Tag Archives: Search Ads

How retailers can get ready for the holidays and beyond

Consumer behaviors are changing as people adjust to new stay-at-home lifestyles and retailers are working as fast as they can to keep up. People are spending more time online than ever before and are turning to Google to explore, research and plan their purchases—both online and in the real world.

As a result of COVID-19, we’re seeing distinct changes in consumer shopping behavior that will likely continue through the holidays. First, e-commerce has become the front door to the store as consumers more carefully plan their visits to physical stores. Second, consumers will shop what matters—deals and discounts—as well as value-driven and mission-driven brands. Retailers can help by meeting consumers where they feel most comfortable shopping.

Digital tools can help retailers connect with shoppers as they plan their next purchase. Here are some updates we've made to our products to make it even easier.

Help shoppers plan their visits to your stores

In an effort to stay safe and shop comfortably, consumers want to verify hours, confirm inventory, and check for options like curbside pickup before making a visit. In a recent survey, 67 percent of holiday shoppers said they will confirm online that an item is in stock before going to the store to buy it.

In addition to Search, Google Maps has become a key tool to reach and engage with potential shoppers as they plan their visit. With Local campaigns, you can connect with nearby customers when they’re searching or browsing for businesses like yours across Maps, Search, YouTube and Display. Businesses are using Local campaigns right now to share open status, provide health and safety updates, or highlight in-store options like curbside pickup and promotions on a store-by-store basis. Starting today, you can optimize Local campaigns for store visit indicators like clicks on “directions” or “calls.” This will make it possible for even more businesses to access Local campaigns.

E02575269 Clothing Store Mock Aug20_v03 (1).png — You can now run Local campaigns even if you don’t have store visits, by leveraging bidding for clicks on “calls” or “directions”

Location extensions can also help people find your stores by showing your ads with your address, a map to your location, or the distance to your business. Now it’s easier for major retailers and chains to set up location extensions by selecting their store locations from a curated list from Google. In just a few clicks, choose the chain you want to promote to quickly create a location extension. We’ll review to make sure the chain is a good match for your business using signals like its website domain and country. Later, you can use location groups to filter for specific locations within that chain. Google’s curated location lists allow you to use the same location information that powers Google Maps.

E02575269 Clothing Store Mock Update1 Aug20 v01-2.png — Set up location extensions faster by selecting your locations from a curated list, right in your Google Ads account

Retail store owners have a lot to manage during these strange times, but don’t forget to keep your Google My Business profile updated if you change your store hours or your operating procedures.

Highlight your promotions across Google

As worries about the economy continue, deal-seeking behaviors have intensified. Whether people ultimately purchase online or in-store, shoppers are expecting discounts and even 58 percent of holiday shoppers will hold off on buying gift items until they are on sale.¹

This year, we’re doing more to help you get discovered by holiday deal-seekers. Shoppers in the U.S. searching for items on sale or Black Friday deals will see expanded sales filters on google.com/shopping. Promotions, which populate these sales filters—and on average increase conversion rates by 28 percent,²—will be easier and faster to use. You’ll be able to support flash sales and last minute discounts with near instant promotion approvals on eligible offers and easy editing of your live promotions (U.S. only).

Join us today for Think Retail on Air

We're here to help you be ready for whatever comes next—including a holiday season unlike any other. For more details on how to prepare for the holidays and beyond, join us for Think Retail on Air which kicks off in just a few hours at 10:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT.

Ep15_ Vision_Thumbnail_01_Ep15.jpg — Marie Gulin-Merle and Bill Ready help retailers prepare for what’s next at Think Retail on Air

Hear from brands like Walgreens, Petco and lululemon, along with Google’s President of Commerce Bill Ready and Retail Industry Director Sarah Travis, as they share consumer insights, trends and strategies to help you navigate this changing environment. Later this week, we'll follow up with sessions by Google experts on best practices to drive online sales, grow local sales and inspire new customers.

Consumer behaviors are changing fast, and it’s harder than ever to be a retailer. We’re here to help you connect people to your stores and what you sell—no matter where they want to buy it—this holiday season, and beyond.

