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Google is currently the world’s largest search engine and, consequently, the most visited website worldwide. On top of this, Google now owns several mainstay properties like YouTube, the Play Store, Google Maps, Blogger, is a leading developer in Android Operating Systems, and one can’t forget its many partner sites and apps as well!
What does this all amount to? Well, it means that Google is constantly connecting billions of users worldwide. Whether they are looking for answers on Search, watching funny videos on YouTube, exploring new sights on Google Maps, discovering new apps on Google Play, browsing content on the web, and a multitude of other activities.
Key among them, for marketers, is the not-so-hidden secret that these days, most people use Google as a way to search for products that they want to buy. A fact that Google has made sure to capitalize on as much as possible. This means that…
Suffice it to say, the potential to build a brand and influence purchasing decisions on Google is now limitless — spanning across various services, channels, formats, devices, and campaign methodology. Simply put, Google provides the most robust Search Engine Marketing (SEM) platform in the world, complete with a host of tools that were developed to influence advertisers’ and consumers’ decisions globally.
Today, we’ll be comparing two of its main advertising tools in a bid to determine which one is better for your advertising needs: Google Shopping Ads vs. AdWords. Which is it going to be?
AdWords
AdWords (as it may still be known by some of the more experienced marketers out there even after Google adopted the term “Google Ads” in July 2018) is search and display advertising combined to create an all-inclusive advertising engine. Google Ads is a large, widely used online advertising platform owned and operated by Google, and it is used by millions of businesses to grow their brands and generate new business throughout the world.
It targets users using two networks: search and display.
When running your ads on the Search Network, you make them eligible to appear on Google’s Search Engine Result Pages (SERP). And, by doing so, you can target users who are already actively searching for your product because your Ad will be triggered by certain keywords in the user’s search query — promoting higher conversion probability. At the moment, this is the most common pay-per-click (PPC) advertising model used by search engines. It is tried and tested, proven to work, and allows for better insights into your PPC performance than other alternatives.
When talking about Google Ads, it’s important to note that, with this model, you can serve your ad on the Google Display Network (GDN), which is a collection of millions of websites that reach across the internet. Including, but not limited to YouTube, Facebook, News sites, and various blogs. All of which, combined, can reach up to 90% of the world’s internet users. A prospect that should prove to be appealing to any advertiser.
Admittedly, capturing users’ attention on the GDN is a lot harder than on the search network — since, the GDN is not really set up to address high-buying-intent queries, but instead, more for entertainment, information, relaxation, etc. Still, it is a great space to build brand awareness. This should, in turn, lead to a natural increase in impressions, clicks on your organic listings searches for your brand, and, of course, traffic to your website.
For Google Ads’ Paid Search, you, as an advertiser, will have to bid on keywords (the words that people are most likely to use when searching for your product), and if you win, then your ad will be displayed at the top of SERP. Perfectly placed to pluck off potential customers and sales.
As for the pricing model, you will be billed a certain amount (the cost of Google Ads varies based on several factors) every time a user clicks on your ad. Note, you can always set a daily (or monthly, if you’d rather), budget to regulate expenditure based on your desired Google Ads campaign strategy.
Google Shopping Ads
Google Shopping is a comparison shopping agent (CSA) or engine (CSE). Or, put more simply, it is a price comparison platform where consumers can look through different product listings from multiple retailers, stores, vendors, or outlets that make up a bunch of different brands to compare their offerings and settle on what they find most appealing.
From a retailer’s perspective, it is a form of online advertising that gives you and other retailers a platform to upload your product data with the expectation that a consumer searching for the product you’re carrying will view it and choose to purchase from you.
When it first launched in 2002, Google Shopping actually went by the name Froogle. It went through many different iterations after that. Being referred to as Google Product Searches (Google Products) in 2007 when it was integrated with Google Search. And then, of course, was again renamed in 2012, during the initial introduction of Google Merchant Center to become the “Google Shopping” that we know it as today.
Retailers that use Google Shopping to market their products use a combination of attractive displays, catchy titles, and detailed product descriptions to catch the attention of consumers. This is possible with Google’s innate algorithms, which allows it to rank ad quality for similar products and display them in descending order (with the best-ranked ad assuming pole position). It matches similar products by pulling specific keywords from the available product titles and descriptions to ensure that each listing is relevant to the users’ search query.
The relevant Google Shopping Ads appear on the SERP for users alongside organic results and are displayed with product attributes like price, brand, name, description, and images. The ads also capture the website where the product is originally listed for maximum conversion potential.
What makes all this possible is Google Merchant Center. So, you’ll need to create a Google Merchant Center account to start so that you can digitally upload and, later, manage all of your store’s inventory. This information will serve as a catalog of all that you have on offer. And it’s where you will provide the aforementioned displayed attributes like price, images, descriptions, product identifiers, etc. so that Google Product Ads, Google Assistant, and Google Search will be able to pull the data required for showings.
How They Compare
Buy on Google (Previously Known as Google Shopping Actions)
This is a Google Shopping enhancement that facilitates shopping while browsing. It is convenient for the customer as it does not require switching between multiple websites while searching for a product. It also offers express checkout directly from Google, allowing them to purchase from various retailers from one universal cart.
