Friday-ready to connect with shoppers at the moments that matter and convert them into customers
  • Holiday Survival Checklist: Follow this checklist to make mid-flight changes to your campaigns and learn how to adjust bids for new trending products 

By taking these lists and checking them twice, and tuning your campaigns based on click share insights, you can increase sales this season...and have a happier holiday!

Posted by Dimitris Meretakis, Product Manager, Google Shopping

Source: Inside AdWords


What are people shopping for near your stores — and across America?

Today we're launching the beta of our new Shopping Insights tool, another step towards helping retailers connect with consumers in moments that matter, by making data about shopping habits and preferences more accessible.

Shopping Insights shows the products people are searching for across cities, time and devices. While 87% of shopping research happens online, 92% of goods are still sold in retail stores. By better understanding user’s shopping intent online, retailers can make more informed local merchandising and marketing decisions for their stores.

The Shopping Insights tool estimates popularity and trends for a given product by aggregating keyword data from the millions of searches consumers are doing to shop for that product. Further, you can see data for every city available for targeting in AdWords, and compare mobile to desktop patterns to better serve customers near your stores. Here’s a demo of how it works:
Observe and meet local demand

Shopping Insights lets retailers analyze product interest by city and time to understand local demand. As an example, let’s take a look at search interest in Halloween costumes. While Elsa and Olaf from Frozen set the pace last year, this year the battle is shaping up between Minions and Star Wars. Minions were initially more popular, with search interest for Minion costumes over 2.5X higher than Star Wars costumes in July. Following the release of new footage for the next Star Wars movie in late August, search interest for Star Wars costumes briefly overtook Minions, closing the gap to a 10% difference in September.
However, when looking at the city level, we can see significant variance in regional preferences. Let’s compare two popular college towns, Berkeley, CA and Madison, WI. In Berkeley, for example, Star Wars costumes are nearly 3x more popular than Minion costumes, but in Madison, WI Minion costumes are 3x more popular than Star Wars.
In another example of regional trends, interest in emoji joggers first appeared near Atlanta, then moved to New York City over the next several months, peaking during the holiday season last year. Consumers on the west coast haven’t caught on to the trend yet. This type of insight can help you understand how to meet demand for regionally popular products, while carrying less inventory in regions with less interest.
See interest by mobile, desktop, or both 

Shopping Insights also gives you a clearer look at the devices people are using during their “I-want-to-know, go, do, and buy” moments, so you can plan your campaigns for the right screens. For instance, searches for Disney Vans shoes have grown a whopping 10X since the launch of the “Young at Heart” line in May. And fans of Disney Vans clearly prefer to shop on mobile, using smartphones 3X more often than desktop to search for the popular shoes.
The Californian roots of both Disney and Vans are also visible in the data; interest was 2X higher in Los Angeles than New York, even though New York has twice the population. In fact, 38% of all searches came from California.

Understand nationwide, regional, and local outliers with featured stories

We will also release featured stories highlighting interesting trends across the nation, based on data mined by our teams. Check out the console war story between ‘xbox one’ and ‘ps4’ or the rising popularity of Birkenstock sandals. We hope these stories inspire your own creative uses of Shopping Insights.

Getting started with Shopping Insights 

Shopping Insights Beta is now available in the U.S., covering the 5,000+ most popular products on Google Shopping between April 01, 2014 to September 30, 2015. In the coming months, we'll have fresh updates with new data, insights and stories. It's all part of our long-term commitment to help retailers succeed with deeper insights about users’ intent and context.

To get started visit: shopping.thinkwithgoogle.com.

Posted by Jonathan Alferness, Vice President, Product Management, Google Shopping

Source: Inside AdWords


New Op-ed: Digital publishers need an ad strategy reset

As more brand dollars move to digital, and the technology supporting digital advertising evolves, publishers have a tremendous opportunity to boost their revenues and profits. However, capitalizing on this opportunity requires publishers to evolve their sales strategies, fast.

As programmatic buying continues to grow, one of the first steps publishers must take is to adopt a holistic cross-channel ad sales strategy.

A new op-ed by Paul Zwillenberg, Global Leader of The Boston Consulting Group’s Media Sector, explores this idea and shares the strategies and tactics employed by today’s most successful digital publishers.

Head on over to DoubleClick.com to read the full article.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing team

Redefining "Advertising": How 2013 Transformed Digital Marketing

It was a great year for digital advertising. New technologies took off, helping brands, agencies and publishers reach today’s constantly connected consumers more easily and effectively than ever before. With budgets no longer being siloed, 20% of organizations incorporated digital into each marketing function, per a study by Adobe.

We compiled a few of the bigger changes in marketing and digital advertising in 2013, to see how far the industry has come along. View the full infographic here or see a brief summary below.

Redefining “creative”
New creative formats took center stage in 2013. Marketers invested more in social media and TrueView skippable video ad formats continued to grow on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange.



Redefining “integrated”
The new 360 media plan cannot overlook digital and the sheer number of screens people interact with. In 2012, Google released some research indicating that people use 3 screen combinations a day. In 2013, this manifested itself in the form of increased investments in multi-screen campaigns.