^{1. Google commissioned Ipsos COVID-19 tracker, US n=745 18 +online consumers who plan to shop for the holidays. June 25-28}

^{2. Google internal A/B testing data from Nov 2019 - Feb 2020, analyzing Shopping ads conversion rate with a promotion annotation versus Shopping ads without an annotation, including 9569 advertisers across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, France, India and Australia}

Source: Google Ads & Commerce

Tap into intent to generate leads

Consumers are more engaged with businesses who can meet their needs from home right now–and they’re more willing to move on to those who can. In June, a Google/Ipsos survey showed that 32 percent of U.S. consumers shopped online with a brand they hadn't before COVID-19.¹ This is an opportunity for businesses to connect with new customers, but it’s also a challenge—especially if you’re dealing with shifts in your day-to-day operations, or bandwidth limitations that may slow you down.

Our goal is to help you find and connect with your best leads, faster. Today, we’re sharing ways to help you do that on Search and beyond—with foundational tools that tap into the power of intent, ad formats that help you find qualified leads, and measurement solutions that optimize for lead value.

Focus on the fundamentals

It can be difficult to identify where consumer demand is shifting while making sure you have the right query coverage. In the past three months, we’ve seen Search interest surge for terms like “small business loans,” “video conference” and “online learning.” To help you respond to these changes in consumer behavior, start by refreshing the fundamentals:

Tap into intent: Pair broad match keywords with Smart Bidding. By evaluating billions of combinations of signals in real time, these tools help you make the most of changing trends while meeting your goals.
Inspire new audiences across Google: Reach up to 3 billion people with Discovery ads as they explore YouTube, Discover and Gmail. This reach, alongside Google's machine learning and unique understanding of intent, makes it easier to generate qualified leads at scale.
Follow Google’s creative best practices: Write ads that clearly articulate your value to people researching new brands. Start with messaging that includes your unique user benefit, a strong call to action, and a variety of ad extensions.
Uncover new opportunities: Use optimization score and Performance Planner. As the market evolves, you may find that your campaigns, bids and budgets aren’t set up to meet shifting demand.

Find qualified leads

Consumers now prefer to use more varied methods to communicate with a business. In fact, our research from March shows that one in three shoppers would rather buy from a company that provides a wide range of ways to reach them—like web forms and calls.² To help people connect with your business in more ways, we’ve built lead-focused ad formats that span the Google ecosystem, including call ads and lead form extensions.

With new lead form extensions in Google Ads, you can now show a lead form directly in your ad, giving people an easy way to share information as they search, discover and watch relevant content. This seamless flow can help you find high-quality leads in a more efficient way. Right now, this works with ads on Search, YouTube and Discovery and is available globally. Later this year, we’ll begin rolling these out across Display campaigns.

Using a lead form on YouTube during a video

Jeep used lead form extensions with their Korea branch and saw completed leads increase more than tenfold. According to Jeep, this extension also generated leads at the most efficient cost among all ad platforms.

Call ads are designed for any business that relies on phone calls to drive leads. These ads encourage people to call you for more information, and can appear on any device that makes phone calls. And by including the optional “Visit website” link with your ads, it’s easier for people to learn more about your business before calling you. This can help you get higher-quality calls and more qualified leads.

half phone_02 - call first with website - lowercase.png — Call ad featuring an optional “Visit website” link

Optimize for lead value

Ultimately, your goal isn’t just to drive leads—it’s to turn those leads into sales. To optimize for this goal in Google Ads, you need to connect your converted leads to your online campaigns. To help you do that, we’re making it easier to import offline conversions just by using the information people already give you in your lead form. As a result, it will take less time to integrate with your customer relationship management (CRM) system. Look for this feature to roll out later this year.

ZenBusiness, a startup that helps other businesses, imported offline conversions and used that data with Smart Bidding to acquire more high-intent customers. As a result, the brand saw a 400 percent increase in customer acquisition year-over-year. This also freed up time for the brand to focus on more strategic initiatives. As Zach Rippstein, VP of Marketing for ZenBusiness, said: “We're now able to devote our time to more impactful areas like ad copy testing, conversion optimization, and growing new channels.”

While lead data can help you optimize campaigns, it can also be used to nurture leads with Customer Match. Whether it’s creating an online connection with an offline customer, or enhancing existing relationships with a custom message, Customer Match makes it easy to continue the conversation with your best customers. Over the last few months, we’ve made Customer Match easier to use, and rolled out several other updates:

You can now create similar audiences based on Customer Match lists. This helps you find more potential customers.
Match rates have been improved and will now update in real time. This makes it easier for you to troubleshoot your list and connect with more of your customers.

