Here's What REALLY Works In Ecommerce Google Ads 2024
Summary
TLDRThe video script discusses the 'Merchant Excellence' report in Google Ads, a tool to enhance e-commerce advertising performance, particularly for shopping ads. It's available to certain users in the EU who utilize comparison shopping services and meet a monthly spending threshold. The speaker outlines key takeaways from the report, emphasizing the importance of a high-quality data feed, addressing disapprovals, optimizing titles, and utilizing data enrichment to boost ad performance. The script also covers the significance of product ratings, promotions, and shipping offers in improving click-through rates and conversions.
Takeaways
- 📈 The 'Merchant Excellence' report in Google Ads is a valuable tool for e-commerce advertisers, especially for those using comparison shopping services in the EU with significant monthly spend.
- 🔍 Although the report is not available to everyone, insights can be gleaned from a provided PDF that details the report's contents and significance.
- 💡 The quality of data in your Google Merchant Center feed is critical for the performance of your shopping ads and will become increasingly important as more ad formats are powered by this feed.
- 🛒 The report emphasizes the importance of having a high product approval rate, with disapprovals and missing GTINs being key areas to address for improved ad performance.
- 📝 Optimized titles in your data feed can significantly increase click-through rates, and should be a focus area for advertisers looking to boost performance.
- 📈 Data enrichment, including detailed product descriptions, categories, and types, is highlighted as an important factor for improving the quality of your shopping ads.
- 🌟 The use of annotations such as product ratings, promotions, and shipping information can enhance the attractiveness of your shopping ads and improve click-through and conversion rates.
- 📉 The report provides benchmarks and a prioritization system to help advertisers understand where their campaigns stand and what areas require improvement.
- 🚀 For those who qualify, the Merchant Excellence report offers a detailed analysis and actionable insights to improve the performance of shopping ads campaigns.
- 💻 Regular monitoring and optimization of your data feed, including checking for disapprovals and ensuring all fields are accurately filled out, is a continuous process essential for ad success.
- 📊 The report underscores the correlation between a high Merchant Excellence score and better performance in Google Ads, indicating that attention to detail in feed management pays off.
Q & A
What is the Merchant Excellence report in Google Ads?
-The Merchant Excellence report is a specialized report in Google Ads that helps e-commerce advertisers improve their shopping ads campaigns. It provides insights and benchmarks to optimize product feeds and enhance ad performance.
Is the Merchant Excellence report available to everyone?
-No, the Merchant Excellence report is only available to advertisers who use comparison shopping services in the EU and spend over 100K monthly on shopping.
What can one learn from the Merchant Excellence report even without access to it?
-Even without direct access, one can learn about the importance of data feed optimization, product titles, GTINs, and data enrichment by reviewing the PDF description of the report provided by Google.
What is the significance of having a high-quality data feed in Google Merchant Center?
-A high-quality data feed is crucial as it powers various ad formats and is a key determinant of offer quality in shopping ad auctions. It will become increasingly important as Google continues to expand ad formats.
How can fixing missing GTINs impact ad performance?
-Fixing missing GTINs can lead to up to a 3X click uplift, as indicated by some businesses, by ensuring that product data is accurately represented in ad campaigns.
What is the importance of checking for data disapprovals in Google Merchant Center?
-Regularly checking for data disapprovals is vital to maintain product approval rates and avoid negative impacts on ad performance. Google suggests doing this weekly.
How can optimized titles in a data feed impact click-through rates?
-Optimized titles can drive a significant increase in clicks per offer, with some suggesting an increase of up to 15% based on testing and experience.
What does 'data enrichment' refer to in the context of the Merchant Excellence report?
-Data enrichment refers to the process of optimizing various aspects of the product feed beyond just the titles, including images, descriptions, product categories, and types.
Why are product ratings important for shopping ads?
-Product ratings are important as they can significantly increase click-through rates (CTR) and conversion rates by building trust and providing social proof.
What steps can be taken to improve a Merchant Excellence score?
-To improve a Merchant Excellence score, one should focus on maximizing total offers, increasing approval rates, enriching data feed, using annotations effectively, and ensuring product types are accurately filled out with relevant keywords.
How can the Merchant Excellence report help in boosting return on ad spend (ROAS)?
-The report provides insights into areas of the data feed that can be optimized to improve ad performance, such as offer quality, bid levels, and relevance, which in turn can boost ROAS.
