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More insights on Google Shopping Actions. Create public events in Google Maps
Yesterday, we broke the news about the launch of personalized Shopping Actions (GSA) within the Google Shopping platform. We know you want to know more on this, so we’ve brought you one of the first case studies on GSA.
Other than that, Google is quietly rolling out another feature in Maps. How useful is this feature and for whom?
Let’s jump into the GSA case study first.
Case Study on Google Shopping Actions
Many of you have been wondering whether you should stick to conventional Product Listing Ads (PLA) on Google Shopping, try the new marketplace with Google Shopping Actions (GSA) at a cost per sale model, or experiment with both of them.
To clarify things and hopefully answer your questions, we bring you this case study on Google Shopping Actions by a retailer which recently tested GSA on the new marketplace.
First, let’s look at some highlights from Google’s own findings on GSA.
- 68% of shoppers are new buyers on the marketplace. This means they were less likely to have already bought from a retailer which was not on Google Express.
- Ulta Beauty, a huge beauty chain, saw a 35% increase in their Average Order Value (AOV).
- 20% increase in order size for Target.
Now, let’s jump into the actual case study conducted by a retail sports brand Ambush Board Co.
Objective
- To measure the impact on PLA performance by running GSA simultaneously.
- To measure overall gains and losses by running PLA and GSA simultaneously.
Timeframe: 4 months
Workflow
- A shopping feed was uploaded to both PLA and GSA.
- Orders were received on Google’s GSA platform.
- Order details were then shared with retailers website for fulfilment and logistics.
- Tracking numbers were sent back to GSA.
Results
- 80% cost increase when running both PLA and GSA in unison.
- 20% performance drop and a 16% cost increase on PLA.
- Overall conversions increased by 115%.
- Overall conversion value increased by 104%.
Takeaways
- Combining PLA and GSA campaigns is the best option to maximize sales.
- Google is exposing GSA ads for low funnel searches and PLA ads for high funnel searches.
- For higher funnel search queries, using PLAs to send users directly to your own website works better.
- For lower funnel search queries, using GSAs is a better option. Let Google do all the heavy lifting for you.
That should answer your question. The total revenue for the company doubled when using PLA along with GSA, and if that’s not exciting news for retailers we don’t know what is!
Zoom In
If you’re targeting search terms with low buyer intent, use GSA. If Google is able to convert these cold audiences into buyers on their own platform, you might be happy to offer a cost per sale to Google.
Basically, you’re paying Google an extra fee for the customer acquisition.
However, search terms with a high buyer intent or branded keywords are hot audiences for your brand. Use PLAs to send this traffic directly to your website.
Allow these buyers to gain a better understanding about your brand and make them your loyal customers.
GSA is still new, but we hope this case study has helped you gain some more insight on Google’s new marketplace and how you can use it to your advantage.
Google Maps rolls out a new feature
In another Google update, Google Maps is now allowing users to create public events associated with their locations.
- Events can be added to a Google Maps listing using the Android app.
- From the Contribute tab, tap on ‘Add a public event’ to start creating an event.
- You can specify a name, location, start time, end time, category, description, website, and even add photos.
Though there is no official announcement on this from Google, some users have already started seeing these results in SERP. At the moment, it’s unclear exactly who is getting access to this feature and why.
It could have something to do with whether a user is a Local Guide or not. Chances are that it might be restricted to people who have a legitimate history of contributing accurate information to Maps.
The reason for this is simple – If everyone is given the ability to add a public event to Google Maps, this feature would undoubtedly get abused almost instantly.
Hiring an FB Ads expert?
Are you looking for a quick way to gauge a potential new employee’s skills? If you are, then it’s good news for you!
We came across this Facebook Ads Quiz that can help you quickly evaluate potential employees.
It’s a quick 10-minute test and gives you a brief overview of their knowledge and expertise in FB Ads.
You can even take this test yourself and see how much of an expert you yourself are! *wink*
SPONSORED
Mobile Content is not dead. It’s all about competition and know-how!
