Google Data

If you think people make purchase decisions quickly, think again. Today’s consumers visit websites at least 6 times, on average, in the purchase process.¹ And for those who abandon a shopping cart, 75% say they intend on returning to a company’s website to make a purchase.²

We’ve created a new best practices guide, Tailor Your Ads with Dynamic Remarketing, to help advertisers win those crucial “ready-to-buy” moments with dynamic remarketing and relevant ads. As business data feeds are crucial to dynamic remarketing campaigns, this guide focuses on how to create and optimize your feeds. It covers topics such as:

• Setting up high-quality business data feeds 
• Providing complete product data 
• Keeping your business data feed fresh 
• Activating dynamic remarketing ads 

Check out these dynamic remarketing best practices to drive more relevant ads and improved performance.

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Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing crew

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1. Source: Google/Nielsen Study: Mobile Path to Purchase: Five Key Findings, November 2013 
2. Source: BI Intelligence Study: Shopping Cart Abandonment Report, March 2015.

Video consumption has gone from primetime to ‘all-the-time.’ From teens to adults, people spend as much time watching online video as they do watching TV. ¹

There have never been more opportunities for brands to connect with consumers through the power of video and YouTube. We’ve published a new guide, Press Play on TrueView Video Ads, to help you understand how to optimize TrueView ads to support your performance goals. It touches on topics such as:

• Understanding TrueView ads and how to measure success 
• Capturing attention with compelling TrueView ads 
• Reaching highly-qualified audiences with YouTube 
• Tracking and optimizing video ads 

Check out these TrueView video ads best practices to drive more leads or conversions for your business.

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Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

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Source: Millward Brown Study, Video Creative in a Digital World, 2015.

Three years ago we launched Google Partners to help businesses connect with online professionals and agencies. Top Partners began earning their Google Partner badge by demonstrating their business was healthy, their clients were happy, and they were up to date with the latest product knowledge.

Since then, we received a number of requests from our Partners asking for a way to further differentiate themselves. Today, we’re excited to share the addition of Google Partner specializations.

The new feature is embedded into the Google Partner badge and designed to help businesses identify the right Partner for their specific business needs.

Partners can earn specializations in 5 areas of expertise:

• Search 
• Mobile 
• Video 
• Display 
• Shopping 

To earn a specialization, badged Partners will need at least one certified individual and a history of consistent product performance.

“The changes to the Google Partner program are exciting for potential advertisers and our company,” says Neal Gann, CEO of Showroom Logic. “These new specializations show Google’s commitment to better serve their Partners and help us highlight what makes our technology and team so unique. It should also help prospective clients make a clear choice because it’s now easier for them to find top Partners that are aligned with their immediate goals.” 

Additionally, we’re introducing a new Premier Google Partner badge.

The new badge is designed to recognize Partners who manage a substantial portfolio of Google advertising campaigns and deliver great results for their customers. Premier Partners will be required to maintain additional certification requirements and will receive increased support from Google.

“Google identifying and recognizing highly experienced agencies is a great step and a distinctive honor. We are thrilled to be a part of the new designation and look forward to displaying this badge,” shares Joe Chura, CEO of Launch Digital Marketing. 

We hope these updates will help businesses find the right Partner for their needs and allow our Partners to better differentiate themselves. Learn more at the new Google Partners homepage.  

Posted by Allan Thygesen, VP Global Sales & Operations

Last year, we launched Shopping remarketing lists to help you reconnect with past visitors to your site. Now, through your existing customer data of offline and online signals, we’re making it easier for you to re-engage your loyal shoppers as they shop on Google. Today we’re announcing Customer Match for Shopping, a new opportunity to focus campaigns on your highest-value audiences – your previous purchasers, rewards members, newsletter subscribers, or local in-store shoppers.

Already available on Search, Gmail, and YouTube, we’re announcing the launch of Customer Match for Shopping ads. Customer Match for Shopping allows you to upload a list of email addresses, which can be matched to signed-in users on Google in a secure and privacy-safe way.

