Shopping Blog

(cross-posted on the DoubleClick Search Blog)
A few months ago, we announced improvements to our inventory-aware campaigns feature, which automatically creates and optimizes a retailer’s search campaigns, based on updates made to their Google Merchant Center product feed. Since then, we’ve seen some impressive results across the board, showing that inventory-managed keywords more than doubled return on ad spend for heavy users(1).

Today, we wanted to highlight one of our success stories around this feature. The following story comes from Piston -- a bicoastal digital agency in the US, who helped their retail client maintain a “stylish profile” by keeping their campaigns relevant using inventory-aware campaigns.

After working around the clock to keep up with ever-changing product descriptions, prices, and landing pages during a busy holiday season, Piston turned to inventory-aware campaigns to scale their campaign management across their retail client’s 8,000+ products.

“When we’re looking for a solution, the key questions we ask are: can this save us time, can this save us money, and does it have features that can really help us impact our bottom line? And with DoubleClick inventory-aware campaigns, the answer was always ‘Yes’.” says Jennifer Johnstone, Senior Performance Marketing Strategist at Piston. “Inventory-aware campaigns allow us to save time from manually managing product inventory, enable us to spend our dollars on more efficient product level keywords, and help us drive more revenue than manual campaign builds.”

One quarter after adopting inventory-aware campaigns, Piston saw a 51% rise in ROAS, a 26% jump in CTR, and a 50% boost in conversion rate, compared to manually-managed campaigns. Additionally, inventory-aware campaigns allowed them to expand keyword coverage on both products and SKUs by 49% -- all while saving an estimated 38 hours over one quarter since implementation.

To get the full scoop on Piston’s success with inventory-aware campaigns, download the full customer story here. Stay tuned to the DoubleClick Search blog and Google+ page for even more customer success stories.

1. Google internal data, 2013

(cross-posted on the Google Commerce Blog)

People love saving money. According to eMarketer, almost 88.2 million people--or half of all U.S. adults who use the Internet--redeemed an online coupon in 2011, and this number should increase to 96.8 million by 2013. So it’s no wonder why so many companies, big and small, are using discounts, in the form of daily deals, to drive increases in sales.

In November 2011 Google Offers partnered with REI, the nationally loved outdoor retailer, to run REI’s first-ever daily deal and Google’s first-ever national offer: $15 for $25 worth of outdoor gear from REI.

Co-branded landing page used with marketing campaign to increase awareness of the offer

“REI was looking for ways to learn how we can use daily deals to drive the business during a non-promotional period, both within our stores and online, and a partnership with Google was a great fit,” said Teresa Harting, REI’s Marketing Manager. “We wanted to partner with a company that understood our brand and could manage it appropriately in the midst of a large-scale promotional announcement.”

In the weeks leading up to the offer, REI and Google worked closely to develop an offer that accurately reflected the REI brand. The companies also worked hand in hand to craft a well-executed pre-offer campaign that would drive interest and awareness among REI customers. The campaign, which ended on the date the offer ran, included the following tactics:

• A 10 day teaser campaign on Google’s GDN, which drove people to a co-branded landing page for the offer. 
• An email campaign sent to REI’s opted-in subscriber base and to Google Offers opted-in subscribers on the day of the offer. 
• REI Facebook and Twitter posts were published the day before the offer and the day of the offer.
• Facebook promotion on the REI brand page, including real-time interaction with customers to answer any questions about the offer.

REI.com site promotion on the day of the offer

Beginning on November 3rd, the REI Google Offer ran for 24 hours and was purchased by nearly 90,000 people across the U.S. The one-day deal has driven a significant amount of sales, both online and offline, and the average order value exceeded REI’s already high expectations. Further analysis will continue through the end of the redemption period to understand the total business impact, but it’s clear that REI will continue to see a benefit from their Google Offer.

“Our objective in running a Google Offer was to understand if we could attract new REI customers and increase traffic to our stores and to our website. Additionally, we wanted to gain a better understanding around how daily deals work for REI and if it would yield similar or higher average order values across both new and loyal customers. We have seen strong redemption and are continuing to track the results through the end of the redemption period. Overall, we are happy with the results of our very first daily deal with Google Offers,” said Harting.

If you’re a merchant and are interested in running a Google Offer, please visit: google.com/offers/business. 

Posted by Robin Lien, Google U.S. Retail Team

With the flurry of new phone models launching, the mobile phone market is heating up again this Holiday shopping season.

