If you are an e-commerce retailer and promote your store via Google AdWords, then you know that Product Listing Ad campaigns are a must-do. Product Listing Ads appear in their own box on Google Search, separate from text ads, and they have been proven to be a very effective way to increase targeted traffic and sales.
Google, always working on improving its products and services, recently launched a new campaign type for Product Listing Ads (PLA) called Shopping Campaigns, which give users access to inventory and product feed information directly in AdWords, making it easier for marketers to monitor and optimize their efforts.Read More
Google has announced that they will be retiring Product Extension ads in late May 2013, which comes after Product Listing Ads were introduced to advertisers last year.
Google says that advertisers have seen better results from their paid model of Product Listing Ads and as a result, they will retire Product Extensions which will no longer be a separate ad extension in AdWords campaigns.
Product Extensions are additions to text ads on a search engine results page that include a small image and pricing of the product the user searched for.
Google recommends that advertisers implement Product Listing Ads in order to capture commerce-related searches and promote products on Google.com and within Google Shopping. In addition, Google has introduced new product feed specifications that merchants must comply with by July 2013.
Advertisers can still implement Sitelinks, Location Extensions, Call Extensions and other ad extensions discussed here.
Last month we spotted Product ads on Bing.com and the advertising platform has officially announced this week that they are planning to add a new search format for ads in the United States called Product Ads. Bing says that Product Ads will allow retail advertisers to include product details such as image, price, description and merchant information within the ad. In addition, these ad formats will be pulled from inventory from an advertiser’s real-time product catalog that will create the new rich ad format which is intended to deliver key product information to a user before making a decision of which link to click.
Bing is suggesting that advertisers prepare for the release of Product ads early this summer with a code ready date of June 1st so that advertisers are able to support their customers and Product Ads as soon as it is available.
Bing Product Ads are similar to Google AdWords Product Listing Ads, which was introduced to advertisers approximately one year ago.
Below is a screen shot Bing provided of what Product Ads will look like on a Bing.com search engine results page (SERP).