Outlines
📈 Introduction to Merchant Excellence Report
The speaker introduces the Merchant Excellence report, a tool within Google Ads designed to enhance e-commerce advertisers' performance with shopping ads. The report is not widely accessible, but the provided PDF offers valuable insights into improving ad campaigns. The speaker promises to discuss the key lessons from the report and how to access it, focusing on the importance of a high-quality data feed for successful ad performance. The report's availability is limited to users of comparison shopping services in the EU with substantial monthly spends, but the PDF's contents are universally applicable. The speaker also mentions additional resources available to advertisers, such as free audits and the significance of maintaining a high approval rate for product data.
🛒 Maximizing Product Approvals and Data Quality
This paragraph delves into the importance of product approvals and data quality within the Merchant Excellence report. The speaker emphasizes the significance of fixing errors such as missing GTINs, which can result in a substantial increase in click-through rates. The speaker also discusses the priority of addressing data disapprovals, which can occur for various reasons and affect ad performance. Titles and data enrichment, including optimizing product descriptions and categories, are highlighted as critical for improving ad effectiveness. The speaker suggests a weekly review of the merchant center for any disapprovals or data feed issues and provides tips on how to fix them using Google's guidance.
🌟 Enhancing Ad Performance with Data Enrichment
The speaker discusses how to improve ad performance through data enrichment, including the use of annotations, product ratings, promotions, and shipping information. The importance of having a review aggregator to enable product ratings is stressed, as well as the impact of promotions and shipping offers on conversion rates. The speaker also touches on the role of a good return policy in enhancing customer trust and ad performance. The focus is on ensuring that all aspects of the product feed are optimized to increase impressions, click-through rates, and overall ad effectiveness.
📊 Improving Merchant Excellence Score for Better Ad Performance
In this paragraph, the speaker focuses on how to improve the Merchant Excellence score, which correlates with better performance in Google Ads. The speaker outlines several key areas to focus on, such as maximizing total offers by ensuring all products are approved, increasing targeted offers, and improving data quality to boost impressions and click-through rates. The importance of using custom labels, item IDs, and product types to organize and enhance the product feed is also discussed. The speaker emphasizes the need to avoid generic images and to fill out all relevant fields in the product feed to optimize ad performance.
🚀 Conclusion and Call to Action
The speaker concludes by expressing a desire for the Merchant Excellence report to be available to all advertisers, questioning why it's limited to certain users. They summarize the key takeaways from the report and emphasize the importance of a high-quality data feed for e-commerce advertisers. The speaker also encourages viewers to explore additional resources for optimizing Performance Max campaigns and promises to provide more insights in future content.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Merchant Excellence Report
💡Data Feed
💡Google Merchant Center
💡CSS (Comparison Shopping Service)
💡Product Approval Rate
💡GTIN
💡Data Disapprovals
💡Data Enrichment
💡Annotations
💡Performance Max
💡CTR (Click-Through Rate)
Highlights
The Merchant Excellence report in Google Ads can significantly enhance e-commerce advertising, especially for shopping ads and performance Max campaigns.
The report is not universally available; it's exclusive to users of comparison shopping services in the EU with spending over 100K monthly.
A PDF document describes the Merchant Excellence report, providing insights even without direct access to the report itself.
Google offers free audits for data feeds to those running comparison shopping services, with a low threshold of 500 USD per month spending.
The Merchant Excellence report provides a ranking of various items against benchmarks, indicating areas for improvement.
The quality of data in Google's Merchant Center is pivotal for the performance of shopping ads and will become increasingly important as more ad formats are powered by it.
Three main factors influence shopping ad auctions: offer quality, bid level, and relevance, with offer quality being primarily determined by product data.
Fixing missing GTINs in the data feed can lead to up to a 3X click uplift, underscoring the importance of accurate product data.
Data disapprovals can significantly impact ad performance, and regular weekly checks are recommended to maintain approval rates.
Optimized titles in the data feed can drive a substantial increase in click-through rates, with the potential for a 15% increase based on the speaker's experience.
Data enrichment, beyond just titles, involves optimizing all aspects of the product feed for better ad performance.
Usage of annotations in shopping ads, such as product ratings, promotions, and shipping information, can enhance ad appeal and performance.
Product type in the data feed is a critical field that should be filled out with four levels of depth for optimal performance.
The Merchant Excellence report can help identify areas such as disapproved items, generic images, and invalid GTINs to focus on for optimization.