CM Match Rate Cropped.png — New “match rate” interface for Customer Match

We’re also collaborating with Zapier to develop a Google Ads integration that makes it easier to work with your data. This solution automatically imports and exports data between Google Ads and your CRM system. It currently supports lead form extensions, offline conversion imports and Customer Match. Learn about how Google handles data privacy on our Help Center.

Resources to help you generate quality leads

Businesses now have to be better at both generating and managing their leads. In addition to today’s announcements, we’re sharing a collection of lead generation resources on our Advertising Solutions Center. There, you’ll hear more about our latest updates and learn from other businesses who made the shift to digital. We’ll continue to roll out new videos about our products on the Advertising Solutions Center in the coming weeks.

^{1. Google commissioned Ipsos COVID-19 tracker, US n=1000 online consumers 18+ per market. June 18-21.}

^{2. Google/Ipsos, Shopping Tracker, Mar 2020, Online survey, Americans 18+ who conducted shopping activities in past two days: n=1000.}

Source: The Official Google Blog

Tap into intent to generate leads

Focus on the fundamentals

Tap into intent: Pair broad match keywords with Smart Bidding. By evaluating billions of combinations of signals in real time, these tools help you make the most of changing trends while meeting your goals.
Inspire new audiences across Google: Reach up to 3 billion people with Discovery ads as they explore YouTube, Discover and Gmail. This reach, alongside Google's machine learning and unique understanding of intent, makes it easier to generate qualified leads at scale.
Follow Google’s creative best practices: Write ads that clearly articulate your value to people researching new brands. Start with messaging that includes your unique user benefit, a strong call to action, and a variety of ad extensions.
Uncover new opportunities: Use optimization score and Performance Planner. As the market evolves, you may find that your campaigns, bids and budgets aren’t set up to meet shifting demand.

Find qualified leads

Optimize for lead value

You can now create similar audiences based on Customer Match lists. This helps you find more potential customers.
Match rates have been improved and will now update in real time. This makes it easier for you to troubleshoot your list and connect with more of your customers.

Resources to help you generate quality leads

^{1. Google commissioned Ipsos COVID-19 tracker, US n=1000 online consumers 18+ per market. June 18-21.}

^{2. Google/Ipsos, Shopping Tracker, Mar 2020, Online survey, Americans 18+ who conducted shopping activities in past two days: n=1000.}

Source: The Official Google Blog

Decoding decisions to grow online sales

With more consumers sheltering at home, digital adoption has rapidly accelerated and changed consumer shopping behavior globally. Consumers are looking for new and delightful products related to the home; for example, searches for “planter box” grew 200 percent year over year globally. They’re finding ways to celebrate from afar, with global searches for “online gift” increasing by over 100 percent year over year, and we saw 600 percent more searches for “click and collect” year over year, indicating shoppers around the world are keen to skip delivery and get what they need right now.

With so much information and choice available online, the space between the purchase trigger and the purchase itself has become incredibly complex. Through the lens of behavioral science, our latest Decoding Decisions research reveals how shoppers manage this complexity—we call it the “messy middle”—and codifies behavior into two mental modes: exploration (an expansive activity) and evaluation (a reductive activity). Discoveries made in the “messy middle” often determine the outcome, so it’s a critical space for businesses to connect with shoppers and win brand favor.

We’re focused on helping you influence the hundreds of millions of shoppers who come to Google every day. Today, we’re adding new ways to showcase and augment your brand and products visually to spark action across Search, Shopping, and Display ads; optimize and grow your customer acquisition volume; and amplify your e-Commerce experience.

Rich, personalized creatives across Search, Shopping, and Display ads

Rich ad creatives are the key to engaging shoppers as they navigate the “messy middle.” Of people who shop online, 85 percent say product information and pictures are important to them when deciding which brand or retailer to buy from. Recently, we shared how Discovery ads can help you visually inspire shoppers scrolling their feeds on YouTube, Discover, and Gmail as well as how you can make your videos shoppable on YouTube. Today, we’re bringing the same rich product experience to Search, Shopping, and Display ads.

To help you grow online sales with your Search ads, we’re launching an image extensions beta program. You can easily add high-quality, rich assets, so shoppers can quickly see products to consider and take action faster. With image extensions, you can upload relevant images or automatically curate them from your website with machine learning. Hugo Boss used image extensions with responsive search ads and saw a 2.5x improvement in ROI and 5 percent bump in clickthrough rates.

