Google Product Listing Ads Are Experiencing Phenomenal Growth
Recently Front Man Marketing reviewed the 1st quarter report by Merkle for Digital Marketing; we now know that PLA spending grew 41% year over year in the 1st quarter of 2016. That is a significant increase over 4th quarter 2015’s 34% growth. In addition PLAs got a boost in December as Google began showing the format on its image search results, traffic Google typically classifies as a search partner. It also appears that PLAs have benefited modestly from Google’s removal of right side ads on the desktop.
This data suggests, the game is changing for e-commerce advertisers, from one in which optimizing keyword lists, along with the ad copy and bids tied to them, to one in which shopping campaigns/PLA’s are a requirement. This of course means the product feed driven model of advertising is here to stay.
One of the key areas seeing growth is in mobile. According to the Merkle Digital Report, PLA Clicks were up 162% year over year in the 1st quarter of 2016. That increase by itself is astonishing, but Merkle also reports that spending rose 193% for the same period. Google has increased the size of PLA on the phone as well as increased the frequency of their display.
Google’s search partners are also seeing tremendous growth in PLA’s. As we mentioned earlier, Google has now begun showing PLA’s as a part of image results – which produced a mind blowing 545% increase in December of 2015. Since then that increase has fallen, but is on the rise again.
Here at Front Man Marketing, we believe for E-commerce marketers, PLA’s must be a priority. Give us a call we would love to develop a Shopping/PLA campaign for you!