We’re sure you’ve heard that Mobile Content is suffering due to market regulation. Or maybe you’re new in affiliate marketing and haven’t heard. Let us bring everyone on the same page.
During the “golden days” of Mobile Content offers, there were close to no regulations when it comes to billing flows, so 1-click was available across the board. That brought 2 things: a high CVR but also a lot of competition for this offer type.
Fast forward 2 years until today and the fact that regulation shifted the offers to 2-click or mobile-originated (MO) flows might be the biggest reason to get back in. Hear out what Spicyoffers has to say…
Competition was super high a few years ago. CPMs were soaring. Since the regulations came into play, something changed… Affiliates switched to sweeps, nutra and e-com. Competition is dwindling.
So what’s the status these days?
- Conversion rates have indeed dropped, but they are much more stable.
- Cost of traffic has also significantly decreased. There’s less competition so pricing is bound to decrease! Carrier traffic is as cheap as WiFi traffic in some cases.
Since traffic can be 5 times cheaper, there’s still a window for 200-300% ROI on your campaigns. If you find the performance network that understand the market conditions, that builds proper offers and is committed to this offer type.
Spicyoffers aggregates years and years of experience on the mobile content field. They know how to make it happen by following these 3 major commitments.
- Competitive Payouts. They negotiate the highest payout for you.
- Aggressive flows. They carefully select offers based on their user flow to ensure high CR. For example:
- Videogram – 1 click – ZA – CellC – Other – Responsive – CPL: 1.40€ (mainstream)
- Download Freak – 2 clicks – IT – Tim, Wind, H3G – Software – Mobile – CPS: 1.96€ (mainstream)
- Mr. Skin – 1 click – PT – Vodafone – Charm & Adult – Mobile2 – CPL: $2.80 (adult)
- Sex Deluxe – 1 click – GR – Vodafone – Charm & Adult – Mobile – CPL: $2.28 (adult)
- All their offers are internally tested and approved by their Mobile Content experts.
If you want to know more about Mobile Content and how to skyrocket your revenue, ping one of their experts.
REPORTS
Direct Response Paid Media Report
We love our readers! It’s not a cliché either, we really do!
Especially when they share some useful content to include in our daily briefing, Such as this Direct Response Report.
Okay, we don’t share everything our readers send to us, but this report has some key insights and looks particularly interesting.
It’s been compiled by performance marketing agency, Jump!. It analyzes over 8B impressions, 50M clicks and 4M conversions.
More than enough data to find some trends and insights that can help us out.
Before we get into the analysis, note that 95% of the traffic analyzed is from USA.
Traffic sources include: Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Google Search Ads, Google Display Ads, Bing Ads, Taboola, Yahoo Gemini and Outbrain.
Now, let’s dive into the analysis and trends:
- CPC: Q3 CPC spiked, with Q4 being very similar. Which means that fewer people clicked on ads.
- CTR: CTR has steadily fallen over the past year. This could be down to two potential factors: One is the introduction of Stories, which have a low CTR. While higher spend towards Audience Network also has lowered CTR.
- CPM: CPMs in 2018 were much higher than 2016-2017.
Takeaways
- More competition: FB announced that it has now over 7M advertisers on its platform. As this number continues to grow, CPM will keep rising too.
- Newsfeed CPMs are still rising: CPM on the most effective placement continued to rise. This means advertisers have been forced to adopt new placements, and to adjust to a creative-first strategy from a media-first strategy.
- Automation to become forced: Automation will be the biggest topic for FB in 2019. CBO is the first example, but even bigger audiences performing better than niche audiences show that FB wants to control campaign optimization and targeting through their algorithm.
- CPC: CPCs steadily rose each quarter. While more budgets have been shifting to this platform, the majority of that has been used on the Stories format.
- CTR: CTR went down here as well. Similarly to FB, this is because of Stories’ low CTR.
- CPM: CPM rose mid-year, but it went down again as the year ended. That’s because the ad load moved to Stories, reducing CPMs even during the busy final quarter.