Image Extensions.png — New image extension beta on Google Search to visually represent your brand and products

In addition to rich image assets, we’re introducing new ways to further personalize and curate your responsive search ads for today’s shoppers. You can now dynamically highlight sales or time-sensitive deals with a countdown and get suggestions on how to promote online availability, shipping, and returns.

RSA no carousel.png — New responsive search ad features to highlight your sales, promotions and shipping offerings

For retailers, we’re offering more visual ways to stand out from the competition with Smart Shopping campaigns.¹ Beginning today in the U.S., you can now highlight features like free and fast shipping, which has shown to increase average conversion rates by 9 percent. Later this year, you’ll be able to better differentiate with a dynamically curated carousel of your most relevant products in a new immersive, browsable shopping experience plus include video content in your Display ads.

SSC no carousel.png — New visual shopping formats in the United States through Smart Shopping campaigns with free and fast shipping annotations; an immersive, browsable shopping experience; and videos on Display ads

Building on the innovation from Search and Shopping ads, we’re updating the look and feel for responsive display ads so you can better engage shoppers as they browse millions of sites and apps with your Display campaigns. Starting today, you have new creative layouts, automatically generated video ads, and updated dynamic ads—which can now display your business name alongside your logo, emphasize your latest promotions, and even spotlight a single product.

Updated look and feel of dynamic display ads, featuring beauty brand COSMEDIX

Automated bidding to find the right shopper

Smart Bidding evaluates over 1 million combinations of relevant contextual signals present during the auction like time of day, device type, or operating system. This means you’ll reach the right customers at the right time to drive more online sales—even when consumer demand fluctuates across Google—in real-time.

Last week, we shared several new tools like portfolio bid strategies and bid strategy reports to get more performance out of every dollar. Building on that, as of today, you’ll be able to optimize your Smart Shopping campaign to grow online sales specifically from new customers.¹ Retailers who participated in early testing for new customer acquisition are already seeing great results. IT Cosmetics, a makeup and skincare brand, added the new customer acquisition goal to their Smart Shopping campaign and saw a 188 percent increase in revenue from new customers.

New Customer Acquisition_.png — Smart Shopping campaigns’ new customer acquisition value

Resources and tools to achieve a fast, frictionless e-Commerce experience

The need for a fast, frictionless e-Commerce experience, particularly on mobile, has never been more prevalent. Businesses who embrace digital, particularly in our current environment, are able to engage consumers like never before.

“[Digital and e-Commerce] has allowed us over the pandemic to reach people where they are absolutely unequivocally spending the most of their time, which is online on screen.”
- Christina Tosi, owner of Milk Bar

Today, we’re sharing a new collection of Online Sales resources on our Advertising Solutions Center. You’ll find our latest customer research that delves deeper into the “messy middle,” hear from businesses who pivoted to digital, and learn about our newest product innovations and resources to improve your e-Commerce experience. We’ll continue to roll out more videos about our new products on the Advertising Solutions Center in the coming weeks.

Advertising Solutions Center.png — New collection of Online Sales resources on the Advertising Solutions Center

We hope these latest updates will help businesses capture online shopping demand and achieve their marketing objectives.

^{1. In Europe, Smart Shopping campaigns can be used with any Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) you work with. The ads will show on general search results pages and on any other surfaces the CSS has opted in to.}

Source: The Official Google Blog

Meet your marketing objectives with helpful tools and automation

Consumer behaviors, habits and schedules are shifting faster than ever. Google data shows that searches have surged in the past month for sprinkler controls in the United States, mechanical puzzles in Germany, and powered hand fans in Japan. Keeping pace with these trends can be difficult, especially if the pandemic has impacted your business.

Marketers have more work to do than ever before, and less time to do it. That’s why we’re introducing improved tools and automated solutions to help you get things done, respond to changes, and grow your business.

Finding new opportunities in a dynamic market

It’s never easy to keep up with shifts in consumer demand, and it’s especially challenging in a dynamic market. The Recommendations page is your best source for real-time, personalized guidance to adjust to these changes. With optimization score, you can prioritize the recommendations that help you discover new opportunities for your campaigns.

