Google’s new Shopping Format - Bad for Small Businesses

Google is rolling out a new “experience” for their shopping, product listing ads (PLA). How might this experience affect your campaigns? Early results say it’s hard to tell, but it could have a big impact for anyone competing against big brands.

Starting in July, the search giant announced that it would begin testing a new ad format for broad match queries in its PLA ads. According to Google, up to 40% of all shopping searches will be eligible to see this new advertising format Shopping Showcase. The new Shopping Showcase will revolutionize the way shopping results are categorized. Brand searches on Google will match users to mini-storefront pages that catalogue many products from a single brand. Almost like walking through a mall, where you see the different brands side by side without seeing their products.

Shopping Showcase for Brands

Shopping Showcase will undoubtedly have a significant impact for brand advertisers. Standard format PLA ads focused user on the product image, often users would click on an ad before even realizing who was selling the product. In the new Showcase format, the seller brand is presented before the product, giving a big advantage to advertisers with name recognition.

Why is this Bad for Small Business?

Google shopping is a great tool for businesses with superior products or pricing. If you are better than your competitors, Google shopping let’s you prove it. Focusing users on product image, reviews and price. Or at least it used to be. By instead focusing users to catalogue brand page, will decrease impressions and chances are there are only going to be 3 -4 brands per search that get product impressions. This leaves little room for anyone trying to break into an industry. It isn’t clear yet how Google would handle a brand with only a couple products, if they would even be eligible for the Showcase format. In the video above, you can see it works great for someone like ASOS who sells 50 different summer dresses. How would Shopping Showcase work for a brand that only sells 3 dresses?

Attis Media supports businesses that are looking to grow their web presence. If you have questions about how this change may affect your PLA campaigns, we’d be happy to review your account free.