Maximizing total offers and approval rates ensures that as many products as possible are available for advertising, thus increasing potential impressions and sales.
Improving the Merchant Excellence score correlates with better performance in Google Ads, indicating the importance of a high-quality data feed.
The speaker expresses a desire for the Merchant Excellence report to be available to all advertisers, not just those meeting specific criteria, for the mutual benefit of advertisers and Google.
For e-commerce advertisers looking to master Performance Max campaigns, additional resources such as the speaker's top 10 tips video are recommended.
Transcripts
I recently came across an excellent type
of report that you can run in Google ads
that's going to help you be a much much
better e-commerce Advertiser when it
comes to shopping ads and performance
Max the report type is called Merchant
excellence and although it's not a
report type that is available to
everyone this PDF that I have for you
today describes the report and there's
so much we can learn about the report
and about improving our shopping ads
campaigns just by looking at this PDF
and I want to run through the PDF with
you today to give you the key lessons
you can learn from this PDF from this
Merchant Excellence report even if you
can't access the report and I'll show
you how to access the report if you
qualify for it in just a bit but even if
you can't access a report you should be
able to take some learnings from this
and understand exactly what to do next
to boost your return on ad spend in your
performance Max or shopping ads campaign
okay so I've got the PDF in front of me
this is the PDF that Google put together
to describe exactly what the merchant
Excellence report is and why it's
valuable and what is important to make
sure you have a high performing shopping
ads campaign by the way uh I'm going to
put links for all this stuff in the
description below the video but they
have a link here there's a Google help
file and actually this report is
actually only available to people who
use comparison shopping services so if
you add vertising in the EU if you're
plugged into a CSS and if you're
spending over a certain amount then you
can access this report for everyone else
L we're going to run through the PDF
together because we can learn most of
what we need to learn just through
looking at the PDF uh but if you come to
this page here and if you are running a
CSS uh approach to your Google shopping
ads in the EU you've actually got two
cool free things you can get so free
Audits and merchant center uh Merchant
Excellence report so pretty much
everyone can get a free audit of their
data feed done by Google uh so
eligibility for the free audit is anyone
running CSS uh all CSS uh runners or
Merchants can request this service and
you only need to be spending 500 USD per
month on shopping that's a pretty low
requirement a lot of people meet that
requirement so I haven't checked out the
feed audit today we're going to talk
about the merchant Excellence report um
and the merchant Excellence report
unfortunately is a bit harder to get you
have to be running uh CSS in the EU and
you have to be spending 100K monthly on
shopping so I'm guessing a lot of people
watching this video won't qualify for
that but don't worry if you don't
qualify because as I say there's so much
we can learn just by looking at this
document here where Google is telling us
what is important about your data feed
and what's important about your data
feed is ultimately going to be what's
important about your shopping ads
campaign and your performance Max
campaign because those campaign types
are leveraging your data feed okay so
these are the table of contents I am
going to provide you a link to this
report in the description below so I
don't want to go through every page in
detail what I want to do is just kind of
scroll here and tell you what I think is
important to know and what you should
focus on okay some introductory Stu
quality of data injected into Google
Solutions is critical and when they say
the quality of data injected the talking
about your data feed really uh this is
this I find really interesting merchants
Center will continue to power more ad
formats over time as it has happened
over the past few years so what does
that mean that means that well look at
this timeline in 2014 your data feed
could power shopping campaigns and
display campaigns and pretty much those
display campaigns were just retargeting
that was in 2014 now in 2023 your data
feed and your Google merchant center
account can power all these ad formats
here and as stated by Google this is
only going to get more overtime so
having a good quality data feed is
already really important for your
e-commerce Google ads account today and
it's only going to get more important
over time so take note of
that okay your shopping ad auctions it's
like three main factors the offer
quality so that really just means your
your product how good is your product
how good is your pricing and that is
indicated by your product data so this
Factor here your offer quality that's
all pretty much determined by your data
feed uh and then you've got your bid
level that's going to be determined in
Google ads by the smart bidding
algorithm or by whatever bid strategy
you've chosen relevance always important
with Google ads offer quality is super
important so yeah like it goes without
saying the quality of your product the
quality of everything about your product
what you're offering to the consumer
super important yeah duh uh this is how
the merchant center uh sorry the
merchant Excellence reports looks if you
qualify for it so it looks pretty snazzy
