Adwords Product Listing Ads Takes Over Product Extensions

In my previous blog post on Google Adwords Ad Extensions, I talked about Product Extensions and its benefits. But as Adwords users, you all must be familiar with the fact that Product Extensions are no more active. Adwords Product Listing Ads took over it with all its advanced customization features; though it serves the same purpose of displaying product details and images on Google SERP.

 So let’s see how Adwords Product Listing Ads work:

Check out the image below! It shows product details  (images, prices, links and merchant name) of tennis shoes of five different brands; as a result of the user search query ‘Tennis Shoes’.

Adwords product listing ads have proved beneficial to many businesses in boosting up their online marketing results. Let’s look at the: 

Benefits of Adwords Product Listing Ads:

• Higher Click-through-Rate: Suppose there are two ads-
  1. A simple text ad saying ‘Puma Tennis Shoes at $40’, and
  2. An ad with pictures of great looking Puma shoes, and other details.

Which one would you notice first? The one with pictures, right! Therefore, the CTR of your ads would automatically increase on using Product Listing Ads. 

• More Qualified Leads: Product details directly on the search engine results page help viewers make informed purchase decisions; which thereby increases the chances of conversion.
• Broader Reach: Check out the image above ones more. Amazon.co.uk ad appears twice.
  1. As a text ad, at the top of the page, and
  2. In the product listing ad section

Thus, it has simply doubled the chance of getting a click on the ad; and reaching to the potential customers easier.

• Standard CPC rates: Similar to all ad campaigns on Adwords, product listing ads run on CPC basis. You just need to set a minimum bidding amount and daily budget for each day. Simple!

The initial step to get started with Adwords Product Listing Ads is to link your Google Merchant Center account with Adwords. This will help Adwords pull relevant product details and display on the result page; whenever it matches to any of the user search query. So let’s begin with the:

Steps to Setup Adwords Product Listing Ad Campaigns:

1. Link your Google Merchant Center account with your Adwords

Login in to your Google Merchant Center account

Go to Setting > Adwords

Enter Adwords Customer Id

Click Link Account

2. Set up Adwords Product listing Ad campaigns for a ‘New’ ad campaign

Login in to Adwords account

Click on Campaigns tab

Click on +New Campaign

Select Search Networks only

Under Campaigns Type, Click the radio button next to the ‘Product listing ads’

Under Bidding and Budget > set the Default Bid and Daily Budget of the campaign

Under Ad Extensions section, select the linked Google Merchant account

Click Save and Continue

Create your first Ad group > Assign a name to the ad group

Enter a Promotional Phrase, relevant to all the products associated with the ad group

Add ‘All Products’ target to ad group by default (customize the product targets later)

Under Ad group bid section, set the default bid for the ad group.

Click Save ad group

3. Set up Adwords Product listing Ad campaigns for a ‘Existing’ ad campaign

Login to Adwords account

Click on the Campaign where you want to create Product listing ads

Click on the Ad Extensions tab

Click on the View > Product extensions from the drop down menu

Click on +New extension

Under ‘Select extension’ drop down menu, select your account

Click Save

Follow the link to watch a video on Youtube.com on How to Set up Product Listing Ads on Adwords

That is all for today. I will discuss more about Google Adwords in my upcoming blog pots. Keep reading till then!