Google’s New Product Ads

When looking to buy a product on the internet, what are you most interested in finding?

Most people are interested in two things; the look (image) of the product and the price. After completing the query customers have to go from site to site, look for that specific product and do some comparison shopping. Wouldn’t it be cool if those two elements will pop up with the search results?

Google thinks so. Just in time for the holidays, Google introduced a few days ago a new type of ad to their advertisers, called “Product Ads”.

No more few lines of text based on keywords appearing in the search result. Now you can see the picture of the product and the price in one glance on the search result page. Google is stepping into comparison shopping.

The system has been tested for the past year on some 800 advertisers and is now open to all.  As a user of Google search engine, you probably have noticed it under shopping results. A picture, a price and the website.

“Product ads” marks a shift in how Google runs its business model. No more different keywords and different biddings for each phrase using AdWords. . Advertisers can now pay only when a purchase is made, not per click that directs customers to their site. The other big change is that Google chooses when to show the product.

The advertiser give Google the feed to its products and Google automatically matches queries to what it thinks the customers is looking for.

Business owners who have tried Product Ads, say they liked the results. You might give up a little on the flexibility of different keywords but what you gain is big savings and eliminating the guessing game and the risk of AdWords. If before a hundred clicks with no conversion had to be paid for, now if there are a hundred clicks and no conversion, advertisers don’t pay for it.

Google product manager says that in the test period the click through rate increased by 50% compared to text ads. The new system is different from the “image ads” Google introduced a few months ago, which show up only if customers click the images search. These are still tied to keyword search and are still paid per click.

“We think it means we’re going to have a much broader range of products in Google,” said Dennis Woodside, vice president of ad sales for the Americas. “Product Ads” make a lot of sense for e-commerce sites and follows Google’s increasing venture into comparison shopping on the search engine result pages.