The second installment of our biggest takeaways from Google Marketing Live 2019 and what they mean for our clients. Read part one here.
What is it: Google announced a new shopping experience coming soon to help users decide what to buy and how to buy it. The experience will eventually be found at google.com/shopping and will allow users to buy online, nearby or from retailers directly through Google – complete with Google guarantees and via saved payment methods. Building on the new experience, it will be expanding from Shopping to Search, Voice, Images and YouTube later this year. Advertisers need to opt in for Shopping Actions to take full advantage of the features.
Why this is significant: Better integration, better experience. Because Google has a relationship with customers in more places, it is more natural to continue the shopping journey on Google without having to go to a separate "mall." Consumers will be able to shop from reputable brands and not worry about if the product is going to match the description. Until now, Google's shopping approach has been fairly disjointed. Moving forward, the functionality will have a wider scope therefore becoming something that users might find valuable and could potentially pull them away from the endless aisle of Amazon.
What it means for our clients: With Google’s inventory stretching from voice to search to video, staying on top of its latest shopping features will ensure you're not left behind. While Google makes the transition sound easy, it’s important to evaluate if this a fit for your particular brand. Take into consideration the fact of allowing the transaction to occur on Google, which might have impacts to first-party data collection, tracking/measurement and potentially remarketing campaigns due to the lack of a site visit.
What is it: Showcase Ads is a highly visual shopping ad format available from Google and targeted to higher funnel product queries, such as foundation and cameras. The intention is to offer multiple options to a user versus placing a bet on a single SKU. Showcase Ads can appear on Search, but will soon expand to Images, Discover and YouTube.;
Why this is significant: Showcase ads have been a great way for advertisers to address broader queries. But since advertisers don't control how often this particular format is shown versus individual Product Listing Ads/Local Inventory Ads, expanding inventory should allow for additional volume and opportunity.
What it means for our clients: If you haven't already launched showcase campaigns, test it. The additional effort should pay off with the expanded inventory. For those with mature showcase campaigns, continue testing, optimizing and evaluating potential for increased investment.
What is it: Google is providing a way for multiple parties to cooperatively fund product focused shopping campaigns through Google Ads. This has been a pain point for advertisers in the past, both from the perspective of manufactures without eCommerce capabilities on their website as well as for retailers looking to drive and promote specific brand sales in store and online. Given the growth of Amazon, it's no surprise that a wave of similar features is now underway with various media partners.
Why this is significant: It takes what many brands do manually through vendor and coop programs with direct partners and seeks to simplify the workflow.
What it means for our clients: For clients without existing programs, this may open up opportunity for increased digital investment in a way that provides more control and visibility for the brand. For brands with established coop programs, this new methodology may require an adjustment period for partnerships already in the works. As always, we recommend evaluating the new functionality in detail before revising how programs are structured to see if it's a fit for your business model.
What is it: Google introduced new advertising policy controls in their Chrome Browser. These controls center around cookies and fingerprinting. For cookies, users will have greater control to block cookies used in a third-party context, while still being able to reference cookies used in a first-party context. Chrome will also be much stricter in restricting fingerprinting.
Why this is significant: The changes will provide the mechanisms for how users can control the use of their data for personalized advertising. This level of transparency was difficult to delineate prior to this announcement as it was hard to identify cookies that were used for functionality such as user login versus ones that are used for tracking.
What it means for our clients: Google didn’t provide all the details on how these new changes will be implemented. For example, very little details were provided on how the fingerprinting will be controlled. The controls around cookies will be rolled out to developers first, but an exact time frame was not given. This is an area we will continue to monitor.
The Biggest Takeaways from Google Marketing Live 2019 - Part One
Google Marketing Live: 10 things get excited about in 2019
Shopping revamp: Google shopping inventory expansion