Google Shopping and the EvolvingPLA Landscape

Vertical Nerve is a:

Most of us have experience with

traditional keyword campaigns and

expectations, and PLA has outperformed

all of those.- Chase Twomey

Director of E-Commerce, Zoro Tools

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The Google Shopping landscape is evolving, and fast! There are four types of shopping results in Google:

Organic Search Results

AdWords ProductAd Extensions

Product Listing Ads Maps and Places Listings

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3 4

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In this White Paper, we specifi cally address the growing opportunity - and the potential “gotchas” - of Product Listing Ads, or PLAs.

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launching to all US advertis-

ers in November 2010, within

a year, Product Listing Ads (PLAs) saw sig-

nifi cant growth depicting a 600% increase

in tra! c globally year over year and 2Xs the

CTR vs. text ads according to

Google.

PLAs are a phenomenal mar-

keting tool, but when done in-

correctly can damage a brand

and also showcase irrelevant

products.

When done correctly in Google

Merchant Center and Google

AdWords, PLAs produce fan-

tastic results. With properly

positioned text ads, remar-

keting / display campaigns,

organic campaigns and other

marketing campaigns, the ROI attributed

from PLA campaigns should become the

highest performing strategy in a marketer’s

portfolio.

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600%INCREASEIN GLOBALTRAFFIC

Now is the time for all retailers across

the globe to take product specifi c PLAs

seriously!

Since 2002, Google Shopping “Beta” has

been an incredible source of

free tra! c for e-commerce

retailers.

Last November, Google

shocked the e-commerce sec-

tor by announcing their transi-

tion from a free to a paid model

in the U.S. PLAs are a hybrid of

Google Shopping and Google

AdWords accounts.

Managing PLAs e" ectively is a

complex process that requires

the synchronization of two

Google products, but PLAs are

now a requirement for all merchants

who want to promote their products

through Google Shopping.

The ROI

attributed from

PLA campaigns

should become

the highest

performing

strategy in a

marketer’s

portfolio.

year over year

Since

Source: Google Research Study - October 2012

When Google Shopping came into market in 2002,

listing products was easy. Merchants could literally

send a basic feed specifi cation (i.e. product ID, prod-

uct URL, image URL, sale price and descriptions) and

still generate quality tra! c. This was the case for

eight years until 2010 when Google started making

changes to their feed specifi cations that made listing

products very complex.

These changes have allowed Google to distinguish

who their power users were. By doing so, they were

able to eliminate companies that weren’t serious

about online marketing and sales. These companies

received “disapproved” statuses frequently, which

eliminated their product listings. Here are examples

of changes that have occurred in Google Shopping:

§ New specifi cation announced by Google on July 16, 2013 that includes the addition of the unique product identifi er (UPI) and multipack. Merchants should update their feeds immediately so they don’t get penalized.

§ Addition of new fi eld attributes like Google product cat-egory, tax, shipping, multipack, adult, energy e! ciency class, expiration date and Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) just to name a few.

§ The addition of 2,400 new Google category values.

§ Apparel merchants were also required to identify their parent-child relationships by requiring merchants to apply an item group ID (parent SKU) value along with the child SKUs variant values (color, gender and size).

§ Sale price and price fi elds now require a currency value with two decimal points.

§ No Free Shipping in product titles.

§ Special characters are not allowed in any fi eld attribute.

The latest update occurred on June 11, 2013, when Google announced the same transition to the fol-lowing International regions: UK, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Australia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic.

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Keeping up with Google changes is

something that can be fi xed through

trial and error, but without the proper

tools and resources, it is very di! cult to

improve impressions. For merchants

starting out for the fi rst time, getting a

fully-optimized Google Shopping feed is

a lot of work, requiring time and testing

on the merchants’ end.

The graph above illustrates how product listings can be a! ected.

Disapproved Products in the

thousands!

When Google suggested that the transi-

tion from the free to paid model would be

an easy process, everyone experienced the

exact opposite. Managing PLAs through

Google Shopping and Google AdWords has

been very complex. Merchants with ba-

sic feed requirements typically spent days

(sometimes months) trying to get their

product listings back up.

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Using a manufacturer name with model number will help

improve PLA impressions.