For example, “Keywords & Targeting” recommendations make it easy for you to find new trends that are relevant to your business. More than 16 million keyword recommendations in Google Ads are based on market trends, with new recommendations added every day. In March, consumer goods company Artnaturals noticed that demand was increasing for organic hand sanitizer and soaps. Using keyword recommendations, they were able to quickly pivot their advertising to these new trends. As a result, the brand’s monthly site traffic increased by 700 percent.

You can currently find recommendations throughout your campaigns, on the Recommendations page, and in the Google Ads mobile app. Soon, you’ll be able to see them in Google Ads Editor as well. We’ve also added support for recommendations and campaign level optimization score to the Google Ads API, and account level optimization score will be coming soon. This will make it even easier for you to review, manage and act on your recommendations at scale.

Planning with confidence

There are many new growth opportunities emerging in search due to shifts in consumer behavior. Performance Planner removes the guesswork in this process by giving you a performance plan with predicted clicks, conversions and conversion values based on different spend levels and return-on-investment targets.

In the meal delivery sector, Cook it used Performance Planner to optimize campaign budgets and make the most of rising search interest in meal kits in March. Paired with Smart Bidding, the brand saw a 200 percent increase in conversions in just two weeks.

Starting today, you can now use Performance Planner to plan Search campaigns using shared budgets. Performance Planner is currently available for Search and Shopping campaigns, and will soon be available to Display and App campaigns.

Performance Planner is a great way to make sure your budgets are set at the right level to capture new growth opportunities on search.

Optimizing campaigns in real time

These days, marketers have to deliver on performance while dealing with limited time and resources. Smart Bidding is key to helping you balance these constraints; it can help you automatically drive more performance out of every dollar you spend while freeing up time. Over the last few months, we’ve built new Smart Bidding features based on your feedback.

In the coming weeks, you’ll be able to create, monitor and manage your portfolio bid strategies across accounts at the manager account level. By combining campaigns from different accounts into a single portfolio, it’ll be easier to drive more performance across those accounts. As part of this update to portfolio bidding, bid strategy reports will be available for your new cross-account bid strategies. These reports give you more visibility into how your bid strategy is working via status updates, advanced performance reports, and top signals.

It’s important to provide more transparency into your bids, especially right now—so in the coming months, we'll make explanations available for Smart Bidding campaigns. This will make it easier for you to understand what caused clicks, impressions, costs and conversions to change.

Over the rest of the year, we plan to roll out even more reporting updates to give you further insight into your automated bidding—such as limited inventory status for Maximize conversions and Target CPA, improved top signals, and conversion value estimates.

Monitoring performance to take action

In an ever-changing market, it’s important to check your performance on a regular basis. The Google Ads mobile app makes it easy for you to monitor campaigns in real time, helping you take quick action from wherever you are. We’ve been listening to your feedback and continue to invest in new features to make the app a helpful and personalized companion for your marketing efforts.

As part of that investment, we’ve launched manager accounts in the mobile app. This means you can view and manage all your Google Ads accounts in one place, on the go. With manager accounts in the app, you’re now able to:

Discover business-wide trends and performance insights for all your accounts on the Overview page.
Improve performance at scale with optimization score, and prioritize recommendations across all your accounts.
Manage campaigns and compare performance across your accounts.
Use push notifications to monitor all your accounts, wherever you are.

AGY47, an agency based in the UK, saved over two hours per week using the mobile app to check in on performance, make improvements, and keep their accounts organized on the go. As Sarah Williams, AGY47’s head of paid marketing, put it: “We never miss a beat with the Google Ads mobile app.”

Download the Google Ads mobile app now on Android or iOS.

Looking at the road ahead

Through the end of the year, we’ll continue to roll out improvements that help you adapt and drive performance in this dynamic environment. To stay up to date with new product deep dives and best practices, register for Ads on air. You can also stay tuned to The Update to learn about new insights and features that can help you meet your marketing objectives. Please continue to share your feedback as we partner together to navigate the road ahead.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Helping businesses and nonprofits recover

In the last few months, COVID-19 has impacted businesses in profound ways. Throughout that time, I’ve heard from organizations, large and small, how they’re staying connected with customers through technology. This has always been core to my team’s purpose, but we can do more to help businesses and nonprofits through this crisis.

Today we’re announcing a $200 million increase to our annual Ad Grants commitment, to offer a total of $1 billion to better support nonprofits. This $1 billion helps nonprofits around the world that are tackling pressing issues like COVID-19 response and recovery, especially in developing economies. And we’re doing more.

