'Net Features : product listing ads

5 Tips for Optimizing Product Listing Ads

Michael Garrity — Mon, 25 Mar 2013 19:15:00 GMT

Since Google introduced Product Listing Ads (PLAs) as part of its Google Shopping initiative last year, Internet advertisers and online merchants have been working hard to find the best possible ways to optimize the performance of their PLAs.

These product-specific and information-rich advertisements are displayed when consumers conduct product-related searches and are visible in a sponsored section on the SERPs. So far, they can increase click-through rates by as much as 73 percent, conversion rates by 35 percent and provide a 46 percent higher return on ad spend for merchants.

However, in order to get numbers like those (or even better), it’s important to clean up your product feeds (where Google pulls the information for each individual product from) and carefully set up your PLA campaigns.

Here are five things you can do to improve the overall performance of your Google PLAs:

Title Specs

What’s in a name? Well, for busy consumers, it can be a lot, especially because titles will indicate the queries that you’re likely to show up for. That’s why you should be thoughtful when giving your products a title in your product feed. For starters, be sure that it is no longer than 70 characters; otherwise, Google will truncate parts of the title. In addition, be sure to put the most important (read: significant for keyword-based searches) information at the front of the title, since Google will only show the first couple of words in the SERPs.

Information and Descriptions

While both product titles and descriptions should include essential keywords for the searches that you want those specific products to appear on, they shouldn’t be overstuffed with keywords. In other words, ensure that they include necessary information while also being readable and interesting for consumers. Also, don't worry where you place your keywords in the descriptions, since they don’t actually show up in the PLAs; they’re really there so that Google can more easily separate similar products.

Price Products Accurately

Google will almost certainly penalize any PLAs that inaccurately list the price of the product in question. Keep in mind that if you have package pricing, you will have to include the lowest possible price that someone can add items into their cart for. For instance, if customers must buy a minimum of 20 products for $2 each, the price should be listed as $40, not $2.

Ad Groups

One way to gain greater control over the bidding, offer copy and targeting of each product is to create a separate ad group for each product category. When you do this, you can either use the product categories Google uses for Google Shopping, or customize your own parameters to categorize groups of products in the most relevant way possible. In addition, you should be careful when putting bids on a catch-all ad group, as Google will serve the PLA from the ad group with the highest bid, ignoring all of the others. That being said, you can also optimize your best-selling ad group and make it more visible by giving them higher bids.

Testing Ad Groups

When you set up your ad groups, you should create custom targets that will focus on the first targeting option and your individual product IDs. This allows you to see what queries each of your products are showing up for and provide more visibility into which of your products are converting well. The reports you glean from this testing will show you which of your feed’s copy listings are most effective, and which products you can increase your bids on due to their higher conversion rates. You should also monitor the average position for you groups that usually perform well, and if you see that your average position changes when you haven’t done anything, it’s probably because other merchants (e.g. your competitors) are increasing their bids; you’ll need to do the same in order to stay competitive.

Use Google PLA's to Give Consumers Ads They Want

Michael Garrity — Tue, 05 Mar 2013 18:45:00 GMT

Last week, DataPop launched the very first semantic advertising platform for Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs), leveraging a “deep understanding” of shopper intent, product details and performance signals to drive results for retailers.

The platform, which is based on DataPop’s flagship creative optimization technology, will seamlessly extract any relevant information from a retailer’s product feed and then attempt to connect it to consumer intent. This means that advertisers can use the PLA platform to create advertisements that will automatically directly target a consumer’s intuitive product needs by understanding their preferences for images, promotional text, pricing and ad copy.

DataPop is an online ad optimization company that provides intuitive advertisement customization technology and services to retail, travel and automotive brands around the world. The company’s flagship product allows brands to easily create “ads that consumers actually want to click on.” Now, it is using that same technology to match online consumers with the product their desire the most (based on their past behavior), while removing the clutter of ineffective ads and improving click-through and conversion rates in the process.

So far, those retailers that leveraged the platform early have seen triple-digit increased in click and conversion volumes from Google PLA.

Among the features included in DataPop’s PLA platform are semantic field optimization, multivariate testing of feed construction approaches, automated account structure and semantic negative management, consumer intent and product attribute insights and tracking via integration with third-party SEM platforms.

“What’s most compelling about our PLA platform is the dramatic relevance improvements it creates relative to the poorly matched ad solutions in the industry,” said DataPop CEO Jason Lehmbeck. “While most are struggling to understand the impact of Google’s PLA product on the marketplace and how they are going to integrate within it, we have launched a solution to actually grow and optimize media spend against this exciting new opportunity for marketers.”

Google's PLAs Get a Boost

Allison Howen — Tue, 06 Nov 2012 20:20:00 GMT

Google's Product Listing Ads (PLAs) are proving to be a valuable advertisement option for merchants; however, launching a PLA campaign through Kenshoo may prove to be even more valuable.

This is because the digital marketing solutions provider analyzed more than 270 million global impressions and clicks that were aggregated from merchants managing their Google PLAs through the Kenshoo platform, and found that most retailers increased sales revenue by 607 percent during the first month following the release of Kenshoo’s new PLA support. This success also led to an increase of spending on these advertisements by 348 percent.

In fact, although Kenshoo’s data found that Google PLAs typically outperform text search ads in many ways – including providing merchants with a 73 percent higher click-through rate, a 35 percent higher conversion rate, a 36 percent lower average cost-per-click rate and a 46 percent higher return on ad spend rate. The data also revealed that merchants who leverage Kenshoo’s PLA bid policies tend to boost their results even further – with an additional 4 percent increase on click-through rates, an additional 34 percent increase in conversion rates, an additional 31 percent decrease in average cost-per-click rates and an additional 89 percent increase in return on ad spend.

"Retailers using Kenshoo to manage PLAs saw impressive results leading to large increases in spend, and we expect these trends to continue in 2013 and beyond as marketers get more savvy using tools like Kenshoo to drive tangible results," said Will Martin-Gill, General Manager of Kenshoo Enterprise and Kenshoo Local. "Marketers should consider these metrics when determining their campaign goals, especially since site traffic and sales will only continue to increase as the holiday season nears and they seek to engage consumers and expand visibility for their products."

Kenshoo's PLA enhancements, which were released in September, include product-level tracking, reporting and management for Google Shopping as well as a custom PLA bid policy. The Kenshoo algorithm collects data based on historical performance and predicts PLA revenue per click to set bids. Additionally, new Kenshoo reports, such as the Fusion Report for Product Targets, provide users with insights into the performance of each PLA placement and its impact on conversions, while the path-to-conversion reports show the relationship between PLAs and other channels so that merchants can better optimize their campaigns and bidding decisions. The platform also provides a negative keyword suggestion report for PLA campaigns in order to help prevent irrelevant clicks, reduce costs and improve quality scores.