I haven't seen one of these out in the
wild yet but they actually take all
these different items and then rank them
uh know versus Benchmark status yes or
no priority level so it's a great report
I'm I'm hoping to get my hands on one of
these reports and I'm going to run
through my client list and see which of
my clients is actually spending more
than 100K monthly in the EU on SC CSS uh
hopefully I can get a follow-up video
out to you showing you how the report
looks but for now let's just learn from
the
PDF uh okay so this is just showing you
more stuff about how the report itself
looks okay yeah yeah yeah we get it the
report is cool yeah I get it we don't
have the report right now but let's just
learn from this
PDF yeah okay so I get that like this is
just sort of
summarizing like things you can learn
from the report but down here we're
actually okay now we start getting into
the meat and potatoes look this is a
slide from Google telling you exactly
what is important in your data feed and
we have things that actually I talk
about all the time if if you follow me
and and know me you'll know that these
are things that I often talk about so uh
your gtin that's a field in your data
feed according to Google some businesses
have seen up to a 3X click uplift after
fixing missing gtin so what does this
mean this means go into your merchant
center for your shopping ads campaign
for your performance Max campaign it
means check your disapprovals check the
Diagnostics of your feed you should be
doing that Weekly in my opinion and
sometimes you're going to see a gtin
error if you see that gtin error fix it
like and if you don't believe me that
this is important well here's Google
also telling you that this is important
uh even more important though than gtins
in my estimation is this one data
disapprovals I would have put
disapprovals at the top really I think
that's the most but I put either
disapprovals or titles at the top I
wouldn't have done the list in this
order if I was prioritizing B on most
important I would have said number one
on the list is either disapprovals or
titles maybe the joint top and then I
would have said gtim then I would have
said data enrichment but disapprovals
whatever prioritization you give it it's
important right like you can get your
products disapproved for just seemingly
really random reasons and sometimes a
product that is approved now might just
suddenly get disapproved next week
because I don't know Google's automated
bot just doesn't like you for some
reason like it they have have automated
Bots that are running these kind of
approval processes and you never know
like some little change on your landing
page or site might suddenly upset the
but so don't even if you've got a 100%
product approval rate right now in your
shopping feed don't assume it's always
going to stay that way check your
Diagnostics in Google merchant center
once per week and then you're going to
spot if there's any issues with gtins
and any issues with disapprovals both of
these things are important I think
disapprovals is more important so focus
on those and if you see anything get
disapproved in your feed fix it Google
merchant center will kindly tell you
exactly how to fix the disapproval you
just have to click on the little
question mark bubble in Google merchant
center and it will tell you how to fix
the thing so fix it uh titles are super
important I've been saying this for
years optim like Google says optimized
titles can drive a 1% increase in clicks
per offer actually the the testing that
I've done and seen others do indicates
that the increase here is a lot larger
actually based on on my data and you
know what I've seen from uh spending
millions of dollars on Google ads I
actually kind of see these two things
the other way rounds based on what I've
seen like I would say actually from what
I've seen titles can increase click
volume by 15% whereas data enrichment I
put that more in the 1% boundary based
on the data I have it's interesting that
Google is kind of saying something else
here uh I'm not seeing the same like
based on the accounts that we run we
could argue over like what the actual
uplift is either way do both of these
things right problem solved uh
personally I would say uh titles is the
most important part that's the part of
your product feed that Google pays the
most attention to so get all your good
high volume keywords in your title and
really what they mean here when they say
data enrichment is they mean all the
other items of your feed right so
there's you tons of other uh variables
in your feed there's tons of other like
bits of the feed to fill out not only
you have your title you've got like your
images your description your product
category your product type so in this uh
chart here what you can basically think
of data enrichment is is it's like
optimize your titles here and then data
enrichment means optimize the rest of
your feed also right
um yeah usage of annotations so this
means like all the other little things
that you can add onto your shopping ads
when you use the correct functions in
Google merch centers so product ratings
yeah just absolutely do product ratings
to enable product ratings you need to
have a review aggregator you can use
like a premium third party platform uh
like yo for example or if you want to do
it cheaper you can use Google customer
reviews which is free just just bit bit
more of a setup it's a bit technical the
setup either way you need to be
collecting reviews for your products you
need the review feed to be plugged into
Google merchant center that will enable
when done correctly that will enable
product ratings these stars that show up
on your product super important uh
raises your CTR Merchant promo