How it works

Customer Match can be used to increase the visibility of your brand and products to your highest value customers as they search. Say you’re a retailer that specializes in sporting goods and you have a rewards program for die-hard baseball fans. Since it’s baseball season you have a segment of customers who are likely thinking to make purchase soon. By using Customer Match, you can increase your bids for this segment. So the next time a fan searches for gear, you can meet him or her with the right product at the right time.

Customer Match for Shopping allows you to adjust bids across various segments of your known high-value customers. To start, upload a list of email addresses into AdWords, which can be securely and privately matched to signed-in users on Google. This offers the ability to create a remarketing list to reach these customers across your campaigns.

Roland Mouret puts loyal customers first

Retailers are already seeing strong results with our current Customer Match solution on Search, Gmail and YouTube. For example, Roland Mouret, a French fashion designer, recently launched their online store and used Customer Match for Search to preview their Autumn and Winter line with loyal customers. Highlighting these fashions to existing customers helped drive an 87% reduction in cost-per-action.

Customer Match for Shopping will be rolling out later this summer. You can sign up here if you’re interested in participating in the current beta.

Posted by Archana Kannan, Product Manager for Google Shopping

As marketers kick off 2017 planning, consumer preference for online video is higher than ever. Today’s study from comScore, commissioned by Google, shows that adults are 30% more likely to prefer online video platforms over TV when given a choice where to watch video content. Does your media plan reflect that kind of preference?

If online video is your audience’s priority, it should be your media plan’s priority, too. We dug into the recent study and came up with six things to keep in mind about this changing audience as you develop your 2017 plan:

1. They Prefer Online Video Platforms to TV 

The popularity of online video continues to grow. Today, when given a choice where to watch video, adults prefer online video platforms 30% more than watching on TV. Among millennials, that number jumps to 105%.

2. People Watching Long & Short-Form Video Prefer YouTube 

Among viewers that watch both long and short-form content, 81% cite a preference for YouTube, making it the #1 choice. Compare that to the next-highest choice, TV, which earned just 56% of viewer votes.

3. They Choose YouTube Over Other Online Video Providers 

YouTube also wins when compared to other online video providers. When asked to pick one online video platform, 48% of adults chose YouTube (vs. 29% for Netflix and 10% for Facebook):

4. Viewers Take Action on Video Ads, Especially on Short-Form Content 

Online video has forever changed the media landscape, with more than half of all people regularly watching short-form videos (like branded content or viral videos), and two-thirds of millennials watching short-form weekly.

That’s good news for brands: comScore’s research shows viewers are more likely to take action after watching ads on short-form content compared to traditional content (like movies and tv shows). Taking action could include sharing on social media, looking for more information about the brand advertised, recommending the brand or product, etc.

5. They Prefer YouTube for Branded Content and Videos 

Uploaded by Users. We already heard that adults who watch short and long-form content prefer YouTube, but it’s also preferred across multiple content types. For example, 74% of adults prefer YouTube for videos uploaded by users and—critically—69% prefer YouTube for videos uploaded by brands, companies, and institutions.

6. YouTube Super-users May Surprise You 

The final part of comScore’s research examined YouTube’s most passionate fans—“die hards”—and they aren’t who you might expect. Many are parents, live in a city, and 49% are women:  

Posted by:
Celie O’Neil-Hart, Product Marketing Manager, YouTube B2B
Howard Blumenstein, Product Marketing Manager, Strategy and Insights, YouTube B2B

Whether it’s for entertainment, indulging a passion, or discovering something new, more people are turning to YouTube to watch video. In fact, growth in watch time on YouTube is up at least 50% year-over-year.¹ Now, more than ever, businesses can connect with their customers through video advertising on YouTube.

But we know that creating a video ad can be challenging. To make it easier for every business— from a dog walker to a barber shop owner—to get started with advertising on YouTube, we’re launching the YouTube Director suite of products. Three products that make video ads more accessible to businesses.

