What Are Product Listing Ads (PLAs)?
Product Listing Ads (PLAs), also called Google Shopping Ads, are advertisements that appear in response to user queries on Google search results.
They usually appear at the top, the upper right, or the upper left side of the search engine results page (SERP) and are given prominence over organic search results and text ads. They are also further highlighted with a high-quality feature image, a link to the product’s landing page, its price (including running offers and promotions), and the site owner’s information.
Because all the crucial information is captured within the PLAs themselves, the leads (when compared to regular search ads or text-based ads) are generally more qualified, as the users are given more than enough information to make a choice before clicking on the ad.
How PLAs Work
PLAs are cost-per-click ads. That means that you are only billed when users actually click on your ad and visit your landing page. As for setting up, the bulk of your work and management occur within a Google Merchant Center account (where you’ll have to upload all your product data) and a Google Ads account (where you’ll be able to manage your campaigns.)
Google decides when and where your PLAs appear based on several factors:
The Bid Amount
Just like Google’s other ad formats, the placement of your Shopping ads is based on real-time ad auctions. So, generally, the higher you are willing to bid, the more likely your ad will be placed. Note, you’ll need to use a Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) solution to bid on these auctions.
CSSs can be kind of tricky, but for now, the only thing you really need to know is that Google Shopping is a CSS (more on this later.)
Of course, if you want to learn more about CSSs anyway and how you can take advantage of the more advanced options out there, Fredrik Lindros, the CEO of the Nasdaq listed company, Speqta, talks about it in a recent interview, where he introduces their newest CSS solution, Bidbrain™ — notable for being an AI-powered bid optimization tool capable of increasing your sales at around +20-50% at the same or higher ROAS (Return on Ad Spend.)
The Ad Quality During Auction Time
Google gives all your products an independent product score that decides when and where they are placed. A higher quality score means your ad has been deemed relevant and is expected to convert more — translating to lower costs and better ad placement.
There are multiple factors that go into what kind of quality score your products are given. Most of these are fixable by optimizing your product feed — which is another thing that you can manage with external solutions like the aforementioned CSS solution, Bidbrain, which doubles as a product feed optimizer that should increase both the quality of your ads and their ROI.
The Context of the Search in Relation to Your Ad
Of course, there is no point in wasting prime ad space for ads that are irrelevant to the user’s query. Google avoids doing so by making use of the user’s location, the device the user is using, the time of the query, and multiple other factors to see which ads are the most relevant.
The Impact of Your Ad Extensions
Extensions that are deemed to have the potential to increase your click-through rate can greatly impact how often your PLAs appear on Google Shopping. Whether it be in the form of special offers, positive reviews, pathways to unique landing pages, etc.
Google Shopping
Google Shopping is a Comparison Shopping Agent (CSA), Engine (CSE), or Service (CSS) owned and managed by Google.
On this engine, users can search for the products that they are looking to buy and are provided with a select number of options from various merchants representing different outlets, brands, and businesses. The options presented are determined by the user’s query — possible because Google has a collection of tools capable of parsing through millions of products in real-time to find the ones that are the closest match to the user’s search terms.
How Google Shopping Works
At this point, the connection between Product Listing Ads and Google Shopping is probably a little clearer for you. But let’s dig in a little deeper before answering our main question for the day by moving on to just how Google Shopping works.
To begin with, Google Shopping is a homepage of Google (much like how Google Images is a homepage of Google.) Users can access it by clicking on the Shopping tab and they can use it to search for a product that they are interested in buying.
It’s important to understand now that Product Listing Ads are listed on Google Shopping as well as the “All” tab (which is, of course, the first search result tab). But, to make things a little clearer, we must first go over how PLAs are set up:
Setting Up a Product Listing Ad
Several building blocks must come together for a product listing ad to appear on Google Shopping:
Creating a Google Ads Account
Google Ads is Google’s online advertising platform wherein advertisers bid to display their advertisements, service offerings, product listings, etc. to web users across Google’s ad networks (i.e., Google Search, Google Shopping, the GDN, etc.) A Google Ads account is for the management of these advertisements, as such, it is required to set up PLAs.
Setting up a Google Ads account can be a bit of a hassle, and especially more so if you’re setting it up for PLAs. Google does now offer Smart Shopping — which is a simpler and automated way of getting your PLAs set up, but also a lot more restrictive (no insights are provided and control over which devices, networks, and locations your ad shows up is not possible.)
Basic Account Set Up Tips
- One way to improve your overall Google Shopping experience is to link your Google Ads account to Google Analytics. Doing so should help you make more informed marketing decisions as you will be able to see whether your ad spend is truly adding value to your business’s growth.
- You might want to set up Conversion Tracking as well. Conversion tracking will help you determine whether your ad clicks are actually converting — which is data that you absolutely need in order to find out which of your campaigns are the best-performing.
Creating a Merchant Center Account and Verifying Your Site Ownership.
Your Google Shopping campaigns cannot succeed without a fully optimized Merchant Center account as this account will be what acts as an online repository for your store by holding all the information for the products you sell — both online and in your brick-and-mortar stores.
Import Your Data Feed to Your Merchant Center
The Merchant Center hosts your Google Shopping Feed, a product data spreadsheet that organizes critical information about your products in a manner that Google can interpret. It is the main source of information Google will use to auto-generate your PLAs. And it’s also the data bank from which Google will determine whether your product is relevant to a shopping query.
Some of the basic fields available are product title, product image, and product category. The fields can be further customized to meet your specific target audience by inserting AI technology directly into your Google Ads account (like Bidbrain), which will enable you to create additional fields in your data feed beyond Google’s own provisions.
You need to ensure that your data quality meets Google standards, that your field columns are correctly labeled, that you have not violated character limits, and that all key attributes have been included. You can always refer to Google’s product data specification guidelines to format your product information and get it right. Google does offer tools that you can use to schedule regular updates for your feed. But, as mentioned previously, there are other ways of optimizing and keeping your feed updated with advanced, AI-powered programs (like the aforementioned Bidbrain), to ensure that you are maintaining a slight edge over your competitors.
Linking Your Google Ads Account to Your Google Merchant Center Account
Every campaign that you initiate relies on the product feed that is hosted in your merchant center. It is what Google will use to determine your product’s relevance to your target audience and how much to bill you. As such, it is important to have your Google Ads account linked to your Merchant Center account.
The Difference
Now that we’ve properly defined both of the items in question, we can finally tell you this: The difference is that Google Shopping is not an ad but rather a platform for consumers to search, browse, and compare products across brands, outlets, and retailers. Think of it as a ‘runway’ for ads (which are the models in this metaphor.)
That means that Product Listing Ads are a part of the Google Shopping platform (and thus, comparison is unnecessary.) Just remember that the two simply make up components of the larger Google Ads umbrella through which they are set up.