Google Shopping product data is di-

rectly correlated with the impressions

and conversion ratios of PLAs. Since

there are no keywords with PLAs,

the only way for Google to match

search query results to product data

is through the Google Shopping data

feed. If products are disapproved for

data quality reasons, those products

will never show up in search results.

Tracking data quality on a daily basis

and updating product data according

to the errors has become a daily pro-

cess. Many experienced merchants

have probably noticed a significant

improvement in impressions and CTRs.

One example of optimizing Google

Shopping product data for better im-

pressions is to use relevant keywords

in product titles and description fields.

Example of Product Listing Ads – In the image, product title, product type and values are displayed on the right hand side. This is all man-aged through Google Merchant Center.

* It’s important that merchants use correct unique product identifi ers within product titles, model number and description fi elds in order to fully-optimize impressions. This will improve PLA results on Goo-gle’s search engine results pages (SERPs).

PLAs work in two di" erent ways. Mer-

chants using a PLA strategy today will no-

tice that there are listings on Google Shop-

ping and on Google’s search engine result

pages (SERPs).

Google Shopping listings are accessed via

the Shopping Link on Google and act as a

comparison shopping engine. Users can

search products based on keyword terms.

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This is the method of display for Google Shopping. PLAs, on the other hand, will be displayed within the original Google search results.

GoogleShopping Now

There are also options for brick and mor-

tar store locations to show up within a

searcher’s vicinity.

Category specifi c options are available as

well and this interface is similar to com-

parison shopping engines like Shopzilla,

Pricegrabber and Shopping.com.

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PLA usingGoogle’s SERP

PLAs that appear in the main SERP display

the image, product title, price, category

value and special o" erings for merchants

utilizing promotional texts. Optimizing

these listing can be very challenging be-

cause the current default setting and Goo-

gle’s recommendation for PLAs is to send

all products into one PLA Ad Group (see:

Google PLA Recommendation).

The logic behind optimizing PLAs is that

Google will choose products from Google

Merchant center and match it to search

query results. The challenge with opti-

mizing PLAs through Google’s recom-

mendation is to have one single Ad Group

assigned to all SKUs.

Google will match relevant data from your

Product Titles, Brand Names, Model Num-

bers, ASIN, EAN, GTIN, MPN or a variety of

specifi c and non-specifi c terms from your

product data.

This is where data quality becomes crucial,

but more importantly, setting up prod-

uct-specifi c PLAs. ROI with PLAs can be

strong, but with one single Ad Group con-

taining all products in a catalog it is virtu-

ally impossible to make improvements.

PRIMARY REASONSMERCHANTS MUST TAKE

A PRODUCT SPECIFIC PLA APPROACH:

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Merchants fi nd it diffi cult to bid intelligently across various price points with-out product specifi c PLAs. Merchants should not bid $1 for a product that is $5 and use the same bid for a product that is $1,000. Bids should be set intelli-gently based on margin and price point.

Negative keyword strat-egies can be applied to product specifi c PLA Ad Groups. For negative key-word strategies, one key item to note is that Google still displays a small per-centage of free clicks on Google Shopping. It’s important to not re-move under-performing products from Google Merchant Center be-cause it’s still possible to receive free clicks. Free clicks don’t affect ROI. The best practice is to eliminate negative performing products in Google AdWords and leave free listings on Google Shopping.

Product specifi c PLAs will allow promotional text on various price points or subset of category values. For example, it’s not possible to place free shipping for products over a $100 using Goo-gle’s recommendation.

Case Study:Specialized On-Line Retailer

in only 6 months!

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#1

#2

#3

( July - Dec. 2012 )

The retailer was able to create product-specifi c negative keywords to match generic keywords to their individual product with the best ROI.

This strategy is used to force Google to show the products the retailer wants shown rather than give the choice to Google when matching products to search terms.

In addition to increasing revenue,this retailer was able to increase their

ROASfrom 2.4 %to 28.4 %

§ Be prepared to commit a lot of time, resources and money to achieve the best results.

§ Build product-specifi c PLA Ad Groups within AdWords.

§ Use PLA-specifi c fi eld attributes (adwords_labels or adwords_grouping), which are used for product fi lters to limit a campaign to a group of products or product targets to bid di" erently across di" erent subsets of products.