Typically during this time of year, we gather at Google Marketing Live, our annual event to discuss new products and hear feedback from you. In lieu of our in-person event, throughout this summer we’ll host “virtual product roundtables” with our product managers, announce a number of new products, share new insights and kick off a new weekly video series, The Update on Think with Google, discussing industry trends and best practices.

Helping businesses and organizations recover is the first topic we'll explore. Today we’re sharing updates for small businesses ahead of a Google-wide initiative, International Small Business Week, taking place June 22-27. This is a week dedicated to celebrating small businesses when we’ll share tips, trainings and products to help them get back on their feet.

Helping consumers connect with businesses

As people spend more time at home, we’ve seen searches for local services, like “carpet cleaning” or “air conditioning repair” increase by 50 percent in recent months. We’re now making it easier to book these services directly in Google Search on mobile through Local Services Ads in the U.S. Local Services Ads help people discover and connect with trustworthy, local professionals backed by the Google Guarantee. Later this month, we’re also launching a new mobile site for the U.S. and Canada, to help more people find, compare and book nearby service providers faster.

Book local service providers directly on Google Search

As people search for products they urgently need and limit their in-person store interactions, they’re looking for real-time updates on product availability at local stores. Searches for “curbside pickup” and “in stock” have surged by more than 70 percent in recent months. Our goal is to help people find and buy the things they need, quickly and easily. Starting today the Shopping tab will show helpful local store information, including product availability, locations, and fulfillment options like delivery and curbside pickup. This information will show up in all countries where the Shopping tab is available.

New to the Shopping tab: curbside pickup and more information for local stores

Helping businesses connect with customers

For many small businesses around the world, digital tools have become a lifeline this year. 1 in 3 small business owners say that without digital tools, they would have had to close all or part of their business. With businesses at various stages of digital transformation—some are online, some are halfway there and others have a long way to go—we’re committed to helping businesses get online and grow with easy-to-use tools.

To help businesses quickly improve their online presence, today we’re introducing Grow My Store to retailers in the U.S. In Europe, Grow My Store has been an effective way for many small retailers to get quick tips on how to improve their online store and understand how they are doing compared to peers in the industry. Businesses just need to enter their website URL into the tool and within minutes they will get a custom report.

To help make local businesses more discoverable, this week we’re introducing Local Opportunity Finder. Enter the name of your business and Google will provide personalized suggestions on how to make improvements to your Business Profile on Google. For example, ensuring your opening hours are current, adding curbside pickup information, or uploading a photo that represents your business.

Finally, to help small business advertisers easily promote their businesses, we’ve expanded Smart campaigns to 150 countries and now we’re making it easier and faster to sign up using the Google Ads app. You can set up a Smart campaign and create your first ad in just 15 minutes while on the go. And starting today, you can use Smart campaigns to display a prominent, square-shaped Google Maps pin with your business category logo, highlighting specific services that you offer, like curbside pickup or delivery. We’re bringing Promoted pins to Smart campaigns advertisers for free through the end of September.

Promoted pins through Smart campaigns help businesses stand out on Google Maps

What’s Next

Upcoming episodes of The Update on Think with Google will provide exclusive access to industry leaders, like George Hanson, Chief Digital Officer at Panera Bread, and Marla Kaplowitz, President and CEO of the 4As. In addition, my team of product leaders will use this series to share upcoming product innovations designed to make it easier to manage your marketing.

The Update Image 1 - Calendar.jpg
The Update Image 2 - Calendar.jpg
The Update Image 3 - MOs.jpg

We look forward to connecting with you virtually through our virtual roundtables and The Update. Until then follow us on the Google Ads blog for the latest product announcements.

Source: The Official Google Blog

Helping businesses and nonprofits recover

Helping consumers connect with businesses

Helping businesses connect with customers

What’s Next

The Update Image 1 - Calendar.jpg
The Update Image 2 - Calendar.jpg
The Update Image 3 - MOs.jpg

We look forward to connecting with you virtually through our virtual roundtables and The Update. Until then follow us on the Google Ads blog for the latest product announcements.

