Get more from AdWords this season with improved Product Ads

(cross-posted on the Inside Adwords Blog)

The busiest shopping days of the holiday season are just around the corner! As you're thinking about ways to get more results from AdWords this season, consider investing in Product Listing Ads, which allow shoppers to see the exact products you offer before they even reach your site, leading to more clicks, higher quality leads, and higher ROI for your search ads. In fact, users are twice as likely to click on Product Listing Ads than on text ads in the same location for shopping queries.

Here are a couple of recent enhancements we’ve made to Product Listing Ads to make them even more effective this season:

More featured products - Product Listing Ads (in the top ad location) can now show up to 5 products at a time, giving users more shopping choices and allowing more advertisers to promote their inventories in all countries with Product Listing Ads.

More traffic - Since launching Product Listing Ads in AdWords to all US advertisers, we’ve seen significant growth with an overall 600% increase in traffic to retailers from Product Listing Ads compared to last year. With the holiday season approaching, we expect even more users shopping and searching for products on Google.

How can you take advantage of this opportunity?

• Optimize bids and plan for budgets for holiday season - Bid competitively and appropriately for your expected holiday sales. Also, ensure that your budgets aren’t limiting your ability to capture the growing holiday traffic.
• Feature all of your products - Use the "All Products" product target to ensure you are running Product Listing Ads on all of your inventory.
• Review Merchant Center data quality errors and suggestions - Check the Data Quality tab in Merchant Center to ensure you are providing us with enough information to help us match your products to more and better customer queries.
• Use promotional messages to highlight special promotions - Messages such as “Free Shipping,” coupon codes, or “Extended Warranty Special” can help your ad stand out.

Looking for more ways to get the most out of Product Listing Ads? Visit the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Andrew Truong, Product Marketing Manager, Product Ads