Make a video ad right from your phone

With the free YouTube Director for business app (available for iPhone today in the U.S. and Canada) anyone can create a video ad for their business quickly and easily—right from their phone. No editing experience required. People like Woody Lovell Jr., owner of the The Barber Shop Club in Los Angeles, are already seeing positive results with YouTube Director.

Woody shot and edited a video ad by himself, uploaded it to YouTube, and worked with an AdWords expert to run a campaign. As a result, Woody’s business saw a significant increase in potential customers being able to remember and recognize his ad.²

We challenged five business owners—including Woody—to create a video ad in twenty minutes or less. Watch what happened and download the app to give it a try.

Get a professional to make your video ad

Ensuring that your ads are able to be seen is an important baseline for driving brand impact. That’s why we’ve been so focused on improving viewability measurement. We’ve spent the last several years investing in our Active View technology, which measures whether or not an ad was able to be seen. Active View makes viewability measurement effortless and free. Over the next few weeks, Active View will become available for all YouTube in-stream inventory, including TrueView, whether bought through Google AdWords or DoubleClick Bid Manager.

Viewability on YouTube 

As the place people choose to watch video, YouTube has an industry-leading average viewability of 93% globally¹. To help you measure the viewability of your ads, Active View now provides viewability measurement on a per-campaign-basis, so you can understand how your campaigns are performing.

Catching the WAVE to greater brand impact 

Viewability is crucial, which is why we’re excited to extend Active View to our full range of in-stream formats on YouTube. But it’s important to keep in mind that with video, viewability is an indicator of whether or not your ad was on screen – not the impact of your ad. In addition to viewability, there are several factors that drive results for brand campaigns, such as: Are your ads heard as well as seen? Is the viewer interested in seeing video and paying attention to your ad? And most importantly, for how long do they watch and listen? We take each of these factors – not viewability alone – into account when we deliver your ads. It’s Watchtime, Audibility, Viewability and Engagement together that drive the greatest impact for your brand, and YouTube alone delivers the whole package:

Watch Time: Looking at hundreds of Brand Lift studies, we saw that the longer a user watches your ad, the higher the lift in awareness and consideration²
Audibility: We tested 280 campaigns and found that among users exposed to ads that were both viewable and audible, ad recall had a lift of 43%. Among users exposed to ads that were viewable alone, ad recall was significantly lower at 31%³
Viewability: YouTube has industry-leading 93% viewability
Engagement: Looking at 89 US brands that ran Brand Lift studies, we found viewers exposed to TrueView ads are 10x more likely to engage with the brand on YouTube, such as visiting or subscribing to the brand channel, watching more from that brand, or sharing the brand video⁴

WAVE is what makes video ads on YouTube different. And we tune our video ad system to optimize for all of these factors, to ensure advertisers get the full benefit of video.

The more we can help you understand what drives impact and reach those viewers who want to hear from you, the more you can drive towards your ultimate goal of greater impact per dollar spent.  

Posted by Zach Lupei, Product Manager, Video Ads and Alec Berntson, Product Manager, Measurement

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1. Source: Google and DoubleClick advertising platforms data, April 2016
2. Source: Google August 2015 Meta Analysis: Understanding How Viewability Relates to Brand Metrics for Video Ads
3. Source: Google Brand Lift Data, 280 US campaigns, May 2015
4. Source: Google August 2015 Meta Analysis: Measuring TrueView Impact on Brand Channel Engagement

For many marketers, dealing with the technology and scale necessary to tie offline conversions back to the keywords and ads that drive them can be a difficult task. Often, they have to make important decisions based on aggregated data from different sources or no data at all, making it difficult to understand the true value of their AdWords campaigns.

That’s why we’re introducing AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce. AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce measures the value of your offline conversions that result from online AdWords clicks, without the need to reconcile your AdWords and customer relationship management (CRM) data manually.