promotions any price promotions or
offers you have on your site you can go
into Google merchant center you can set
up that promotion in Google merchant
center so that it does this it shows you
the promotion on your shopping ads if
you're running promotions this is just a
no-brainer you need to do that in Google
merchant center to promote your
promotion fast and free shipping yeah
definitely gives you a conversion rate
uplift and a CTR uplift and if you're if
you've got a good shipping offer make
sure you've configured that in Google
merchant center because it helps uh sale
price drop price once again this is just
like Common Sense stuff if you're
dropping the price if you have good
shipping if you have promotions on put
that information in Google mer Center
because you will see CTR and CVR uplift
and then once again returns like if
you've got a good return policy you can
make sure by the settings in Google
merchant center that is displayed on
your shopping apps so do that uh okay
case study skip through that case study
skip through that I just want to focus
on what what the learnings are for you
and what's important let's just
translate this for you into English
right maximize total offers what that
means is don't have any products
disapproved right it's it's what it's
saying here is an offer is basically a
product um so like if you've got 100
products in your feed make sure that's
100 approved products if 10 of the
products are disapproved then you're not
maximizing your total offers uh so yeah
increase your approval rate uh that's
the that's the same kind of thing
actually these two are kind of related
actually maximize total offers is more
about having as many products as
possible like if you have the product
make sure it's in your feed if you have
100 products have 100 items in your feed
one for each product and then approval
rate yeah that's making sure you have no
disapprovals increase targeted offers so
yeah if you've got uh products in your
feed actually advertise them in Google
ads get more customers that way yeah
makes sense increase Impressions dat
quality so that this is basically saying
you get more Impressions when you really
enrich your data feed uh like okay more
English
language your your product feed make
sure it's full of keywords make sure
it's high quality don't just autocreate
the product feed and leave it at that
actually go through all the items in
your product feed and think about is
this a good title is this a is this a
good description is this a good product
type and uh boost CTR so attributes help
differentiate yeah so have a good image
use promotions get your reviews showing
up all that lovely stuff so these are
some things that are important that you
can do uh I don't really want to focus
on any of those just want to call out
for you here some of the things that I
think are most important yeah like so
okay so their merchant Excellence report
one of the things it reports on is how
many items you have disapproved uh how
many items have a generic image uh like
items with price and avail ility so make
sure you fill out those fields uh
invalid gtins so these things here just
tell you uh what's important in your
product feed and give you an idea of
things you need to pay attention to and
optimize yeah make sure your stuff gets
approved don't let disapproved stuff sit
in your
feed this one here is important as well
I'd like to call this one out like like
these ones here custom label item id uh
item group ID that's more for
organization it doesn't really affect
the performance of your campaign but
this one here really does so product
type and this would have fallen under
data enrichment product type is another
field in your feed and most people do a
bad job of this don't do that do a good
job of your product type so look for the
product type field in your feed and make
sure that you filled it out to four
levels of depth you get four levels of
depth in your product type feed most
people only use one and then they often
just make it exactly the same as their
Google product category waste of space
use all all four levels of your product
type and put good keywords in each level
right then you'll be doing much
better okay so there's some stuff you
can do to increase
Impressions some stuff you can do to
boost clickthrough
[Music]
rates what can you do to improve your
score improving your score your Merchant
excellent score will mostly correlate
with getting better performance in
Google ads okay there's a glossery tab
that EXP explaining here how the report
looks it's a shame this isn't available
to everyone why why Google why isn't
this just available to everyone why is
it only limited to CSS people spending
over 100k okay I I get the 100K thing
maybe they use M like uh manual reps um
rep like dedicated reps to manually put
this together so they only want to focus
on higher spend advertisers but why is
it only for CSS advertisers why isn't
this just just for all shopping
advertisers at the end of the day if we
all have better data feed s Google makes
more money so why don't they just
provide this to everyone spending over a
certain amount of money I don't know
Google so there you have it the merchant
Excellence report and what we can learn
from what's in that report to make us
better and more profitable e-commerce
advertisers when it comes to shopping
ads and performance Max by the way if
you really want to master and dominate
performance Max campaigns for your
e-commerce store you're going to want to
check out this video here which is my
top 10 tips for performance Max op
optimizations that you can run today to
get more profit and higher return on ad
spend for your campaigns see you on the
next one
5.0 / 5 (0 votes)