As always, the world of Google Ads and paid search is moving quickly. With new functionality and features, and changes in the way Google is delivering campaigns across Search and Shopping, it’s important to keep up to date to make sure your campaigns are being managed effectively.
Here are some of the key announcements and updates from Google Ads in February 2020.
#1 – Google Expanding Shopping Ads to Gmail
Shopping ads on the Google Ads platform will soon be available to be shown across Gmail as early as March 2020. This covers both Product Shopping ads and Showcase Shopping ads.
This follows their roll-out of Search ads on the Gmail platform, but now allows for more ecommerce retailers to take advantage of the functionality.
To opt-in to this display, retailers should opt-in to “YouTube, Gmail and Discover” display under Networks, in Settings.
#2 – Easier Remarketing Ads Management with Shared Remarketing Lists
Google has announced that you can now easily share remarketing lists across manager and sub-manager accounts.
Google shares that “with a manager account, you can share audience lists across accounts – but it requires multiple steps to set up. To make it easier to quickly share your audience lists, you can now enable continuous audience sharing in your manager accounts.”
These shared lists make the management of remarketing campaigns much easier, and allows retailers to easily remarket to their existing visitors and customers through Google Ads.
#3 – All Google Ads Campaigns Will Use Standard Delivery
Google has also announced that, starting in April 2020, Standard delivery will be the only ad delivery method available for new Display, Video, App and Hotel campaigns. This follows their migration to Standard delivery that was started last year with Search and Shopping campaigns.
Google states that “Standard delivery takes into account expected ad performance throughout the day, making it more effective at maximizing performance within your daily budget.”
#4 – Comprehensive Price Comparison Benchmarking Reporting
Retailers now have a comprehensive price comparison benchmarking report at the store, brand, product type and product level. All retailers have to do is ust opt the account into the program and the data is instantly available.
This can be very useful for retailers who want to evaluate their performance at both a holistic level and a product level. As more data becomes available, the easier both retailers and agencies can measure success.
#5 – Grouped Products in ‘Shopping’ Tab of Search Results
We’ve also recently been made aware that in the ‘Shopping’ tab of search results, products are being grouped together if closely related, even if not associated by something like an Item Group ID.
There isn’t usually a huge volume of traffic that comes from that tab compared to standard search results. However, it’s definitely something to be aware of if you’re cautious over your product merchandising and curation.
Keep Up to Date
If you want to discuss anything in this update with our expert PPC team or are looking for support with your paid search campaigns, then get in touch.
