Google Wants More Advertisers, Announces New "Shopping Campaigns" For PLAs

By Tinuiti Team

Oct 23 2013

Google did a lot of retailers a favor yesterday by introducing Shopping Campaigns for their Product Listing Ads program. Check out all the minute details from Google’s announcement here.

What does it all mean? Here are the general takeaways:

1. PLA management will be more accessible to less tech-savvy merchants/advertisers.

Google made PLA management more accessible to manage by making the AdWords login the central interface for making significant changes to the campaign. This more intuitive structure is different from the traditional PLA campaign style of making big changes by switching back and forth from the feed and the AdWords login.

2. Google PLAs will be less feed-based for now.

While it’s still important to exercise Google feed best practices, Shopping campaigns shift PLA management away from the technical aspects of shopping feed marketing and now focuses it on the more familiar AdWords interface.

3. Campaign management will become more efficient for both new PLA advertisers and experienced campaign managers.

New features like competitive benchmarks for bids and a simplified, more holistic performance report will aid in making campaign management more streamlined and thorough.

We can take this as just another smart move to increase Google PLA traffic for this year’s prime shopping season. The Shopping Campaigns program, however, is not currently open to everyone. Interested merchants can sign up here.