How it works 

After linking your AdWords and Salesforce accounts, you can pick which important milestones, like ‘lead qualification’ or ‘deal won’, you want to track as conversions. When someone clicks your ad and visits your website, your website captures a unique Google click ID that tells your website which ad the visitor clicked on. If that visitor submits a lead form on your website, your website passes along the click ID to Salesforce, where it’s stored with the corresponding lead and any future sales opportunities.

AdWords will regularly check your Salesforce account to see if you’ve recorded any new important milestones in your sales funnel that resulted from ad clicks. If so, AdWords will count those milestones as AdWords conversions.

Peninsula, the UK’s largest team of HR, Employment Law and Health Safety experts says, “With AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce, we now have the ability to easily see the keywords that drive qualified leads. This has allowed us to concentrate efforts in the right areas and make better use of our budget. Since we started using this feature, we’ve seen an 11% decrease in cost per lead as a result of reallocating budgets and decreasing bids on poorly performing keywords that were sitting in top positions.”

Focus on the clicks that matter 

With AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce, you’re provided with a more comprehensive view of your sales activities, and the ability to adjust your bids and budgets to be more effective. For example, you can increase your bids on keywords that drive highly qualified leads, or pause ads that result in clicks but no opportunities. This allows you to not only utilize your existing budgets more wisely, but also optimize your ad strategy for better performance.

Learn more 

You can learn more about AdWords Conversion Import for Salesforce by visiting the AdWords Help Center. This solution is only available by invitation for the next few months, and will become available to all advertisers later this year. If you’d like to request an invitation before it becomes available to all advertisers, please contact your Google Sales rep or submit your information here.  

Posted by Jon Diorio, Product Manager, AdWords

The customer journey can be complex. Being able to identify which ads actually influenced someone’s decision can be challenging, but it’s crucial to get right.

In May, we launched the ability to update your attribution model in AdWords. It’s an update that can help you go beyond last-click measurement, the default in AdWords, and understand your customer’s journey on a much deeper level. As of today, this change has been rolled out to all AdWords accounts.

We’ve published a new guide to help you understand attribution and make the right decisions for your account. This resource offers best practices about what you need to do to go beyond last-click, covering topics such as:

• Determining if going beyond the last-click is something that you need to do 
• Choosing a model that fits with your needs 
• Acting on attribution 
• Evolving your approach to attribution as measurement gets better 

By going beyond last-click attribution for your Search ads in AdWords, you can understand your customer journey and make changes to improve your campaigns. Users take a while to make decisions; by changing your approach to attribution you can identify how your advertising affects people across all of their crucial, decision-making moments.

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Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

Today, we’re announcing updates to the Google Shopping Products Feed Specification. The specification is your resource for understanding what information Google needs about your products to run Shopping ads. Each year, we make updates with the goal of creating better experiences for users searching for your products online.

Some of the updates require changes to your current product data that need to be implemented by September 1st, 2016 and February 14th, 2017, respectively.

Here’s an overview of this year’s updates:

• ‘Unit Pricing’ will be made available for all markets and applicable categories to ensure consistency in the way prices are displayed. This means, going forward, if you want to display Unit Prices, use the unit_pricing related attributes and not the price attribute. Learn more.
• ‘Color’ and ‘size’ values submission will be enforced more strictly for apparel products in Germany, France, Japan, and the UK. Complete and consistent data for variant attributes provide a better shopping experience for users. This means, going forward, not providing ‘color’ and ‘size’ values for apparel products in Germany, France, Japan, and the UK, will result in item disapprovals. Learn more about ‘color’. Learn more about ‘size’. 
• ‘Gtin’ and ‘google product category’ requirements will be expanded to Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, India, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Turkey to improve product matching and overall ad performances. This means, going forward, Global Trade Item Numbers (GTINs) are required for all products with a GTIN assigned by the manufacturer. GPC is required for all products falling within the ‘Apparel & Accessories’, ‘Media’, and ‘Software’ categories. Not providing values for the ‘gtin’ or ‘gpc’ attributes will result in item disapprovals. Learn more about Google product categories. Learn more about GTINs. 
• The minimum image size requirements for non-apparel products will be increased from 32 x 32 to 100 x 100 pixels to be able to support new ad formats better. The minimum image size for apparel images will remain 250 x 250 pixels. Ads with large, high-quality images (we recommend 800 x 800 pixels or larger) have proven to be more effective and lead to better performance. This means, going forward, non-apparel images below 100 x 100 pixels and apparel images smaller than 250 x 250 pixels will result in item disapproval. Learn more. 
• The maximum feed file size will increase from 1 GB to 4 GB (Gigabyte). As before, files can either be submitted in compressed or uncompressed format. Learn more.

