Google is Expanding Shopping Ads to Gmail

Google Ads recently announced in an email sent out by @MattGSouthern to Google Ads advertisers, stating that standard Shopping campaigns will become available to Gmail. This is going to become a useful Google Ads feature for marketers all over the world. Email marketing is one of the best marketing strategies e-commerce entrepreneurs favor due to its effectiveness – high click-through rate and conversion among others. Now that it will soon be able to do more, there’s no doubt it will make a huge impact on SEO.

On Thursday 6th of February, Ian Ballantyne published a blog post on Google blog notifying Google Ads advertisers of this new feature along with instructions on how to use it. The feature will allow both Showcase Shopping ads and Product Shopping ads for Gmail. Showcase Shopping ads feature was made available to Youtube and Google Discover in 2019, while only Smart Shopping Ads was available for Gmail. Starting from March 4, Gmail will join Google Discover and Youtube to become eligible to use for shopping campaigns that target the Google Display Network.

How To Use Gmail For Shopping Campaigns

Before you will be able to run showcase shopping campaigns and product shopping campaigns on Gmail, there is a procedure to follow. To make your Google Ads eligible for standard shopping campaigns on Gmail;

• First, log in to your Google Ads
• Check the Campaigns tab and choose a standard shopping campaign.
• Next, click on Settings.
• Scroll to ”Networks”, select it.
• Then, look out for a checkbox beside ”Youtube, Gmail, and Discover”.

That’s it. This will automatically make your Google Ads feature on Gmail as well. It is a one-time setting update, you don’t have to manually copy your standard shopping campaigns to Gmail. Once you categorize a standard shopping campaign under ”Youtube, Gmail, and Google Discover”, Gmail will be automatically eligible for and be able to run the said campaign. The shopping campaigns that are rolled out on Gmail will be added to the Google Display Network.
Additionally, you can also modify your Google Ads settings to give your customers the freedom to choose whether or not to allow standard shopping campaigns via Google Discover, Youtube, and Gmail.
Just like the above procedure, go to your Google Ads, and then to your Settings.

• For AdWords API: check under ”Network” in ”Settings” and change targetContentNetwork to True (opt-in) or False (opt-out).
• For Google Ads API: it is almost the same as above. Check under ”Network” and change target_content_network to True or False.

Doing this will give each person in your target audience the power to decide whether to opt-in or opt-out of your standard shopping campaigns.

There are speculations suggesting that Google Ads’ latest update is as a result of the decline experienced in 2019, particularly during the last quarter. According to Merkle in its last Digital Marketing Report, spending on Google Shopping ads dropped to 16% in the last quarter of 2019 from third quarter’s 24% of the same year. On the other hand, spending on text ads increased, leading to a 15% growth from 2018’s decline. Merkle mentioned that Google’s continuous update and expansion of the program may be responsible for the increased success of text ads.
All in all, what is interesting to note is that marketers are looking at spending a better chunk of their search budgets on Shopping ads. The reasons for choosing to spend more on shopping ads are not farfetched. Shopping ads can be used for numerous purposes such as for generating leads, hosting traffic to your e-commerce site, etc.

Here are some of the benefits of Google Shopping Ads

Shopping ads do not only aid your search engine optimization practices but also boost sales, and do lots more.

Wider Reach: shopping ads will give your business or/and product a wider reach. As you probably know, Google is the biggest search engine on the internet, therefore it will automatically position you for more reach. It gets more interesting; you can run multiple shopping ads and thus reach more people. This also means that from a single search one user can find more than one of your shopping ads when they enter keywords related to your products.

You Don’t Need A Keyword Technique for Shopping Ads: in SEO practices, having a keyword technique is important. However, this is not the case with shopping ads, all you need to do is describe your product attributes in the data feed of your Google Ads Merchant Center. Shopping ads algorithm will then use the product attributes to answer search queries that are relevant to the product. In this way, more people will see your product inventory, unlike when you are competing for keywords with giant e-commerce sites.

Shopping Ads Display Product Information: having potential buyers find your products on the internet is great, however, your aim as a merchant is to sell, not just to be seen. With several merchants competing for the same buyers, using shopping ads gives you an edge. How? Well, when potential buyers find your shopping ads, they see your product name, the price, a few details about the product and pictures of the product before clicking on the ad. By the time they click on the product and go to your e-commerce store, they most likely have already made a decision to buy the product. Shopping ads speeds up the purchasing funnel.

Bottom Line

Running Shopping ads does not mean that you should stop your other SEO practices. Shopping ads can be used to boost your SEO. It gives you access to your product reach and performance data. How many clicks is each product generating when you try a new technique? For example, when you filter products view, take note of which product(s) is responding positively and therefore doesn’t need any new product group. Studying your shopping ads data can help you to improve your SEO practices and eventually improve your sales.
We can’t wait to see how marketers will utilize the Shopping ads update.