Ahead of the holiday season, Google just announced four new features for advertisers to implement in their ad campaigns and merchant feeds.

• Conversion value rules for store sales and store visits
• Product-specific insights
• Deals Content API
• Shipping & Returns Annotations

Conversion value rules for store sales and store visits. Advertisers can now set store visits or sales default values at the campaign level. Google says searches for “store open” have grown by over 400% YoY, so advertisers should optimize their in-store shopping experiences as well as online.

To make it easier for shoppers to find your store, Google suggests keeping your Google Business Profile up to date with your store address and hours. Then grow your store foot traffic by promoting your location to shoppers in the area using Performance Max campaigns for store goals – such as in-store promotions or specials. Smart Bidding can be used to set goals for visits and/or sales.

Product-specific insights. Product-specific insights are available at the account level and help advertisers spot underperforming offers, identify products with missing feed attributes, and compare bidding with your top competitors.

Product insights work on shopping and Performance Max campaigns and are intended to leverage ads performance data to optimize products and provide visibility on what actions to take to fix issues.

Deals Content API. Google says that 55% of shoppers surveyed planned on holding off on buying items until they were on sale.

The Deals Content API is intended to make uploading and managing deals easier at scale.

Merchants and advertisers can now add their sales and promotions to their listings via the Content API, which makes it even easier for merchants to upload and manage their deals at scale.

The Deals Content API had already been launched, but Google had not officially announced it.

Shipping & Returns Annotations. Merchants will now be able to list the expected delivery date (dynamic) (“Delivery by XX/YY”) and free returns right on their ads.

Google notes that 3 in 10 consumers are concerned about stock issues. Adding estimated delivery times can alleviate these concerns and help shoppers stress less and convert more. Advertisers can also easily add their return policies.

Shopping campaign best practices. Google has also outlined some best practices to help advertisers and merchants get ready for the holiday shopping season. To get the most out of your shopping or Performance Max campaigns, Google suggests:

• Maximize your reach by showing your ads to shoppers who search for terms related to your keywords using broad match and Smart Bidding.
• Use responsive search ads to tailor your messaging based on shoppers’ search terms. 
• Harness the power of your Google Merchant Center product feed with YouTube Video action campaigns and Discovery ads, which present new shoppable opportunities for your brand in moments of inspiration and discovery. 
• Promote your app to shoppers across Google’s largest properties such as Search, Google Play, YouTube and more with App campaigns and give users a seamless web-to-app purchase experience by setting up deep links

Read the announcement. You can read the full announcement from Google and learn more information and best practices here.

Why we care. Ecommerce merchants and advertisers who sell during the holidays should start setting up and testing these new features right away. Don’t wait until the holiday season is already here to begin planning and implementation.

Expected shipping and delivery dates will be especially important as shoppers worry about supply chain issues and an uncertain economy.

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