§ Make sure to get the most out of all the Google feed attributes.

§ Don’t forget to investigate the click costs for your products and the industries with low budget and low CPCs.

§ Check for feed errors on a daily basis and eliminate these issues.

§ Make sure to use the data quality tabs to analyze Google Shopping data quality.

§ Optimize Google Shopping product data by imbedding relevant keywords into product titles and descriptions.

§ Target high value segments and fi nd new segments to break out in campaigns. Build account history and send quality data to be rewarded by Google with lower CPCs.

§ Control bids for individual products and bid aggressively on products with high perfor-mance.

§ Manage ROI & costs by pausing unprofi table products using negative keyword strategies.

§ Market only the most competitive products.

Vertical Nerve’s Recipefor High-Performance PLAs

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Vertical Nerve’s PLA service incorporates the

management of your Google Merchant Cen-

ter and your Ad Center. Whether you have

1,000 SKUs or 1,000,000 SKUs, our certifi ed

Sr. Account Managers will implement com-

plex data manipulation strategies to build

out product specifi c PLA Ad Groups and also

optimize your Google Shopping data feed so

there are no data quality issues. This allows

our team to initiate bidding strategies down

to the product level, implement negative

keyword strategies and also develop product

specifi c promotional texts.

Managing your Google Merchant Center

and Product Specifi c PLA Ad Groups is la-

bor intensive, but our experienced team will

make it easy for you to achieve the ROI you

are looking for. Call us today to learn more

about Vertical Nerve and our PLA service!

Product Listing Ads:In Summary

Product Listing Ads:In Summary

by Dice NakamuraBusiness Development Manager,Vertical Nerve

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Vertical Nerve’s attention to PLAs led to

a new discovery on July 15. The search

term “nike boat shoes” is showing “Shop

by style” extensions under the PLA list-

ings, which directs tra! c away from

Google’s SERP and directs it to Google

Shopping’s SERP.

See the two “Shop by style” category val-

ues, “Athletic Shoes” and “Loafers & Slip-

Ons,” in the snap shot below.

Shop by style extensions that take you directly to Google’s SERP

Author’s Note: Look for “Shop by Style” Extensions

By clicking on these links, the viewer is

taken completely away from Google’s

SERP.

It’s important to note that merchants

sending quality data are being reward-

ed here. Google’s taxonomy tree is very

detailed and merchants can choose from

well over 5,000 values. Etailers using

detailed category values are able to take

advantage of Google’s algorithms.

Here is the Google Shopping SERP “Shop by style” – Athletic Shoes view for

“Athletic Shoes.” As you can see, there are no paid text

ads or organic search results. 100% of these listings are Google

Shopping listings.

Google has been very generous with

PLAs lately and advertisers have been

flocking to them since Google Shopping

switched to a paid model in most mar-

kets last year. Vertical Nerve’s analysis

has shown that product listing ads CPCs

are closing in on traditional Google text

ads as the auctions and bids get more

competitive.

Our team could only replicate these

“Shop by style” extensions by searching

“nike boat shoes”. Stay Tuned!

“Athletic Shoes” and “Loafers & Slip-Ons”

have to be in your Google product catego-

ry fi eld within your Google Shopping data

feed. “Athletic Shoes” is the sub-sub-sub

Google category value of Apparel & Acces-

sories > Shoes > Athletic Shoes & Sneakers

> Athletic Shoes. “Loafers & Slip-Ons” is the

sub-sub Google category value of Apparel &

Accessories > Shoes > Loafers & Slip-Ons.

Upon clicking the “Shop by style” category

extensions, you can see below that 100%

of the listings are PLAs under the “Athletic

Shoes” category.

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Vertical Nerve helps companies grow their online revenue through highly effective Search Marketing and improve their online conversions through Digital Analytics. Serving national brands since 1999, Vertical Nerve is a Google Analytics Certifi ed Partner and Premium Authorized Re-seller, a Google AdWords Certifi ed Partner and a Micro-soft Advertising Preferred Agency. Learn more at www.VerticalNerve.com.

ABOUT VERTICAL NERVEContact Sales:

sales@verticalnerve.com800.330.9450© 2013 Vertical Nerve Inc.www.verticalnerve.com