This means more choices for people interested in purchasing a smartphone -- and a challenge for retailers, wireless carriers and hardware manufacturers alike. To succeed, companies need to understand how shoppers are most likely to research and make their purchases this year, online and in stores, and the connection between the two channels.

As a digital marketing leader with over 2,200 store locations in the US, Verizon Wireless recognizes the importance of understanding this connection well. Additionally, as Google searches on non-brand terms like “smartphone”, “new phone” and “mobile phone” have increased 10% year over year, the company has noted the growing opportunity to reach customers researching general terms online before purchasing in store.


In an effort to drill down into the offline -- or in-store -- impact of online advertising on non-brand wireless searches like the ones mentioned above, Verizon worked with Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) and Google to measure the in-store impact of search advertising on non-brand terms over the course of four weeks. The results were impressive:

• Five new phone activations in Verizon owned-and-operated stores for every phone activation online
• 366% return on non-brand search advertising spend

Understanding the incremental value of digital advertising in delivering store sales will help marketers to fully harness the expanding drive-to-store opportunities across desktop, mobile and tablet. As you prepare for the 2011 holiday season, are you capitalizing on search opportunities to get shoppers into your stores?

Posted by Matthieu Mcauliffe, The Google Channel Ads Team

(cross-posted on the Google Mobile Ads Blog)

HP launched a campaign to build awareness and preference for its ink cartridge products. As part of the digital marketing program, HP took advantage of Google’s mobile rich media capabilities to engage consumers on smartphones and tablets.

The rich media ads featured a short interactive game that HP developed for Android and iOS phones and tablets. Users could drag their fingertips across the screen to guide a net andcapture floating butterflies and score points for coupon savings while learning about the HP supplies value proposition.



As it turned out, HP’s playful mobile experience yielded impressive results. Within seven weeks, HP drove significant engagement with consumers. The campaign, executed with the help of mobile agency Airwave, resulted in:

• Over 400,000 games played
• 15% of consumers replaying the game
• Over 26,000 video views

HP took notice of the mobile engagement rates and are now considering other ways to take advantage of the rich creative palette that mobile can provide. According to Tariq Hassan, VP WW Marketing and Communications at HP, “Our customers are looking to mobile devices for entertainment as well as education. Through this collaboration with Google, we were able to deliver both at the same time, giving our customers valuable information about our products in a fun and engaging way.”


Posted by Kevin Otsuka, Associate Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

Few would argue that online display advertising is playing an increasingly important role in the marketing mix. While we frequently talk about how the vast majority of our top advertisers have run a Google display campaign in the last year while continuing to increase their investment, today we’re shining a light on some specific examples.

For each brand we’re highlighting today, display was an integral part of their broader marketing strategy. To make it work, they tapped into a robust display advertising toolbox and applied targeting, creative, measurement and optimization solutions that made the most sense for their campaign objective. Let’s take a look at the results.

Airbnb increased the number of nights booked from 800,000 to 2 million with help from remarketing on the Google Display Network and TrueView video ads on YouTube. (Read case study)

[cross-posted on the Mobile Ads Blog]

Welcome to the latest post in our Mobile Insights series featuring expert views from our mobile ads team. This week’s guest contributors are Alex Barza and Kacy Brod, who lead our U.S. mobile efforts for Retail. Here are their thoughts on the state of mobile marketing in retail gleaned from Think Retail 2011, Google’s annual gathering of retail executives.

At this year’s Think Retail event in Mountain View, mobile marketing was a hot topic.

We started the day by summarizing the most interesting retail insights from a recently conducted 5,000 person mobile survey (watch the three minute highlight video). We also noted that last year our #1 recommendation to retailers was to create mobile-optimized sites and/or apps. After a quick survey of Internet Retailer’s top 100 ranked companies, we’re happy to report the majority now have created one or both.

After speaking with many retailers and analyzing our own retail data, we identified six trends and recommendations around each to help retailers evolve their mobile strategies.

#1 -- Mobile Is Highly Engaging: There’s no other platform that can allow you to touch and engage with a product or brand like mobile can, so intrigue users to interact with your advertising campaign. Invite them to swipe, rotate, tell their own story, or upload their own personal video: the sky’s the limit. The Gilt Groupe, for instance, ran a iPad Rich Media Interstitial ad that lets users interact with multiple product images by swiping and enlarging the images in an interactive manner. Users simply tap or pinch-out and, in this case, have the option to download the app directly from the Apple Marketplace.