Below are the timelines when certain product requirements will lead to item disapprovals:

• Beginning September 1st, 2016, all of the updates, except the GTIN requirement updates, will go into full effect and any product data that doesn’t meet the requirements in the Products Feed Specification will be disapproved. 
• Since providing accurate GTIN information can take more time, the GTIN requirement updates will go into full effect later on, starting February 14th, 2017. 

As you begin making updates to your product data, we also recommend that you update the corresponding microdata on your product landing pages, which helps to ensure a strong match of information between your ads and your website. Additionally, this allows you to take advantage of advanced features such as automatic item updates, which ensure that your ads have the most accurate price and availability information.  

Posted by Angelika Rohrer and Patrik Reali, Google Shopping Team

The shift to mobile is no longer a change on the horizon. It’s here.

Every year, there are trillions of searches on Google and over half of those searches happen on mobile. And across the millions of websites using Google Analytics today, we’re seeing more than half of all web traffic now coming from smartphones and tablets.

When we asked people to describe the role smartphones play in their lives, they used phrases like “attached to my hip”, “butler” and “lifeline.” Smartphones have become the companion that people turn to in I-want-to-know, I-want-to-go, I-want-to-do and I want-to-buy moments throughout the day.

To help marketers succeed in this mobile-first world, we have redesigned AdWords — from the ground-up — and re-thought everything from creatives and bidding, to workflow and measurement.

We’re also making it easier for marketers to bridge the digital and physical worlds. With location-related mobile searches growing 50% faster than all mobile searches, it’s clear that consumers are moving seamlessly between online and offline experiences. So it’s important to help marketers think this way too.

It was incredibly exciting to share new innovations with advertisers this morning at the Google Performance Summit. Below are highlights from today’s announcements. You can watch a replay of the full program here.

AdWords re-imagined for the mobile-first world

Over the last several years, we’ve discovered that accounting for mobile and designing for mobile-first are two very different things. That’s why we’ve completely transformed how we think about and build AdWords.

In order to enable advertisers and developers to drive more downloads of mobile apps — across Google properties — we built Universal App Campaigns. To date, Universal App Campaigns has delivered more than 2 billion downloads for advertisers, across Google Search, Google Play, YouTube, and the Google Display Network. And last week at Google I/O, we announced this campaign type is now available on iOS.

Today, we are announcing even broader changes to advertising with Google, from how text and display ads work, to the way advertisers optimize campaigns.

What do text ads look like in the mobile-first world? Mobile has revolutionized the canvas where ads live. Earlier this year, we removed right-hand side ads on desktop to improve the search experience and make it more consistent across devices. This paved the way for us to introduce the biggest changes to our text ads since AdWords launched fifteen years ago.

Optimized for screen sizes of the most popular smartphones, new expanded text ads in AdWords provide more ad space so you can showcase more information about your products and services before the click. Here are the key changes:

These upgrades help your ads work harder across screens, especially for the on-the-go mobile consumer that wants to know exactly what you offer before tapping into your website.