Takeaways:
- Instagram is the new Facebook: More and more brands are migrating from FB to IG. Increased competition has resulted in CPMs rising.
- Stories Adoption: Most advertisers adopted IG Stories. The format efficacy is still up for debate. It’s 100% creative driven and is thought of more as a brand awareness placement over direct response placement. Again, that’s because of the low CTR.
- Shopping is coming: Instagram rolled out many shopping features since the beginning of the year, and it will continue to do so in 2019.
Paid Search
- CPC: Clicks are getting more expensive as competition on the SERP grows more fierce than it ever has been. CPCs for Tablet traffic is still the cheapest, but Mobile is the more effective option.
- CTR: CTR follows a positive trend: Up by over 20% from Q3. Consumers are open to clicking on ads on this platform.
- Devices: Mobile continued to dominate, accounting for 54% of the total spend. Desktop is right behind at 41%, yet it turns out to be more efficient in the consumers’ conversion journey.
Takeaways:
- Automation is becoming the norm: With algorithms and machine learning taking over, we’re finally seeing the results of all the hard work put in by ad platforms, and Google in particular. Automation will allow media buyers to save more time which they can utilize in strategy and data analysis.
- Google is still the king: Bing lags way behind Google, although their small volume is made more attractive by low CPAs. Moreover, Bing will become the search provider for Yahoo, so there are more changes on the horizon.
- Search Ad Inventory & Options Keep Growing: Search ads continue to grow larger and advertisers who take advantage of every ad feature will dominate the search results.
Native
- CPC: CPC on native ads has been going down steadily. Moreover, Jump! noticed a gradual shift in ad spend towards mobile traffic where the average CPCs are significantly lower.
- CTR: CTR on Native has exploded. This is due to the shift to mobile, where the CTR is usually 2x higher than on desktop.
- CPM: During Q1, CPMs were abnormally high, but then settled back in the Q2. Again, in Q3 and Q4, it started to grow again. This was because CPMs on native ads follow seasonal trends for shopping, fitness services, taxation etc.
Takeaways:
- Native Ads market share is growing: Native ad spending as a percentage of overall display ad spending will continue to grow and it’s estimated to be at 74% by 2021, according to Business Insider.
- Video Ads reign supreme: Native video ads have also started to outpace the growth of other ad formats.
- Artificial Intelligence is on the way: Native platforms are also moving towards the power of artificial intelligence to improve targeting capabilities. Automation enhancements will help improve the efficiency for both buyers and sellers on the native ad platforms.
You can also find stats and insights on other platforms such as YouTube and Google Display Network. Have a look at the doc if you want to learn more about them.
Meeting Planner within LinkedIn Messenger
LinkedIn has added a new feature to its messaging app which will make it easier for users to organise meetups without having to leave the messaging stream.
- Users will now be able to share their availability to schedule meetings quicker.
- Users will also be able to share their one-time location to quickly find a spot to meet.
We know scheduling can often be a pain; you have to switch back and forth between apps to check your calendar, copy and paste multiple time slots, and then coordinate with the other person. So we set out to streamline this process. You can now share your availability directly within a conversation you’re having in the LinkedIn app.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Beer will make you rich!
Did you read the report above? Nice stats, right? However, there’s one huge trend missing.
This is a trend that can make or break your business.
Do you want to lynch your competitors like Russell Crowe in the “Gladiator” movie?
Yes? Nice! ‘Cause there’s only one move that’s keeping you away from that.
And that move is… Targeting drunk people. Yes! You read that right!
In fact, a survey conducted by The Hustle showed that in the USA, drunk shoppers spent $48B per year while intoxicated.
Every drunk shopper spends $444 per year.
Unfortunately, Amazon is the biggest beneficiary of all that inebriated money.
Well, waking up with a hangover and an Amazon order confirmation is the new waking up in Las Vegas married to a stranger and a new tattoo.
+ Alcohol Alert: Don’t drink and SHOP!
PS: Did you ever read this magazine on alcohol effects?
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