Google is launching a new ad format called Showcase Shopping ads, which are created to help retail brands reach people searching for broad product terms with visual displays of their products. Google found 44% of consumers use images to “find ideas” while shopping online, while mobile searches related to finding the “best” product are up more than 50% over a year ago, Ad Week reports. Google will stop saving your searches, your location history, and every single cat video you’ve ever watched on Youtube.
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Product images from advertisers will appear in the search results, enabling brands to visually display their offerings and allow users to click through to a page with product information. Whenever a user enters a search query, search ads are displayed in addition to the search results. Notifications are delivered via Google Now cards and through email alerts.
Showcase Shopping ads will automatically impact merchants running Shopping Campaigns in the US, UK and Australia. With Book on Google, travelers can complete their reservations on Google, which is not the merchant of record. The pricing structure for the premium version is still to be determined.
The company also added to its “TrueView for shopping” feature, which was created to help YouTube watchers buy the products they were seeing in videos online. There are two new features coming globally.
Companion banner: We’re adding a new interactive banner appearing next to the video that lets viewers scroll through products while the video is playing next to it.
Google also said that it is trying to boost cross border search experience through tools that could convert prices of foreign products to local currencies. In the past, Google either didn’t show a product listing ad (PLAs) on board queries or served individual products such as chair or couch.
If an advertiser sells in the USA and any of the other included countries, the currency conversion will appear in a PLA for users in those countries – both U.S. dollars and pounds, for example.
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Google also recently announced an Android virtual reality platform called Daydream, a headset for smartphones and app in the works from a number of big brands, the company hopes to unlock consumer adoption and new marketing opportunities for virtual reality (see more).
