2019 holiday checklist: Inspire shoppers with gift-giving ideas
Whether they’re shopping for themselves or for others, 48 percent of today's shoppers say they're open to buying from new retailers during the holiday season. And increasingly, they’re leaning into videos and inspirational imagery to help them decide. Below, we’ll dive into how Google solutions can help you tap into and create shopping intent, and capture the attention of those undecided shoppers with richer, more interactive experiences
Make YouTube more shoppable
Video has also become a favorite research tool for holiday shoppers. Nearly two-thirds of shoppers say online video has given them ideas and inspiration for their purchase. And more than 90% of these folks say that they’ve discovered new products and brands via YouTube. To tap into this shopping intent, we’re introducing Shopping ads to the YouTube home feed and YouTube search results, making YouTube more shoppable and extending the reach of your Shopping campaigns.
Shopping ads on the YouTube home feed (top) and YouTube search results (bottom)
Retailers like PUMA are excited to reach new customers on YouTube in advance of the holiday season to help them continue the shopping journey. “Consumers are continuing to watch more content on the YouTube platform and we want to be where they are, to reach and engage them,” said Rick Almeida, Vice President of eCommerce at PUMA Group. “This new opportunity will enable PUMA to extend our shopping strategy into a new property and inspire consumers.”
Now, people coming to YouTube to browse and research products may see visual Shopping ads, based on their interest. This means if a consumer expresses an interest in running, they could see ads from retailers that offer running apparel, like PUMA, highlighting different products and prices. If you’re already using standard Shopping campaigns today and are opted-into YouTube on Display Network, you are eligible for this experience.
In addition, we’ve made YouTube video ads more interactive, giving viewers useful and actionable information like store location, interest forms and additional calls-to-actions to help you drive more conversions. In the coming months, sitelink extensions will become available for TrueView for action ads. This makes it easy for viewers to navigate to additional landing pages like your holiday catalogs, your store hours, and more. In a beta test with 30 advertisers, adding sitelinks showed a 23% increase in conversions1.
Example of how Sitelink extensions will work under your TrueView for action video
You can get started with these new extensions by heading to the extensions tab in Google Ads, and clicking on the extension you’d like to get started with. You can learn about these YouTube updates and more here.
Inspire more customers with rich imagery
In a recent Google / Ipsos study, we found that 85 percent of consumers will take action within 24 hours of discovering a product: reading reviews, comparing prices or purchasing the product—sometimes all at once! We offer multiple solutions to help you convert digital window shoppers into satisfied customers.
Showcase Shopping ads, for example, are expanding to Google Images -- helping shoppers explore your brand and product selection. When people search for broader terms like “holiday party dresses”, they’ll see Showcase Shopping ads that group related products together, displaying a diverse range of offerings. They’re great for attracting new customers; on average, we see that about 85 percent of traffic from Showcase Shopping ads to retailer websites come from new visitors. In addition, these ads are now expanding to new search categories like beauty and electronics, when they’ve mainly appeared for apparel and furniture-related searches previously.
Urban Outfitters is one example of a retailer using Showcase Shopping ads to get into the consideration set and inspire those new to their brand. Urban Outfitters expanded their Showcase Shopping ads to 50 key categories across apparel, home decor, and beauty. Overall, they saw a 241 percent CTR lift across campaigns running Showcase Shopping ads, with 52 percent of those customers being new. Moreover, Urban Outfitters saw a 186 percent increase in sales from new customers via Showcase Shopping ads (compared to reactivated customers).
Urban Outfitters Showcase Shopping ad for beauty
Scrolling through personalized feeds like news, video and social is a bigger part of today's consumer journey. And with Discovery ads (beta), you now have a new canvas to inspire hundreds of millions of people with your products as they explore their interests across the feeds in Discover, YouTube and Gmail.
Nectar is one brand updating its Discovery ads with holiday-focused creatives to show off its mattress line and special offers, like its free 365-Night Trial and Forever Warranty™. To drive engagement, Nectar used a variety of high-resolution image assets featuring its mattress in well-lit, realistic settings, while also highlighting promotions in its ad text. Nectar has used custom intent audiences to connect with the right customers, like consumers in the market for bedroom furniture or interested in adjustable bed frames. And during testing, the brand saw an 8% lift in total sales at a 70% lower cost-per-acquisition compared to its paid social campaigns. As a result, Nectar’s parent company, Resident, plans to roll out Discovery ads across its full portfolio of home retail brands.
Reach out to your Google account team to join the global Discovery ads beta.
A Discovery ad for Nectar by Resident as shown on Discover, YouTube, and Gmail
Ready for more tips? Tune in next week to learn how you can drive more shoppers into your local stores.
1. Compared to the same ad without sitelinks. Source: Google data, US, June 2019. Beta experiment with n=30 TrueView for Action advertisers
