Product Listing Ads – Amazon Is Worried – Should You Be?
Due to the huge uptake in AdWords Product Listing Ads that Google has enjoyed Amazon has been hit quite hard by the impact that product listing ads have on Google’s search results page as they used to be there for most items in the top 3 and quite compelling ads due to the brand loyalty people have for Amazon.
On the search results page below you’ll see the nice juicy images that attract such a good click through rate, then off to the right you’ll see Amazon’s PPC advert, not making quite so much impact as they used to before google product listing ads were introduced :
It’s also been suggested that Google is looking to facilitate purchase from these product listing ads at some point in the future without the user ever having to leave Google and go to the merchant’s site, which again has Amazon worried. Other merchants should also worry in our opinion as the key take away from a user searching, finding the product they like at the right price and then buying it will be that users found what they wanted on Google and not on the merchant’s site, brand exposure will become less, brand loyalty will erode and whilst merchant’s will get sales from here only Google really wins here longterm from a customer experience and loyalty point of view if users never visit merchants sites the chance to build a relationship is less, the chance to upsell or cross sell is lower too etc.
As if that wasn’t bad enough for Amazon being pushed to the side (or left to fend for themselves in the organic listings, which are getting pushed further down the page each year) Google is testing new AdWords product listing ads that give the user the option to increase the number of images from 5 to 16 like below :
As you can see this test product listing adblock slides out and totally covers the organic listing area, this is bad news for organic merchants selling products, if you are relying on organic traffic you’ll find Google is evolving to the point where it’s going to be hard to make a living in some sectors.
eBay and Walmart are currently running more product listing ads then amazon, they are down in 11th place by volume of ads on a recent survey in June of those companies using product listing ads, they account for just 1% of the inventory deployed and thus is currently just looking like another average listing.
If you selling products and aren’t currently utilising Google AdWords product listing ads then you should give them a test, they are generating strong sales and it would be wise to having your image ads there rather than a competitor.
