November 29, 2017

Showcase Shopping Ads

We break down a new-ish Shopping ad format, aiming to help people discover your brand & products

As paid search marketers have ever-so-slowly, semi-reluctantly, bedded themselves into the new AdWords interface this year, we’ve enjoyed testing some features and new formats exclusively available in the new fit-out.Google is playing catch up with Facebook for more engaging mobile formats, and Showcase Shopping ads are an interesting foray into formats built with mobile front of mind. Showcase Shopping ads make it more appealing for advertisers to chase broader, research-driven queries when people are still making up their minds, presenting them with a curated selection to introduce your brand or business.

FeaturesFirstly, cost per click has been parked for cost per engagement, meaning the first click comes free, with the pay per engagement only coming if user spends at least 10 seconds within the ad format, or click through a product within the expanded Showcase ad. You can of course track these engagements and any subsequent conversions that are driven.Showcase ads also allow a lifestyle/editorial image to sit along with products pulling from a feed (either the whole feed, or carefully selected products). This is the largest image in the collage that will show on the ad. You can choose between a product image or a header image. The header image will be cropped out on the Search Results Page, but will expand when clicked.

Requirements:

Image:

  • Make sure it’s 1080 x 566 pixels
  • Include an 82 px ‘safety zone’ on the top and on the bottom, so nothing important gets cut off on different screen sizes
  • Use a .jpg or .png file less than 10 MB
  • Don’t use watermarks, overlay texts, collages, borders or logos of competitors. Your ads will not show if you do so.

Headline (recommended):

This is the main text that differentiates your ads from the others. Use up to 24 characters.

Description (recommended):

Up to 120 characters to describe your brand, store, products and promotions.

If you’ve started with a larger set of products like Google recommends (hundreds), once clicked the ad expands revealing your products that are most relevant to the search terms used.Keep in mind only one Showcase Shopping ad can serve per ad group, and they will only ever compete alongside other Showcase Shopping ads.

They’re certainly an interesting format and a first step towards more visually-arresting SERPs, whilst somewhat remedying the problematic nature of Shopping product ad clicks via broad queries unlikely to convert, which can often lead to wasted spend, especially on mobile as people bounce from product ad to product ad as they research.If you have any early encounters on Showcase Shopping ads, please do comment here or tweet us @navigatedigitalDavid Walby, Biddable Account Director

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