Based on early testing, some advertisers have reported increases in clickthrough rates of up to 20% compared to current text ads. We encourage you to start planning for this upgrade before it rolls out later this year.
How do display ads look in a mobile-first world? From sites to apps to videos, mobile has unlocked a universe of new spaces to reach consumers. Responsive ads for display adapt to the diverse content across the more than two million publisher sites and apps on the Google Display Network (GDN). They also unlock new native inventory so you can engage consumers with ads that match the look and feel of the content they’re browsing. Simply provide headlines, a description, an image, and a URL — and Google will automatically design these beautiful responsive ads.

We’re also extending the reach of GDN remarketing campaigns by giving you access to cross-exchange inventory, which includes more websites and apps around the world. With this inventory, European airline SAS drove about 20% more conversions at a similar CPA for its remarketing campaigns. Learn more

What does bidding look like in a mobile-first world? Marketers need more control and flexibility to optimize bids on specific devices. In the next few months, you’ll be able to set individual bid adjustments for each device type — mobile, desktop and tablet. This lets you anchor your base keyword bid to the device most valuable to your business and then set bid adjustments for each of the other devices. You will also have a wider range to adjust bids, up to +900%. With more controls, you can now optimize with greater precision while keeping things simple with a single campaign that reaches consumers across devices.

Mobile is local, bridging digital and physical worlds for marketers

Nearly one third of all mobile searches are related to location. People’s online and offline worlds are colliding — whether you’re researching restaurant ideas for dinner on Friday night or looking for a store that sells rain boots in your size.

To help advertisers reach consumers searching for physical business locations, we’re introducing new local search ads across Google.com and Google Maps. Advertisers using location extensions will be able to prominently showcase their business locations when consumers search for things like “shoe store” or “car repair near me.” Learn more

We’re also investing in more branded, customized experiences for businesses on Google Maps — geared towards helping you increase store visits. First, we’re experimenting with a variety of ad formats on Maps that make it easier for users to find businesses as they navigate the world around them. For example, Maps users may start to see promoted pins for nearby coffee shops, gas stations or lunch spots along their driving route. Local business pages are also getting a brand new look — to encourage consumers to explore your store before they even arrive, we’re adding new features like special offers and the ability to browse product inventory.

With online ads bringing more people to your storefronts, how do you measure the impact?

In today’s crowded market for mobile apps, it’s more important than ever to be able to attract the right users to your app, gain their loyalty, and drive long term value.

By now, you’ve probably had the chance to hear about some new ads & analytics announcements at Google I/O designed to make it easier for developers and marketers to find more of the right users for their apps across all of Google. Things like:

• Improvements to our Universal App Campaigns: expanding beyond Android into iOS and optimizing beyond CPI for user value and in app conversions, and
• A new analytics platform called Firebase Analytics that can help you to understand and optimize for lifetime value.

To help prepare for these updates, we’ve updated two of our best practices guides that will help you use AdWords for driving more app downloads and increasing user engagement.

You can also check them out at g.co/PromoteYourApp. Only 364 days left to the next I/O!

Want to stay on top of even more Best Practices? Sign up to receive our monthly newsletter.

Posted by: Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing

Last year at Google I/O, we shared our mission to make app growth easier with the launch of Universal App Campaigns – one simple campaign that surfaces apps to billions of consumers who use Google Play, Search, YouTube, and more. It’s working, and more people are discovering apps on Google than ever before. Over the past year — and thanks to Universal App Campaigns — we’ve more than doubled the volume of app installs driven by ads, and to date we’ve delivered more than 2 billion downloads to developers.

Today at Google I/O, we’re announcing multiple improvements to Universal App Campaigns to make it an even more powerful tool for app developers to find the right users for their app.

Making app growth simple for iOS developers 

First, Universal App Campaigns are expanding beyond Android to help developers grow their iOS apps. Now, all app developers can tap into the simplicity and power of Universal App Campaigns to reach billions of Android and iOS users on YouTube, the Google Search App, and the Google Display Network. Universal App Campaigns for iOS are available in beta today and will roll out to all developers in the near future.

