Over the past two decades, the retail and commerce sectors have experienced a monumental shift, with online shopping evolving from a futuristic concept to an integral part of everyday life. From buying groceries and clothing to finding the perfect birthday gift, the retail and commerce sector has seen a huge spike in demand.
According to Adobe, U.S. online sales for the holiday shopping season could reach up to $240.8 billion at an 8.4% growth year-over-year. In 2023, shoppers spent $221.8 billion online at 4.9% growth YoY.
To help businesses drive growth, Google has introduced powerful features in Google Ads for retail and commerce. Let’s recap the top features that can help brands improve campaign performance, increase ROI, and build lasting customer relationships.
Here are the key Retail & Commerce updates in 2024:
- Enhance the Shopping Experience with Google’s New Shopping Features: Engage customers with a revamped shopping journey, including a new deals page and generative AI tools for personalised product recommendations.
- Create Branded Videos Effortlessly with Product Studio: Transform static product images into dynamic branded videos with just a few clicks.
- Showcase Apparel with Virtual Try-Ons: Display your products on diverse models using virtual try-ons in Shopping ads to enhance the customer experience.
- Use First-Party Data for Custom Promotions: Use your loyalty program and first-party data to offer tailored promotions in Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns.
- Attract New Customers with First-Order Promotions: Feature special first-order offers directly in Shopping ads to entice new customers through Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns.
- Get Actionable Insights with Google AI in Merchant Center Next: Access tailored performance insights and generate custom reports instantly with plain language descriptions and visual reports.
- Maximise Profits with Automated Discounts: Automatically adjust product prices with AI-powered discounts in Merchant Center Next and maximise gross profit across your entire inventory.
- Sync In-Store Availability for Local Inventory Ads: Automatically add in-store availability from your website to Merchant Center Next and drive sales with local inventory ads.
- View Sale Price Suggestions with Highest Performance Impact: Explore which products benefit the most from pricing adjustments. See a list of all your products with sale price suggestions from Google.
Let’s dive deeper into these updates.
Top Retail & Commerce Updates in 2024
Google launched plenty of AI-driven features in 2024 to help businesses build meaningful connections with shoppers, increase loyalty, and boost ROI.
Here are some of the top features from the latest update:
Enhanced Shopping Experience Using the New Google Shopping
Google Shopping is evolving to provide a more personalised and engaging shopping journey for consumers.
Key enhancements include:
- Dedicated Deals Page: A central hub to discover incredible deals and discounts from various retailers. Check the best offers based on individual shopping preferences and past browsing history.
- Personalised Product Recommendations: AI algorithms analyse user data (search history, purchase history, browsing behaviour) to suggest highly relevant and personalised product recommendations. This goes beyond basic keyword matching and offers more tailored suggestions.
- Enhanced Product Information: AI can be used to generate concise and informative product descriptions, answer user questions, and provide comparisons between different products.
- Improved Search Functionality: AI can refine search queries, understand user intent more accurately, and deliver more precise search results.
Create Branded Videos to Showcase Your Products
With the new feature in Product Studio, you can easily generate branded videos that highlight the key attributes and features of your products. Transform static product images into dynamic, engaging videos in just a few simple clicks.
- Highlight key features: Showcase product functionality and unique selling points in a visually engaging way.
- Boost brand awareness: Create compelling video content that strengthens your brand identity and resonates with your target audience.
- Increase engagement: Captivate viewers and drive greater product interest with dynamic visuals.
Enhance Shopping with Virtual Try-On for Diverse Models
Bring personalisation and inclusivity to your Shopping ads by showcasing your apparel on a diverse range of models using virtual try-on technology.
This feature allows potential customers to see how men’s and women’s tops will look on models of different body types, skin tones, and sizes, offering a more realistic and inclusive shopping experience.
- Increase Brand Appeal: By providing a visual representation of how your products fit various individuals, you help customers make more informed purchasing decisions.
- Enhance the Shopping Experience: Allow customers to virtually “try on” your tops on different body types, ethnicities, and genders, giving them a better idea of fit, style, and how it will look on them.
- Boost Conversions: Shoppers can better imagine themselves in your products, leading to increased conversion rates and customer satisfaction.
Use Your Loyalty Program and First-Party Data for Custom Promotions
Maximise the value of your customer relationships by integrating your loyalty program and first-party data into your Shopping ads. By tapping into this rich data, you can create custom promotions tailored to your most loyal customers or target specific segments based on their past shopping behaviour.
Whether it’s offering exclusive discounts to repeat buyers, rewarding loyalty program members with special deals, or delivering targeted promotions to high-value customers, this strategy allows you to drive stronger engagement and conversion rates.
Attract and Convert New Customers with First-Order Promotions in Shopping Ads
Feature exclusive first-order promotions directly within your Shopping ads to attract customers who may be hesitant to make their first purchase. This helps reduce friction for first-time buyers and justifies their initial investment in your products.
Integrate these first-order promotions into both Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns to show them to relevant, high-intent shoppers across multiple Google platforms.
Get Actionable Insights with Google AI in Merchant Center Next
Use AI-driven insights available in Merchant Center Next to get easy-to-understand performance snippets for actionable guidance on how your campaigns are performing.
Google AI analyses your data and generates these insights to help you optimise your strategies to improve key metrics, whether it’s click-through rates, conversion rates, or overall sales performance.
What sets this apart is the ability to describe your desired report in simple, plain language. You can simply ask for a specific type of performance analysis, and Google AI will instantly generate a visual report, eliminating the need for complicated data queries or manual report-building processes.
Optimise Pricing with Automated Discounts in Merchant Center Next
Automated Discounts in Merchant Center Next dynamically adjusts product discounts on your Shopping ads, based on real-time data and market conditions. By automatically optimising discounts, it helps you find the most effective price point for each product, balancing competitive pricing with profitability.
Automated discounts allow you to maximise gross profit across your entire inventory by responding to changing factors such as demand fluctuations, competitor pricing, and seasonal trends. AI continuously analyses these factors and adjusts your discount strategy so that you remain competitive while also protecting your margins.
Effortlessly Sync In-Store Availability for Local Inventory Ads
Enhance your local shopping experience by seamlessly syncing your in-store inventory with your online ads. With Merchant Center Next, your in-store availability information is automatically extracted from your website and updated in real-time, ensuring that your customers have access to accurate product availability.
This synchronisation allows you to showcase the products available at your physical store locations directly in your Shopping ads. Shoppers can check the availability of items at their nearest store before making a trip, increasing the likelihood of a sale.
View Sale Price Suggestions with the Highest Performance Impact
Discover which products in your catalog stand to gain the most from pricing adjustments through tailored sale price suggestions. This feature allows you to identify the items that could experience the greatest improvements in performance, such as increased visibility, click-through rates, or conversions, by making targeted price changes.
By clicking the “View” button, you gain access to a list of all your products, along with a suggested sale price from Google. In addition to the suggested price adjustments, you’ll also see key performance metrics such as predicted click uplift and conversion uplift.
Note: To receive sale price suggestions, you must either provide basket data and upload cost of goods sold (COGS) for your offers, or report purchase conversions and use the target ROAS bidding strategy for your Shopping ads.
If you want to specify a minimum price for each product to indicate the lowest price for which you want sale price suggestions, you can provide a minimum price [auto_pricing_min_price] through the API or a supplementary feed.
Use these latest features for Retail & Commerce to deliver strong ROI and increase loyalty.
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