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Google Product Search (GPS), the largest comparison shopping engine, contributes anywhere from 15-60% of CSE traffic, though this level is unpredictable and varies widely. Lately, there’s been a corresponding drop off of GPS daily traffic while Product Listing Ads traffic has jumped dramatically. Though this is in line with what you would expect, the dramatic reversal in position of these programs is notable. (stats via Search Engine Land)
It’s with this in mind that Adlucent’s Launch of Precision Product Targeting for Google Product Listing Ads come in: Adlucent Launches Precision Product Targeting for Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs)
AUSTIN, Texas, Sept. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ — Adlucent announced today that its enhanced Precision Product Targeting for Product Listing Ads (PLAs) offering is immediately available to retailers who want to acquire more customers with Google Shopping. Now, through Adlucent, retailers can easily and successfully manage PLAs at the product level, carefully matching search queries to the right item and bid based on a deep understanding of consumer intent. Unlike feed management or aggregate targeting, Adlucent’s SKU-level targeting and optimization yields ongoing increases in PLA performance and efficiency, such as leading retailer Adorama’s year-over-year clickthrough rate (CTR) increase of 176% and conversion rate (CVR) increase of 100% with Precision Product Targeting for PLAs.
“Google PLAs are not simply a replacement for Google Product Search or just another comparison shopping opportunity,” said Michael Griffin, CTO and founder of Adlucent. “Successfully managing the paid search media requires much more than feed management and optimization. Instead, with Precision Product Targeting for PLAs, retailers can effectively optimize to the search queries consumers are using to find their products. It’s understanding consumer intent, like PPC, and carefully matching search queries to the right ads at the lowest cost possible.”
Adlucent’s Precision Product Targeting for PLAs builds on the company’s ten-year history of delivering measurable paid search performance and efficiency for retail brands like Buy.com, Jewelry Television, Oriental Trading Company and Free People. As retailers prepare for the shift to Google Shopping, Adlucent is the first in the industry to create a targeting methodology allowing Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) management at the product level. Predictive bidding is managed at the most granular levels possible – keyword-level for PPC, product-level for PLAs— resulting in spend allocation only to top performing products.
“For retailers already utilizing Google Product Search, this shift by Google means adjusting quickly to preserve revenue and paid search market share,” Griffin continued. “For retailers not participating in the program, Google’s change means an opportunity to protect and acquire market share. With increased traffic being driven to the more prominently positioned PLAs on Google SERPs, all retailers should be refining their strategy now.”
If you’re still wondering if you should launch your PLAs, here are some other insights from the statistics: the gross merchandise value (GMV) driven by Google Product Search for customers that are NOT using PLAs continues to drop. However, for those using PLAs, the GMV driven by GPS has risen slightly. This means customers using PLAs are doing better on the existing free GPS than companies who aren’t using PLAs. For using PLAs, their Google Shopping traffic is up a little, but their Google Shopping revenue is up a lot.
If you are not yet using PLAs, Google Shopping revenue growth for 2012 thus far has plateaued. For customers who have implemented PLAs, revenue up to the 4th quarter of 2012 on Google Shopping is up more than 200%.
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