Commentary

Amazon, Bing, Google Product Ads Critical To Holiday Search Campaigns

Images and videos have become the hot ticket to attract consumers looking for holiday gifts. In fact, product ads or product listing ads (PLA) on Amazon, Bing and Google have become the first point of entry for consumers searching for computers, smartphones, televisions, jewelry clothing, shoes and other items.

More than three-quarters of orders that only include one step in the conversion path start with a PLA, according to a recent study from NetElixir titled "Definitive Guide To PLA Success During the Holiday Season." Even for those searches that require more than one step, PLAs still appear as the first step most often, accounting for 50% of the orders.

More significantly, whenever a PLA was served up in the middle of the conversion path, the average order value (AOV) rose 27%, compared with a single-click conversion. When isolating the conversion paths where PLAs that only appear in the middle, and not as the first or last step, the AOV jumps another 20% to $102.

NetElixir expects product listing ads to drive more than half of all paid-search traffic this holiday season for segments like women's apparel, jewelry and watches, flowers and gifts, consumer electronics, and beauty supplies.

The estimate are based on growth rates from January 2014 through September 2015. Retailers in those sectors last yaer experienced PLA order growth rates YOY that ranged from 173% to 416%, while revenue grew between 184% and 447%.  PLA-driven orders accounted for nearly 30% of their entire online transactions for the season, not just of those driven by paid search.

NetElixir's study also suggests that the amount of real estate that search engines dedicate to PLAs on mobile devices continues to rise. Depending on the smartphone model, PLAs can take up between 25% and 45% of the "'pre-swipe' real estate" on the search engine results page (SERP), which pushes text ads and organic results further down the screen, and sometimes off the screen entirely.

The study also suggests steps to make holiday campaigns more effective such as using merchant promotion feeds, setting up mobile product ad campaigns, having specific shopping campaigns with merchant promotions, structuring campaigns with these for budgets and bidding, staying informed about Google's policy shifts, and optimizing product feeds.

Next story loading loading..