Google Releases Merchant Promotions in Five New Countries

Back in 2012, Google launched its Merchant Promotions product, enabling U.S. retailers to display promotions alongside their Product Listing Ads (PLAs) on both Google’s search results pages and on Google Shopping.

Figure 1

The search engine giant recently announced the expansion of the product to other countries, allowing retailers in the United Kingdom, France, Australia, Germany, and India to take advantage of the service as well. [See Figure 1]

“Participating US retailers have seen improved performance from their Product Listing Ads,” Christina Ilvento, Product Manager at Google Shopping, wrote in the AdWords blog post. She also cited women’s fashion and swimwear direct marketer Venus as one of the retailers that has reaped the benefits of using Merchant Promotions. Ilvento claimed that Venus’ PLAs had a seven percent increase in clickthrough rate (CTR), a two percent increase in conversion rate, and an 11 percent decrease in cost-per-click (CPC) when they made use of Google’s Merchant Promotions.

From a case study by Google discussing Venus’ success:

“With results like this, our course of action is clear,” says Arcidicono [Paid Search Senior Analyst at RKG]. “We plan to keep Merchant Promotions running across Venus’s entire product inventory for as long as its free shipping offer — or any other new offer — exists.”

Google has provided interested retailers with a guide to help them get started with the product. With just a few steps, retailers from the aforementioned countries will be able to create a promotions list, map it in Google Shopping, and upload it to the Google Merchant Center. They will also be able to measure each of their promotion’s performance, as Google uses a system that supports “user specific redemption codes and associated reporting”.

To officially get started, the company encourages retailers to fill out an interest form.

Google’s Merchant Promotions currently caters to a number of well-known U.S. retailers, such as Tommy Hilfiger, OfficeMax®, and more.

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