Finding more valuable users with less effort 

Second, we’re helping developers more easily grow an active user base by finding the right user from the start. Instead of reaching any user to install their app, developers can now also find customers who are likely to be valuable users of their app. A recent study¹ showed that 17% of users drive 85% of app revenue, which is why successful apps are shifting their focus from volume to finding more of the right customers.

Universal App Campaigns will automate targeting, bidding, and creative generation to find your most valuable users based on your in app conversions. Just tell us the in app events that matter to you, whether it’s reaching level ten in your game, subscribing to your service, or making a purchase in your app, and we’ll do the rest. Our models evaluate countless signals and constantly learn and adjust, meaning every ad is based on the freshest, most relevant data. The best thing is that we do all the hard work in the background, predicting which users will be valuable and acquiring them at the right price. These innovations are in testing and will roll out in the coming months.

Pocket Gems has already been leaning on the automation of Universal App Campaigns to find quality users at scale, as David Rose, Director of Performance Marketing said:

“Universal App Campaigns have helped us acquire users with a higher LTV compared to other acquisition channels. We’re particularly excited about how the next generation of Universal App Campaigns will enable us to iterate quickly and optimize for the actions that matter most to our business. This is an app marketer’s dream.”

More ways to reach the right customers at the right moments 

That’s not all. We’re creating more chances for developers to show ads where users go to watch, discover, and communicate. Universal App Campaigns will soon reach more users on YouTube, as well as introduce a new opportunity to reach users on top of tabs in Gmail.

Insights made for apps 
Finally, we know app developers need the best user insights to build better apps and power their marketing campaigns, so we’re particularly excited about Firebase Analytics, our new analytics platform designed for apps from the ground-up that was announced at Google I/O earlier today. It provides prebuilt engagement and in-app actions that will help manage your conversions and lifetime value for AdWords campaigns and over 20 third-party ad networks. If you’re an AdWords user you can funnel these conversions into AdWords so it’s even easier to optimize campaigns to the things you care about.

SparkPeople, one of our early testers in the health and fitness sector, is already gaining more insights and taking a longer term view of app audience growth by linking AdWords accounts to Firebase:

“AdWords is a crucial part of my customer acquisition strategy. Linking my AdWords account to Firebase was incredibly easy, and now I can see total lifetime value for all users I’ve brought in from AdWords, broken down by campaign. The ability to sync my AdWords data to Firebase Analytics has simplified my daily management and optimization from hours to minutes, so I can spend more time building an app my users will love.” – Joe Robb, Digital Marketing Director, SparkPeople 

We look forward to helping many more developers build and grow successful businesses. At Google I/O, we’ll be sharing essential insights and best practices on how to drive growth with Google tools. You can take part too by viewing the live streamed and recorded sessions here. Happy I/O!

Posted by: Sissie Hsiao, Product Management Director, Mobile App Ads

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1. State of Mobile Acquisition, RadiumOne

It comes as little surprise to many of us, but mobile’s share of online retail purchases continues to grow. In 2016, 34% of online retail purchases in the US happen on mobile.¹ And it’s not just the purchases themselves. It’s the explosion of ‘I-need-some-ideas,’ ‘which-one’s-best?’ and ‘I-want-to-buy-it’ micro-moments happening on Google that lead to those purchases. In fact, mobile shopping searches on Google have increased by 30% in the last year.²

Retailers have asked us to help make it easier for them to be there and be useful during these mobile moments. Here’s what we’ve been working on:

Introducing shopping ads on image search 

Whether they’re looking for a new sofa or the perfect pair of earrings, people who search and shop on their smartphones at least once a week say that product images are the shopping feature they turn to most.³ And it turns out, the top questions Google Images users ask us are ‘What’s the price of this?’ and ‘Where can I buy it?’

That’s why we are introducing Shopping ads on image search. Now your ads for related products will appear as shoppers browse Google Images, so they can easily click through to buy from you.