Recommendation: Tie mobile into other branding and channel marketing strategies and look at tapping into Mobile's unique native features to further engage customers.

#2 -- Local Drives Business: We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: we believe in local search. The most popular mobile shopping activity is locating the nearest retailer. When consumers find local information, 88% take action within a day; of this number, 61% call a retailer and 59% visit a store. (1)




Recommendation: Be discoverable and drive store foot traffic when consumers are searching for your business, products, or services. Integrate store locatiors into your display campaigns to help your customers find stores nearest to them.

#3 -- Consumers Want Offers: Google research shows that 70% of consumers use their smartphones while shopping. Why? Consumers love to compare prices while in a store. When we analyzed last year’s holiday search trends, we found a 250% increase over the previous year in searches related to offers and deals.

Recommendation: Use Ads with Offers and mobile coupons in both search and display to drive consumers into your stores and keep them there while they are comparison shopping. Include mobile to distribute promotional offers and time-sensitive coupons and designate custom mobile codes to track the return on your ad spend.

Both display and search ads deliver returns for retailers

#4 -- Consumers Engage with Mobile on Multiple Platforms: More than 165 million tablets are expected to ship in the next two years, and according to eMarketer, 41% of people say shopping is their sole purpose for buying a tablet. As a result we’ve noticed a big surge in search on tablets which has prompted us to completely redesign and optimize the tablet search results page for a touch interface. This means retailers need to have a cross-platform strategy which includes tablets.




Recommendation: Test new ad formats and redesign experiences specifically for different types of devices. Target tablets within your existing desktop search campaigns or break them out to ensure appropriate coverage, especially during this holiday season. Reach the tablet customer via new rich media ad templates that make it easy to execute a rich user experience resulting in extremely high engagement. These templates take advantage of tablets’ larger screen sizes, high-res graphics, touch screens and multimedia capabilities to drive deep engagement with mobile audiences. Take a look at our launch partner video here!

#5 -- Mobile Is Incremental: Fifteen percent of all shopping-related searches are now on a mobile device. This spells opportunity for retailers to tap into search growth by specifically targeting mobile devices and tablets.

When one advertising agency expanded their client’s business onto mobile, they saw some unexpected but very interesting behaviors. 20% of clients who conducted research on the desktop finalized their purchases on mobile devices. Seeing this incredible crossover data, they invested in mobile search advertising by leveraging Google’s Click-to-call ads to drive traffic to their call centers and also sent mobile users to an easy to use two-step ordering process on mobile and tablet sites. This investment led to a large increase of new prospects and also lowered the cost of a sale by 25% when occurring on mobile versus the call center. This is just one example of what can be achieved.



Recommendation: We see huge search spikes during the holiday season, as the above shopping query trend graph illustrates. In fact, last year Google saw a 250% increase on Black Friday related queries vs 2009 during the week of Black Friday and we’re hoping for another banner year for mobile. This is a valuable time to get in front of consumers, so have specific mobile holiday strategies in place and establish appropriate budgets. Below are two examples of how Target and Home Depot used Black Friday messaging during the week of Black Friday to capture the increased demand.




#6 -- A Word On Measurement: Mobile acts as a bridge and impacts your in-store and online channels. The opportunity is huge, but it requires innovative thinking, adapting to new realities, and challenging the assumed models. Our research shows that when consumers make purchases as a result of research conducted on their phones, 76% purchase in-store and 59% purchase online, while a smaller portion purchase on their phones.

Recommendation: Measure mobile differently; don’t measure success solely on mobile sales broadly. Think of conversions differently -- metrics such as a store look-up, customer sign-up, redemption of an offer in store, or app downloads are important. Tablets, on the other hand, have shown very strong eCommerce ROI, especially in retail, and can be measured more like desktop.

To learn more about the above recommendations, download the Full Think Retail Mobile Deck here.

For a quick snapshot of what’s available for retail in mobile now, check out our retail sizzle video.

Posted by: Alex Barza, Senior Account Executive, Mobile & Kacy Brod, Mobile Head of Display, Retail


Additional Notes (1) Google & OTX Study Q4 2010

[cross-posted from the Google Mobile Ads Blog]

Bridgevine is a company that is focused on driving customer acquisition for its clients via its Acquisition and Merchandising Platform, AMP. The platform is a complex network that combines several different channels of promotion to support clients in marketing. To ensure that they are in front of all prospective clients, Bridgevine has been using online and mobile campaigns to promote their business with display and search advertising across both platforms.

