Google Shopping Ads Can Now Reach Gmail Users
Google has announced that advertisers can set up standard Shopping and Showcase Shopping ad campaigns to show in Gmail beginning on the week of March 4th, 2020.
Here’s everything you need to know about Gmail Shopping Ads, their impact on traffic and CPCs, and how to control the new placements.
What Does the New Gmail Inventory Mean for Shopping Advertisers?
Google doesn’t usually choose to release earth-shattering marketing updates via a mass email and its developer blog.
This has been a feature of Google’s controversial fully-automated Smart Shopping campaign type for a while now. It’s great that Google is making an effort to create parity between their fully automated black box Smart campaigns and the people-powered standard Shopping and Showcase campaigns that most sophisticated marketers and advertisers use.
The CPC and the volume for Shopping ads serving via the secondary networks are low. After looking at Smart Shopping campaigns that have had access to this inventory, we expect a pretty small impact on traffic and revenue.
We see this as a move to add some additional inventory for advertisers to show their products at a cheap cost, giving more options to Shopping advertisers.
There is a bit of a quirk with how Google is grouping Gmail, YouTube and Discover together as an opt-in. Basically, if brands want to run ads on Gmail, they’re automatically opted into YouTube too.
Next Steps
Brands and retailers may have strict guidelines for where they want their products to show.
If you want to exclude ads from showing on certain YouTube channels, then you will have to add placement exclusions at the account level.
From a big picture marketing perspective, we do still advise retailers and brands to prioritize standard Gmail ad campaigns and use templates to advertise their products through Gmail.
These are the traditional Gmail campaigns that exist for the display network. It requires more time and effort but having Gmail ads in their own Display campaign (instead of opted in via a checkbox for a Shopping campaign) allows marketers more levers to push/pull on bids and budgets for these ads based on more transparent performance insights.
It is still a good sign though that Google is trying to get their highly successful Google Shopping ads in as many places as possible. For most advertisers, it won’t hurt to turn this feature on and see if it’s an easy way to gain some additional conversions at a low cost.
Want to learn more?
5 Tips for Google Showcase Shopping Ads
Google Shopping Actions: 9 Ways to Optimize Performance in 2020
The 2020 Google Ads Guide for Brands
You Might Be Interested In