Source: Google Ads

Inspire new customers in their moments of discovery

Last year we introduced Discovery ads as a new way to help people discover and engage with your brand as they scroll through their favorite content. In April, we made Discovery ads generally available for all advertisers globally. For the first time, you can reach up to 2.9 billion people as they explore their interests and look for inspiration across multiple Google surfaces—all with a single, easy-to-use campaign.

Reach more people as they browse their favorite feeds

More consumers are now finding their next favorite brand or product through a growing variety of touchpoints—in fact, 86 percent of online consumers say they're on the lookout for shopping ideas as they watch videos or explore content across the web. With Discovery ads, you can rely on Google's understanding of consumers' intent across our properties to engage these audiences as they scroll through their favorite Google feeds—no search query needed:

YouTube: Showcase your products on the Home and Watch Next feeds in YouTube, where over 90 percent of users say they discover new brands or products.
Discover:Reach hundreds of millions of consumers in the feed on the Google Search app as they explore and stay up to date on their interests.
Gmail:Show timely offers to shoppers as they check their inbox for the latest products and deals on the Promotions and Social tabs.

Google Discovery - UGG GIF.gif — Example Discovery ads for lifestyle retailer UGG

Drive interest and action with new audiences

Early adopters like Deckers, iProspect and MandM Direct have seen great results driving customer action with Discovery ads alongside their existing media.

For Deckers' collection of iconic lifestyle brands, inspiring consumers to action through richly visual product experiences is fundamental to its media planning. While Deckers has traditionally relied on social media and video to engage new customers, the company worked with digital agency Jellyfish to expand on its strategy for the UGG brand's 2019 holiday season.

UGG used Discovery ads to promote its holiday gift guide, connecting with fashion-forward shoppers open to trying new products while scrolling through their favorite Google feeds. The global lifestyle brand repurposed high-quality images from social campaigns, featuring popular products like its Classic Short Boot and Men's Neumel Chukka. As a result, UGG saw a strong increase in the quality of its website traffic and a revenue return ten times its original ad spend. Deckers now plans to implement Discovery ads across the rest of its brand portfolio, including HOKA and Teva.

"We're very pleased with our performance on Discovery ads," says Richard Russell, VP Omnichannel Marketing at Deckers. "They've helped us build on our omnichannel strategy—we're driving action with our ideal customer across even more of their purchase journey."

Digital marketing agency iProspect has also seen Discovery ads deliver success for several large brands looking to connect with new customers, including global retailers. "Since we first began testing in early 2019, Discovery ads have driven results across a wide range of verticals, from retail to education," says Gareth Cleevely, VP Head of Paid Search at iProspect. "We've seen them deliver positive performance further down the funnel with up to 48 percent lower cost-per-action compared to social ads."

Google Discovery - MandM Direct Quote.png — An example Discovery ad for UK clothing retailer MandM Direct

Get started with Discovery ads

If you're already running media campaigns for social or video, you can get started by bringing your richest creative assets and most engaging messages over to Discovery ads. For help creating your first campaigns, visit the Google Ads Help Center. And be sure to check out our best practices checklist and creative asset guide for more tips on driving better performance with visually inspiring ads.

Source: Google Ads

Inspire new customers in their moments of discovery

Reach more people as they browse their favorite feeds

YouTube: Showcase your products on the Home and Watch Next feeds in YouTube, where over 90 percent of users say they discover new brands or products.
Discover:Reach hundreds of millions of consumers in the feed on the Google Search app as they explore and stay up to date on their interests.
Gmail:Show timely offers to shoppers as they check their inbox for the latest products and deals on the Promotions and Social tabs.

Drive interest and action with new audiences

Early adopters like Deckers, iProspect and MandM Direct have seen great results driving customer action with Discovery ads alongside their existing media.

Get started with Discovery ads

Source: Google Ads

Navigating the road ahead: The benefits of real-time marketing

Changes in consumer behavior have always resulted in adjustments to marketing strategies. COVID-19 has shown how quickly consumers’ interests, expectations, and purchasing behavior can shift—and with it, an ebb and flow in demand for products and services. Despite these changes, consumer expectations for businesses and brands remain high. In fact, 78 percent of people surveyed say brands should show how they can be helpful in the new everyday life.¹

Adjusting your media buying and the way your business shows up in these dynamic conditions is difficult, especially when some businesses are having to manage twice the complexity with half the capacity. Today, we’ll explore the unique role automation can play in helping you respond to the impact of COVID-19 in real time.

