Every month, our strategy team shares a key insight about innovative changes in the digital world. This month, it’s all about Showcase Ads…
What are Showcase Ads?
Showcase Ads are a new way to let users peruse product collections, triggered by short-tail, generic queries.
Previously when searching generics, Google wouldn’t show any shopping ads or specific products; for such a broad query, a singular product may not be relevant. For example, a user searching the term ‘dress’ may not be ready to view a particular type of dress.
Showcase Ads allow merchants to present their brand and a collection of products in their own Google-hosted landing page.
Why are Showcase Ads important?
Showcase Ads change the landscape for broad search terms, this opens potential for new strategies to target generics and to showcase more products for broad terms. This creates a mixture of brand awareness and drives people to purchase from higher up the funnel for no initial click cost (until a product is clicked or a user spends over 10 seconds on the page).
Why do I need to care about Showcase Ads?
Showcase Ads are larger than shopping ads, meaning less ads showing across generic queries. On average, Google shows 10 Showcase Ads in a carousel, compared to 30 shopping ads. This could affect inventory and therefore higher CPC which, in turn, will impact ROI.
Google will continue to move the needle on how regularly Showcase Ads are served, which could affect overall volume of traffic and potential revenue if you are not taking advantage of this ad type. We would advise any client that uses Google Shopping to look at Showcase Ads as part of their non-brand, long tail strategy.
Showcase Ads Setup and Creation
This functionality is only available in the latest AdWords version. Create a new Ad Group as usual and you will be prompted with ‘Showcase Shopping’, then choose the products you want to feature in your shopping ad. Now, this goes much deeper than regular shopping as you will need to provide:
- Header Image (1080 x 566)
- Headline (Optional, 24 Characters)
- Description (Optional, 120 Characters)
- Final URL
- Display URL
3 Tips for Showcase Ads Best Practice
1. Image quality matters; make sure the images are the best they can be by considering size and product.
2. Use content on the page to qualify searchers – remember you don’t pay for that first click.
3. Use a combination of Google Shopping and Showcase ads. Showcase won’t show as often but can help drive more revenue from top of the funnel searches.
Drop us a line if you need help implementing Showcase Ads for your website we’d love to help!