Google Ads has introduced several updates aimed at helping retailers optimize their holiday shopping campaigns. The new capabilities are designed to provide actionable insights, expand ad formats, simplify local inventory management, and enable more robust testing.
Among the key additions is enhanced product insights on the Ads interface. Marketers will see more granular data on issues like inventory stockouts, high bidding targets, and missing feed info. This aims to help brands make smarter decisions about categories, products types, labels and more.
The platform has also dramatically reduced onboarding time for local inventory ads and introduced a local store ad unit. This combines local inventory data and business profile imagery to better showcase brick-and-mortar stores.
In addition, Google now allows advertisers to run A/B experiments quantifying the impact of online-only bidding versus Smart Bidding for driving store visits and sales. This is currently available for standard shipping campaigns.
The Search ad top slot, which displays business info and prompts actions, has also been expanded to more local advertisers using Performance Max for store visit goals.
On the Merchant Center side, Google has upgraded the Performance Tab to simplify accessing data on best-selling items, high-click products, and competitive benchmarks.
Together, the capabilities aim to help retailers optimize holiday campaigns by enabling robust testing, surfacing actionable insights, expanding high-performing ad formats, and streamlining local ad management.
According to Google, “AI-powered tools are transforming businesses’ ability to move faster, better understand the intent of their customers, and engage them in new ways across the path to purchase.”
The company recommends retailers review the new features and consider testing them ahead of the holiday season to gain early learnings that can shape bidding and campaign strategies.
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Image: Google. Updated insights column within the product page on Google Ads
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