Redefining “buying”
New(Up)fronts. Programmatic. 2013 changed the way digital media spend is committed.18 digital media companies presented at the Digital Content NewFronts. And programmatic buying gained significant traction with an expected ~74% growth, according to eMarketer. As brands took to programmatic and with the growth of programmatic video, CPMs on the DoubleClick Ad Exchange increased, and Preferred Deal impressions grew 250%. DoubleClick Bid Manager powered social media ads, joined FBX.


Redefining “success”
Earlier this year, AdAge released some research indicating that 50% of display ads are not viewed, making advertising viewability a hot industry topic. Google’s viewability measurement solution, ActiveView, got MRC-accredited. Last week, Google announced that it would enable viewability-based buys on the Google Display Network. Engagement Rate was another hot metric in 2013, with Cost per Engagement pay models enabled for ad formats like Engagement Ads on the Google Display Network.


View the full infographic here.

Posted by Yamini Gupta, Product Marketing Team

What industry leaders value in a digital marketing platform

-- The following is cross-posted from the DoubleClick Advertiser blog --

A few months ago, we launched the new version of DFA - DoubleClick Campaign Manager - globally.

The launch coincided with DFA’s 15th anniversary, so we wanted to use this opportunity to hear from some of our longtime partners. Surely, the world has changed since the early days of DFA, 15 years ago. With new opportunities to reach consumers in more ways than ever, come many new challenges for digital marketers. And marketing platforms must continuously evolve to meet the demands of a shifting and ever-growing industry. 

We asked industry leaders Kurt Unkel, President of Product & Solutions at VivaKi, Megan Moldovan, Director of Platform Logistics at Annalect, and Angelina Eng, VP of Digital Media Ops at Carat what they value in a platform in this day and age, and how DoubleClick has evolved to address those needs. Here’s what they told us:
  1. Efficiency, reliability, and simplicity are crucial to helping marketers streamline the campaign management process. Kurt Unkel said, ”What we get with DoubleClick that we struggle to see anywhere else is simplicity - the ability to integrate a lot of disparate technologies into a common stack. That’s something that really makes a difference in our business, because it allows us to focus on the bigger, strategic things.”
  2. Marketers need integration across channels and screens, and to be able to track and execute across their efforts within one system. Angelina Eng notes, “When we talk about all of these different things that are coming out - verification, video, mobile - how do make that work all together? A company that’s embracing that is one that we want to work with.” 
  3. Platforms must help marketers gain more actionable insights and act on them in real-time. “We have almost too much data at our disposal,” Megan Moldovan tells us, “and it can sometimes be hard to sift through all of that information and understand what it really means, and particularly understand what everything means when you look at it together.”


      With DoubleClick, we are investing in tools to help your digital teams work more efficiently to maximize your results across channels and screens. 

      In the coming weeks and months we will deep dive into many of the new product features available in DoubleClick Campaign Manager. Stay tuned to the blog to learn about the new tools that will simplify digital, help you engage across channels, and enable better decisions.

      If you’re an existing DFA customer, reach out to your account manager about upgrading to DoubleClick Campaign Manager today. You can stay on top of new updates by following us on our Google+ page.

      What industry leaders value in a digital marketing platform

      A few months ago, we launched the new version of DFA - DoubleClick Campaign Manager - globally.

      The launch coincided with DFA’s 15th anniversary, so we wanted to use this opportunity to hear from some of our longtime partners. Surely, the world has changed since the early days of DFA, 15 years ago. With new opportunities to reach consumers in more ways than ever, come many new challenges for digital marketers. And marketing platforms must continuously evolve to meet the demands of a shifting and ever-growing industry. 

      We asked industry leaders Kurt Unkel, President of Product & Solutions at VivaKi, Megan Moldovan, Director of Platform Logistics at Annalect, and Angelina Eng, VP of Digital Media Ops at Carat what they value in a platform in this day and age, and how DoubleClick has evolved to address those needs. Here’s what they told us:
      • Efficiency, reliability, and simplicity are crucial to helping marketers streamline the campaign management process. Kurt Unkel said, ”What we get with DoubleClick that we struggle to see anywhere else is simplicity - the ability to integrate a lot of disparate technologies into a common stack. That’s something that really makes a difference in our business, because it allows us to focus on the bigger, strategic things.”
      • Marketers need integration across channels and screens, and to be able to track and execute across their efforts within one system. Angelina Eng notes, “When we talk about all of these different things that are coming out - verification, video, mobile - how do make that work all together? A company that’s embracing that is one that we want to work with.” 
      • Platforms must help marketers gain more actionable insights and act on them in real-time. “We have almost too much data at our disposal,” Megan Moldovan tells us, “and it can sometimes be hard to sift through all of that information and understand what it really means, and particularly understand what everything means when you look at it together.”


        With DoubleClick, we are investing in tools to help your digital teams work more efficiently to maximize your results across channels and screens. 

        In the coming weeks and months we will deep dive into many of the new product features available in DoubleClick Campaign Manager. Stay tuned to the blog to learn about the new tools that will simplify digital, help you engage across channels, and enable better decisions.

        If you’re an existing DFA customer, reach out to your account manager about upgrading to DoubleClick Campaign Manager today. You can stay on top of new updates by following us on our Google+ page.