Get the most out of your budget

As conditions change, so do auction dynamics. Communities are in various stages of response to COVID-19 and the things people care about are rapidly shifting. This influences things like location, mobile browsing habits, conversions, and other variables that impact ad performance. It’s in this constant sea of change where Smart Bidding can help.

Smart Bidding (also available as Google Ads auction-time bidding in Search Ads 360) uses machine learning to automatically calculate bids for each and every auction. Utilizing signals like location, search query, and conversion data, Smart Bidding can optimize bids in real time to hit your performance goal even as query and conversion volume fluctuates.

It’s important to note that unpredictable changes in conversion rates, for example: shifts in conversion cycles, cancellation or return rates, are challenging for any bid automation tool. Under these conditions, consider adjusting your cost per acquisition or return on ad spend targets to ensure the best allocation of your budget. For additional flexibility, consider shared budgets and portfolio bid strategies which are effective ways to automatically adjust bids and move spend across campaigns based on performance.

Reach new and existing customers

From flour to at-home workouts to studying at home, the things people are searching for and how they’re searching for them is evolving. It can be difficult to identify where consumers’ attention and demand is shifting while ensuring you have the right query coverage. Dynamic Search Ads are an easy way to reach customers who are searching for exactly what you have to offer. Using the content on your website, Dynamic Search Ads automatically delivers relevant ads with headlines and landing pages that are specific to the user’s query. So as consumer behavior shifts, you can ensure your Search ads are adjusting in real time to meet that demand, all while saving time.

Another way to find keyword opportunities is through the Recommendations page. "Keywords & Targeting" recommendations help you identify new trends that are relevant to your business. In fact, more than 16 million keyword recommendations in Google Ads are based on market trends alone, with new ones added every day. Consider adding keywords that are projected to drive additional traffic beyond your existing ones, or pausing keywords that are performing poorly.

Once you’ve applied the recommendations that make the most sense for your business, keep an eye on your optimization score. Each recommendation comes with a score uplift, and historically we’ve seen that advertisers who have increased their score by 10 points saw a 10 percent increase in conversions on average. You can quickly check for new recommendations using the Google Ads mobile app.

Show up with the right message

COVID-19 has not only disrupted business operations, like inventory and shipping, but has also impacted the way businesses communicate with customers. As conditions change week to week and community to community, it’s critical to adjust how you’re communicating and interacting with your customers at scale.

Responsive search ads and responsive display ads enable you to make updates to your Search and Display ads at scale, respectively. Using multiple creative assets, like headlines and descriptions, responsive search ads and responsive display ads automatically identify the best combination of assets in order to deliver an ad that’s likely to perform best. For responsive search ads, you can also pin critical information like modified support options or updated business hours to ensure it shows with your ads. If you're seeing an increase in call volume, or your business is operating on limited hours or staffing, call ads (formally known as call-only ads) now also include an optional “Visit website” link. This gives your customers more flexibility in how they connect with your business.

When it comes to adjusting the messages in your video ads, time and resources are limiting factors right now. Rather than starting from scratch, consider using Video Builder. It’s a free beta tool that animates static assets—images, text and logos—with music from YouTube’s audio 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.

Know what’s working

As the world moves from responding to recovering from this crisis, it’s important you have the right tools available to understand the impact of COVID-19 on your business. Over the past few weeks, we’ve introduced improvements to attribution in Google Ads to help you understand your Google media better.

A new look for attribution reports helps you quickly see how customers are engaging with your ads so you can select the right attribution model for your business. One model, data-driven attribution, uses machine learning to determine how much credit to assign to each click along the customer journey. This ensures your media strategy is accounting for changes in consumer behavior during times of crisis. And with more people turning to YouTube during this pandemic, you can use cross-network reports (currently in beta) to understand how customers interact with your Search, Shopping, and YouTube ads—including clicks and video engagements—before converting.

Helpful resources for managing your campaigns

We’ve created a single destination for product guidance and business considerations when managing your campaigns through COVID-19. You can find the full list of guides and checklists here. We’ll continue updating and adding more through the rest of the year.

In early June, we’ll also be launching The Update on Think with Google: a new video series to share the latest insights, news, best practices, and products. Enjoy this sneak peek, and stay tuned.

^{1. Kantar, COVID-19 Barometer Global Report, Wave2, 50 countries, n=9,815, fielded 27th-30th March}