May 15, 2019
Google Shopping Expands with Major Announcements
Google has made a series of major announcements about Google Shopping lately. All of them seem designed to create a stronger experience with more options for businesses to reach their markets as Google Shopping expands.
Soon, your Shopping feed will be able to run ads on YouTube and Google Discover. Both Product and Showcase Shopping Ads will be able to run.
The new option launches “in the week of July 15th, 2019”.
Google Shopping Ads on Google Discover
Formerly known as Google Feed, Google Discover is often described as ‘a social media feed for interests instead of people’. It’s actually a little bit more than that – it learns from your search history and your interests, and shows you the results of the searches you don’t know you should be making.
The more you use Google, the more relevant content will appear on Google Discover. For many companies, having their products not only featured there but with an easy path to buy will be beneficial.
It seems likely that B2B businesses will benefit less. Even there, however, we can imagine corporate Google accounts slowly turning to Google Discover for relevant news and discovering an easy way to source some items.
Google Shopping Ads on YouTube
As we reported on Friday, Google is also trialling ‘shoppable videos’ in the US using YouTube. The potential for selling via YouTube is huge. Shoppable videos allow influencers and brands to market products directly. However, the total market from that might just pale in comparison to the potential from advertising directly to people researching products on video.
What Does This Mean for You?
Whether or not this new service will work for your business will depend on a lot of factors which aren’t all clear yet.
The biggest: It’s not yet known whether you will be able to manage your Shopping Ads for these services separately from search page shopping listings. Some businesses may get more out of YouTube than other ad platforms. Others will perform less well.
Either way, it’s not likely that these campaigns will perform identically to others. So paying the same price may be a bargain, or a problem.
The value of running Shopping Ads rather than Display Ads on YouTube isn’t confirmed yet, though we can expect there to be a difference. We can even predict that B2C businesses will see a better return.
But exact details are not yet clear.
However, the week of June 17th, it will become possible to opt out of these campaigns if you’d prefer. Existing Cloud Seller Pro customers are encouraged to get in touch with us to discuss plans for the new service.
Goodbye Google Express, Hello Google Shopping App
These shifts are just part of a larger initiative. Google VP of Product Management Surojit Chattarjee summed it up like this:
“These new shopping experiences let people shop and purchase frictionlessly right where they already turn to for research and inspiration: Search, Google Images, YouTube and a redesigned Google Shopping destination.”
The Google Shopping tab will now boast a personalised homepage. Shoppers can select brands, features, and individual products to shop for. Reviews and product videos will be available.
But the big game-changer in all of this is the blue shopping cart that will appear beside some items.
Customers will be able to add the item into a universal cart, pay through Google, and order through Google.
And Google will also guarantee anything sold this way – protecting shoppers against misleading listings, late products and damaged items.
Google Express is being folded into Google Shopping as part of this move.