For online retailers shopping is the most important part of paid search.
Data from Merkle shows that through the first 10 weeks of the 4th financial quarter Google Shopping clicks grew 34% year-on-year while impressions were up from 55% in Q3 on mobile phone channels to 111% in Q4.
The data also seems to suggest that the new impressions are being won from a decline in the older text ad format.
Trends show that non-brand text ad clicks were down 26 percent year-on-year during the first ten weeks of Q4, and the clicks for non-brand text ads were down across all types of devices.
These figures would likely point retailers to invest more of their budget into optimizing Google Shopping and reducing their spend on Text ads.
The changes implemented by Google Shopping in 2019, are likely to focus around making the experience better for users.
Keywords still matter, and the query a user types still matters in Google Shopping in order to match a user with the most suitable results, despite claims that keyword optimization is dead.
Newer Google Shopping format variations including Showcase Shopping Ads and Local Inventory Ads will provide an advantage to retailers who use them in 2019 and deliver better solutions to users.
Showcase Shopping ads target more general searches and feature tile ads for specific retailers, instead of ads for specific products. This approach will allow Google to feature Shopping ads even when the search user query isn’t detailed enough to know which specific products to present.
Another Google Shopping variation is Local Inventory Ads. This format has steadily grown its traffic share during 2018.
These great thing about these ads is the convenience they offer to shoppers. The ads include information on when and where a product can be picked up locally for search queries that include a local intention.
