Google Product Listing Ads

[orcahouse]

All quietish on the sales front so considering taking the opportunity to add Rich Snippets and dipping a toe into Google Product Listing Ads. In the days of Froogle we used to do very well from our feed but decided against paying for the privilege when the mandatory adwords link was introduced.

Is anyone out there getting useful conversions from Google PLAs. It seems that ETSY is dominating all shopping results in our sector so not sure if we would see any benefit, at a reasonable bid level, given that we appear on Page 1 for several of our product types as it is.

Any experiences good or bad would be welcome before I research it further. Many thanks.

[fergusw]

Tom,
We run many Google Adword and Product Listing ads (pla's) (UK,US,AUS) campaigns for several customers.
Whilst there are several tips and tricks to try and improve reach and conversions, in general we see the same trends;
i.e. Much lower cost per click, visitor levels and impressions for pla's compared to adwords, however pla's have a massively higher ROI.

As an example, it is not unusual for us to see return on investments of 100~300% for adwords, however we regularly see return on investment of 1000-3000%+ for product listing ads.
Whilst the volume is lower, the figures back up the recommendation to put the time and effort into maintaining an accurate and valid shopping feed with Google. TIP: Build your first PLA campaigns around 'brand' rather than a blanket 'all' campaign.