Brands like Swarovski are excited about this new visual format.

According to Yelena Aschberger, Vice President of Digital Communication, PR & Events at Swarovski CGB, “Swarovski is an emotional brand and we are always looking for new ways to bring our products into a visually inspiring context. We’re thrilled to be able to leverage Google’s newest formats, particularly Shopping ads on image search which will allow us to engage shoppers and inspire them to desire our brand as they’re browsing and discovering products in our categories.”

Your ads are automatically eligible to show on image search as part of the Google Search Network.

Making local inventory ads more useful and accessible 

Searches with local intent – those that include a place name or zip code, or words like “near me” – have doubled in the past year.⁴ We introduced local inventory ads to help make the inventory in your local stores accessible to people shopping online. This format has been incredibly effective for shoppers and retailers, and we’ve shown them four times more to people looking for local products in the last year.

Starting today you can show people that you offer buy online pickup in store by adding a store pickup link to the Google-hosted local product page. This is the page that appears after a user clicks your local inventory ad.

Kohl’s, a participant in our Store Pick-up pilot program, saw a 40 to 50% increase in clicks from their Google local storefront to the Kohl’s site with this feature.

For advertisers who use local inventory ads, we’re also making your inventory searchable on Google.com in the local Knowledge Panel, a place where shoppers already look for store hours and directions. Together these updates will assure shoppers that what they’re looking for is in stock, bringing more of them into your stores.

Bringing Google Express to more shoppers and retailers 

Google Express continues to drive value for retailers by helping them sell their inventory online and particularly on mobile – with our mobile app accounting for over 50% of orders.

Over 50% of customers brought to retailers by Google Express are new.⁵ And sales from retailers’ existing customers have grown by 18%.⁵ On the back of this success, we continue to roll out our overnight delivery service. In June, we’ll launch to over 23M people in Texas and parts of surrounding states, increasing Google Express coverage to over 120M people.

More Purchases on Google 

Last July we launched Purchases on Google. This feature of Shopping ads allows people to easily buy products on mobile through retailer-branded product pages hosted by Google.

Ralph Lauren, UGG, Staples and more of our top advertisers have been testing this feature and seeing strong results. That’s not only good for retailers, but also for shoppers who are more easily able to purchase on the go.

According to John Kalinich, Senior Vice President, Global Digital Commerce at Deckers Brands, “It’s early days, but we’re seeing a nearly 50% increase in conversion rate on our mobile Shopping ads with Purchases on Google and a 25% decrease in our cost per conversion for UGG.“

Staples has seen similar results. “We’ve added 95% of our products to the Purchases on Google program and within less than a year, we’ve already seen an improvement in ROAS, compared to mobile shopping ads” says Faisal Masud, EVP of Global E-Commerce at Staples.

As mobile’s role in shopping continues to grow, being there and being useful to people in their “I need some ideas,” “which one’s best?” and “I want to buy it” micro-moments will drive more online and store sales. Please talk to your Google account team if you’re interested in trying any of these features.  

Posted by: Jonathan Alferness, Vice President, Product Management, Google Shopping

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1. Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized data from Google Analytics for US retailers, U.S., April 2016.
2. Google Data, Aggregated, anonymized mobile searches that are eligible for a Product Listing Ad, Global, May 10, 2015 – May 9, 2016.
3. Google/Purchased Digital Diary: How Consumers Solve Their Needs in the Moment, May 2016, Smartphone users = 1000. Search and purchase on smartphones weekly = 736. Shopping features include the following: Engage with advertisements or messages from a business (click, watch, etc.) Check product availability online or instore, Read reviews from other shoppers and experts, Watch online videos about the product or service, Look at product images for the product or service, Use discounts or offers for a product or service, Contact a store about a product or service, View store locations on a map.
4. Google Trends, U.S., 2015 vs 2014.
5. MasterCard/Google Express incrementality study, 2016