As Bridgevine expanded their business onto mobile, they saw some unexpected but very interesting behavior from clients. 20% of clients that did research on the desktop would then finalize their purchase on their mobile devices. Seeing this incredible crossover data, Bridgevine invested in mobile search advertising by leveraging Google’s click to call to drive traffic to their call centers and also send mobile users to an easy to use two-step ordering process on mobile and tablet sites. This investment led to a large increase of new prospects and also lowered the cost of a sale by 25% when occurring on mobile versus the call center.

With visible success with Google Mobile Ads, Bridgevine targeted their mobile audience by generating mobile-only deals accessible via their mobile optimized site. To ensure they were targeting customers accurately on specific mobile devices, Bridgevine put resources toward campaigns that focused on device keywords, and then tweaked the campaigns to suit the interactions they saw by device. The campaigns using Google mobile ads drove up mobile sales by 10% for Bridgevine; something they believe wouldn’t have happened without Google mobile.

With this type of success in mobile, and also seeing a crossover from desktop to mobile, Bridgevine will continue to invest in mobile advertising as an asset to the growth of their company’s revenue.

To learn more about this crossover campaign, download the entire case study here.

Posted by Dalia Mitra, Product Marketing Manager, Mobile Ads

As we shared last month, Google’s Online to Store research shows that online marketing campaigns are effective in significantly increasing in-store sales. In other words, digital ads influence shopping decisions made in physical store aisles as well as those made in front of computer screens.

This week, we’ll take a closer look at the individual Online to Store study results of technology company Hewlett-Packard (HP). HP collaborated with Google and Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) to quantify the impact of online search ads on in-store purchases. They conducted a four-week long study in which users were exposed to HP search ads co-branded with a leading national electronics retailer. Would a significant number of users who clicked on a co-branded HP/retailer ad after searching on keywords such as “hp laptop” and “laptop computer” then purchase a product at the physical retail location, generating incremental in-store sales?

The answer, the study showed, was yes. The online campaign resulted in a 530% overall return on advertising spend (ROAS) for computers, with a 1,090% ROAS in the top 25% of markets based on specific store attributes for the computing category. Furthermore, HP found that ads for higher-end models and ads in more prominent positions on the searchresults page were correlated with an even higher increase in physical store sales. This suggests that some users who conduct research online may be more comfortable purchasing higher-end items at a local store, and also highlights the importance of ad rank in influencing users.

To learn more about this and other studies, visit Google’s new Think Insights site.

Posted by Emily Parker, The Google Tech Team

Editor’s note: Woodcraft Supply is one of the nation’s oldest and largest suppliers of quality woodworking tools and supplies, offering more than 20,000 products through its retail stores, catalog, and website. We’ve invited today’s guest blogger, Nancy Miller, VP of Internet Sales and Development for Woodcraft Supply, to talk about how Google has helped her increase search revenue and transform Woodcraft’s online store. To learn more about her experience, read the Woodcraft.com case study.


At Woodcraft, we strive to provide the best experience for our customers, which means helping them find the right tool for the project. To this end, our retail stores are staffed with knowledgeable woodworkers. Online, we need a powerful search engine.

Prior to our switch to Google Commerce Search, Woodcraft had been using another popular third-party search solution - but we just weren’t seeing the same level of satisfaction on our website as we were in our stores. Visitors to our site often couldn’t find the products they were looking for, and our support team fielded a lot of complaints. Our customers were frustrated and our conversions suffered so we decided to make a change.

After thorough research, we picked Google to host our e-commerce search; their service provided better results, improved rankings, and an intuitive administrator interface. Google Commerce Search is simpler to maintain and much more effective than our old solution - even before customization. In fact, during our testing period we moved half of our traffic to Google Commerce Search and left the remainder on our existing solution – and with Google our conversions from search were 27.7 percent higher and our search revenues were up 34 percent!

Beyond providing a multifaceted search experience with better results, and increasing our online sales, Google Commerce Search has made our customers and employees much happier with our website. The complaints have virtually disappeared, giving us more time to focus on our passion: woodworking.



Above: Nancy Miller, Kyle Crabtree, Chris Brown, Matt Hall, Steve Markle September Fleming, and Daniel Pennock with their latest woodworking project.

Posted by Nancy Miller, Woodcraft Supply