Google Shopping - targeted product placements

Google Shopping offers companies versatile opportunities within search engine advertising (SEA) to promote their own products and target the right audience through selected campaigns. Ads achieve enormous reach and are displayed on desktops, smartphones, in Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, and the Google Display Network, among others. But what exactly does the platform include, what are Comparison Shopping Services (CSS), what role do product feeds/feed optimization, Google Shopping campaigns/Product Listing Ads (PLAs), or targeted remarketing play for your e-business?

What is Google Shopping?

Google Shopping is a tool from SEA / search engine marketing. It enables store operators to make their product data available to Google and, after processing, to place it online in Google's search results and the associated services.

The Google Merchant Center offers the opportunity to provide users with business and product information. This means that all information on selected products is made available exactly when a potential buyer searches for a product on Google.

The online retailer logs into the Google Merchant Center and transfers their product data. Google Shopping campaigns can then be planned accordingly, either free of charge organically (since 2020) or for a fee.

Google itself describes the so-called Google Ads Comparison Shopping Services (CSS) as services that collect product offers from e-commerce retailers and make them available to users who access the retailer's store via ads and make purchases there.

What is product feed / feed optimization about?

Product data serves as the basis for Google Shopping and must be imported into Google. Online retailers should check in detail which options they can use to export the data from their store system and implement good product feed optimization.

Feed optimization is crucial for ensuring that your products are also displayed for the appropriate search queries in Google Shopping. Key elements here are the optimization of titles and product descriptions. Good product feeds, in turn, are an important basis for setting up successful campaigns.

What are Google Shopping campaigns / Product Listing Ads (PLAs)?

After successfully setting up a feed and connecting to Google Ads via the Google Merchant Center, you can create targeted campaigns. These are also referred to as Product Listing Ads (PLAs) by online marketing experts.

There are various approaches to this, such as a bestseller categorization, a mixture of generic and brand-based search terms or the elimination of low profit products depending on the budget.

What does Google Shopping Remarketing mean?

Via remarketing, visitors or customers are addressed again on other pages with advertisements. The product feed can also be used for remarketing ads.

This allows you to implement remarketing based on individual products that were already in the shopping cart but were not purchased (shopping cart abandonment) or are of interest to repeat buyers or other users. Once again, this is based on careful feed optimization and technically sophisticated and seamless tracking.

Google Shopping Organic vs. Paid Ads

In addition to paid ads, since 2020 you have been able to use Google Shopping Organic, a free, organic placement of your products.

According to Google, it also wants to support small e-commerce operators in reaching their target group.

The organic results are displayed in the Shopping tabs, in Search or in Images, for example. Retailers who already use search engine marketing and have integrated their product feed into the Google Merchant Center can also participate in the “Google Platform” program.

Experienced store operators complement their paid ads with free product placements in order to target products in paid and organic shopping results.

Advertisers who are not yet familiar with Google Shopping initially have the option of getting to know the platform, including feed optimization, and trying out the effects, even without paid ads.

Conclusion: Actively increase sales

With the support of Shopping campaigns, you can target potential buyers and reach the exact groups of people who have searched for your product with minimal wastage.

Customers who use Google trust the relevance of the ads and get a quick overview of your product range. However, this requires optimal planning, management and optimization of the ads.

As a digital marketing agency, we support you in increasing product sales through targeted placement in the Google Shopping search results. Would you like to find out more?

We look forward to receiving your enquiry.