As for you as the retailer, well, you can benefit from Buy on Google in several ways:
Google-backed guarantee on products that protect you and your customers.
You can sell your products on all of Google’s online ad surfaces (i.e., Google Assistant, Google Home, and Google Search)
You get access to your customer’s contact details for remarketing and follow-ups.
And you can enjoy a healthier share of a customer’s wallet as they increase their shopping cart’s size buoyed by the ‘Google product discovery experience.’
You need to enable “Buy on Google” to allow your customers to checkout directly from Google Shopping. Doing so will allow its smart advertising features to incorporate the customer’s preferences in determining the product to be displayed (based on various factors, like search history, the advertiser’s campaign structure, the customer’s search query, product performance, and more.)
To paint a clearer picture. Imagine this: a customer types in a product search query on Google Search on their mobile phone while they’re out and about. They see one of your ads pop up, but they don’t make the purchase right away. They get home, and, at that point, they use their Google Assistant to ask for the product again to complete the sale.
As is evident, it is a very seamless process. One that can be neatly wrapped up with a short confirmation from the customer to add your product into their express cart.
So, all in all? “Buy on Google” is a name well coined — referencing their goal to fully enhance the customer experience to encourage customers to spend more on Google. And, while some retailers may not benefit from “Buy on Google” as much as others, it’s still an incredible program for establishing brand authority and optimizing the overall customer experience by allowing for that extension to a customer’s purchase journey across multiple devices and platforms.
Control Over Keywords
In Google Shopping, the system automatically draws keywords from your uploaded product descriptions and titles. With Google Ads (formerly known as Google AdWords), you provide the keywords and are responsible for updating them to maintain relevance. So, in terms of control, Google Ads is the obvious winner as, unlike Google shopping, you can determine the exact keywords that will trigger your ads.
Of course, just remember that having more control doesn’t mean that you will necessarily win the sales you’re looking for. After all, your information may be lacking or incorrect about which words have triggered the product in previous searches — which is so often the case with new products, where historical data is unavailable and where Google’s algorithms may be more useful than not to ensure that your listings are showing for prominent queries.
Scalability
In terms of scalability. Well, Google AdWords definitely lends itself to more detail — allowing you to add extensions with more links, contact information, or any other information that may be relevant about the product. This also has the added benefit of providing a larger pool of information from which a keyword can be generated and increases its ad showing possibility. On the flip side, with Google Shopping Ads, merchants often feel more powerless when it comes to size and ability to stand out from the crowd.
Flexible Landing Pages
With Google Shopping Ads, customers are taken to a specific page. It is, of course, advisable to make this page as relevant to the ad as possible for Google ratings and to retain the shopper’s attention. This will likely be the specific product page to optimize for maximum conversions.
As for Google Adwords, well, it allows for a little more flexibility in terms of where you lead the customer. You can take them to a custom product page where either a specific product is sold or a page where a set of related products is sold — which opens up more sales potential if the initial offering is not quite what the customer is looking for.
Using Google Ads and Google Shopping
Of course, it’s important to note, that the two methods do not have to be mutually exclusive and can actually boost each other in a way that further optimizes your campaign results, which has been broken down below:
You can use text ads to further enhance your Google Shopping campaigns and boost their visibility. Assuming you have already listed your products on Google Shopping, and that they are available for customers to view. You can create a landing page with a particular category of products to which your text ad can direct users who click on it while searching for a product in the same category.
Alternatively, you can have ad extensions directing customers to different landing pages of products within the category. This increases traffic to your site and exposes users to your other offerings which they did not know about and may prefer.
You may have stumbled upon a profitable keyword in your Google Shopping campaign and want to maximize it. You can increase its exposure by creating a text ad around it to push the product even further. Chances of being featured multiple times per query on the SERP if you combine the two strategies are heightened, boosting your brand presence.
Google Shopping is and has always been a feed-based advertising service. The Merchant Center Account is a prerequisite as you need a platform to upload these feeds. This inventory can be accessed by Google Ads and used to provide more details about the products to shoppers.
Google Shopping can’t be used to advertise services as it is based on physical products that are purchased from retailers. Google Ads will be better suited for such businesses.
Smart Campaigns
Google has been developing smart campaign tools that enable you to create ads in minutes and drive tangible results like sending leads to your website and bringing customers to your store — both of which can definitely boost the success rate of both your Google Shopping Ads and AdWords campaigns. Although, it should be noted that there are other alternatives as well that you may want to consider if you’re looking to go above-and-beyond your competitors.
These alternative third-party solutions will allow you to fine-tune your ads further with the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to ensure that your products stand out, head-and-shoulders above the rest. An example of this is, Bidbrain™, the AI-powered bidding solution that doubles as a great product feed optimizer for your Google Shopping Ads.
Any little bit of help counts. And tools like Bidbrain can definitely pack a punch. After all, according to Fredrik Lindros, CEO of Speqta (SPEQT), the Nasdaq listed company that developed Bidbrain, their advanced AI solution has already proven to be highly effective at drawing in more sales — with their clients’ latest sale numbers coming out at +20-50% higher at the same or higher ROAS (Return On Ad Spend), which is definitely not something to pass at.
