Shopping on Google is becoming more and more of a focus for retailers in 2020, with updates and new products coming out left, right and centre. Yesterday, Google officially notified advertisers that another development is in the roadmap for next month: Google Shopping on Gmail.
Shopping Ads on Gmail
Google’s mail network, Gmail, is currently ranked 2nd in the UK’s most used email client, with a 26% share in the UK. Emails themselves have long been a great way for customers to keep up-to-date with their favourite brands’ new products, offers and even discover new brands. According to Google, with this update retailers will be able to serve their Google Shopping ads to users who ‘begin and continue their shopping journey on Gmail’. Shopping Ads, in their standard Product or Showcase form, will be eligible for all advertisers to appear on Gmail in just under a month, from 4th March 2020.
If you’ve been running Shopping ads for a while, you may already be aware that Google Shopping ads have been eligible to show on the YouTube and Discover networks for some time now – in a similar fashion to text ads on the Search Partners networks. This new update means that Gmail will be another network added to the additional network groupings, meaning that Shopping ads served on Gmail will be reported under the Google Display Network.
Your standard or Showcase Shopping campaigns will be automatically enabled to run on Gmail, if they are opted in ‘YouTube, Gmail and Discover’. In the interests of making it easy for advertisers to take advantage of this new development, here’s how you can check if your Google Shopping campaigns have opted into the Gmail network:
- Navigate to the Settings tab within the campaign you wish to review
- You’ll find a tick box to ‘YouTube, Gmail and Discover’ under the ‘Networks’ tab. If this is ticked, your campaign has opted into this network
If you’re an advertiser in Europe, who currently works with a Comparison Shopping Service, they’ll be able to help you understand which platforms they place ads on your behalf.
What do we think?
Gmail ads have long been successful for our clients, and it’ll be no surprise to anyone how imperative Google Shopping is for retailers. As such, it makes perfect sense for Google to integrate its most popular product for retail advertisers with this engaging platform.
Similarly to many new products Google have brought out over the last year, this development combines multiple networks within one setting – YouTube, Gmail and Discover – so while you’ll be eligible to show on all three of these valuable networks, you unfortunately won’t be able to split performance out by network.
Additionally, you may see less volume of traffic coming through these networks than Google Shopping itself, so it’s important to keep an eye on how your campaigns perform over time, to ensure the set up of your campaigns are still the absolute optimal for your business’ goals.
Ultimately, having the power and scope of Gmail behind Shopping campaigns should only be good news to retailers – so long as they have their fingers on the pulse of their Google Shopping performance.
If you’re interested in supercharging your retail business through Google Shopping, please get in touch to see how Croud can help.
