Google Image Search to feature Shopping Ads

“New ways to be there and be useful for mobile shoppers” is what Google has headlined its latest blog post announcing two of the latest developments for shopping ads on mobile.

According to Google, more than 30% of online retail purchases in the US come from mobile. As more and more people begin to shop on mobile, Google continues to look for more and more ways to capitalize on this trend by optimizing the experience for mobile shoppers.

On May 16^th of 2016, Google introduced a change to shopping ads that will help retailers convert more shoppers in the so-called micro-moments of impulse purchases happening on mobile:

Image Search to feature Shopping Ads

Shopping ads can now be integrated into mobile image results pages, whereby retailers can now advertise similar products to the images that people are browsing for on Google Images.

The ads will appear among organic listings. The shopper can then refine the results by filtering the ads according to product type or color. As usual, the product price included in the ad so that users can quickly decide if they want to click through or not.

The idea is that by “being there,” when users show an interest in a similar product, you’re making it easy for them to click through to purchase the product on your site. Whether this new extension will drive direct sales is yet to be determined, especially at the beginning of the launch, as the mindset of the user in image search may still not have adapted. As Markus Knight from 4Ps Marketing states according to this article by econsultancy, “users who are using image search are not necessarily looking for websites to visit, but images of a range of products to compare.” So, be careful to only measure your campaign on CTR and particularly CR, as your ads may initially serve merely to increase product awareness and consideration. Nevertheless, a click can assist in retargeting efforts.

The good news is, if you’re already advertising your products on the Google Search Network, your ads will automatically be considered for appearing in search results for image searches. So, you don’t need to change a thing.

Here’s how it looks:

[caption id="attachment_11481" align="aligncenter" width="207"] Source: Google AdWords blogspot[/caption]

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