Shopping campaigns, or Product Listing Ads (PLAs), have proved revolutionary for AdWords e-commerce. They combine a visually engaging experience on the search results page with the ability to instantly compare prices across retailers.
In fact, these ads have been such a success that Google has continued to invest in them, and as a result, we’ve seen them evolve into an absolutely vital tool for any online retailer.
In 2014, Google actually started putting Shopping results above text ads on the search engine results page (SERP), as you can see in the example below. This reflected what they’d started to see in their data and hear from advertisers: Shopping was often outperforming traditional search.
Meanwhile, TrueView, the YouTube advertising platform, has been more of a slow burner. TrueView campaigns have only recently moved from their own interface to sit alongside other AdWords campaigns, meaning before now it was easy to overlook them as an option.
With four billion views on YouTube every day, there’s no denying the fantastic reach it provides. Its position in people’s lives provides a unique opportunity for advertisers to connect with users as they are living their lives online, rather than just when they’re going online looking for a product.
With the same fairly broad targeting options you’d see on the Google Display Network, I’ve personally never found it an appropriate tool for generating direct response; if you want reach, views and increased brand awareness, however, then TrueView could be the answer. (But if you’re not in a financial position to be running activity without a strong return, perhaps not.)
So what if we could combine the reach we see from TrueView with the selling power of Shopping? Well, Google has.
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