Recently, Google declared a new ad format on Google Images. Following the successful features introduced by Pinterest and Instagram earlier, the most used search engine decided to allow retailers to tag item prices on photos right within the SERPs. In this article, we will show you how new shoppable image ads will work.
Why Google consider labelled photos to return good results
This decision appeared after the research, revealed that half of the online shoppers indicated images to inspire them to buy a product in the pre-holiday period. Moreover, 87.6% of consumers consider clear item photos as a more crucial element of a great online shopping experience that product reviews.
Instagram shopping tags became the main harbinger of the new ad format. Being launched globally last year, this new ability for retailers is demonstrating excellent results. First thing first, traffic to websites of online stores that have shoppable posts increases almost by 1-2% per month. Secondly, the Instagram revenue of some ecommerce businesses that began selling on Instagram rocked up by 13%. According to the Instagram official statistics, almost 75% of users take some actions such as visiting a website, saving a photo or sharing info about a product with friends after viewing a business post. Along with that, the overall Instagram ad revenue in 2018 increased twice compared with the previous year which indicates that this implementation has become prosperous for this social media network as well.
How will shoppable image ads work?
Basically, the mechanics of ads on Google images will be the same. A seller will be able to tag multiple prices directly on images. If on Instagram, users can pin only up to 5 product prices on one photo, the limitation for Google advertising images has not been specified yet, as well as other important details. For instance, what are the requirements for pictures, do they need to be SEO-friendly or can be uploaded only as ad creatives.
Tagged images are expected to be labelled as “Sponsored” to make it easier for consumers to recognise ads. By tapping on the picture, a shopper will be redirected to the website. Will Google duplicate the product information as on Instagram remains to be seen.
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Surojit Chatterjee, the Vice president of Google, stated that their principal goal is to inspire people to find the appropriate product and improve the shopping experience. She said that today customers do not search for a simple image on Google; instead, they seek for fresh ideas. Looking at ready-to-wear solutions, this is much easier to understand how these products will fit them or their interior, or what colours they will be harmonised with.
One more curious thing is that Google will also bring Showcase Shopping ads to a Google Images search engine results page, changing the design a bit, since these two formats of shoppable ads follow the same goals. Recall that Showcase Shopping is now available in 17 countries and used only for very broad top-of-the-funnel queries, unlike product ads.
This means that theoretically, almost all niches of the retail market will be able to run such ad campaigns. However, the creators focused more on visually esthetical spheres such as fashion and home design.
Along with that, online retailers will be able to “stream” their relevant products information beyond advertising on Google at no charge, using Merchant Center.
When will be launched?
Shoppable images on Google are currently being tested only among a selected number of retailers. However, this is expected to roll out officially in Autumn 2019.
Lack of official information arouses rumours that shoppable image ads will be displayed on curated content from Google publishing partners. However, these resources don’t clarify anything about ad image search engine optimisation.
Being a premier Google partner, we will be able to test shoppable image ads as soon as this is available. If you want to optimise images on your ecommerce website, feel free to contact our SEO experts today.
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