While it’s probably in your best interest to seek the advice and help of professionals in order to make the most out of your product listing ads, that’s not always going to be an option for you. We get that, which is why we’ve decided to offer what we like to call Product Listing Ad Best Practices to help you make the most of your Google Product Listing Ads.

#1. Stay on top of your budget. We can’t express enough how often we see our clients create a product listing ad project that starts out on the higher end of their budget. There’s no quicker way to burn out your ad then to spend the money long before you’ve gotten your money’s worth. Be absolutely sure you know your budget, and how much you want to spend on your product listing ads.

#2. Now that you know your budget, begin the bidding. Bidding is important. It’s so important, in fact, that we dedicated a blog to PLA bidding. You need to determine what to bid for your PLAs. This can be a tricky science, something that companies like OperationROI spend endless hours perfecting. You see, sometimes you’ll have to up your bid to something like $7, just to get into Google’s rotation. That doesn’t mean that’s what you’ll be stuck paying (again, it’s a tricky science). Your best bet, if you’re going the DIY approach, is to continuously monitor your PLAs and constantly tweak your bids according to the results you’re getting. Be sure to ride the wave of the PLAs seeing the most traffic.

#3. Optimize your data feed. This is a biggie. For small businesses with less than, say, a few thousand products, this isn’t a terrible task, yet still, it’s quite time consuming. Optimizing your data feeds is a lot like optimizing your web pages. You need to look at your product titles, descriptions, and images. Your titles should be front-loaded with your keywords. Your descriptions should be engaging and essentially force the reader to click to see more. The image should be clear, eye-catching, and colorful, if applicable.

There is, of course, much more to your Product Listing Ads then what we’ve mentioned here. But as we’ve stated before, this is a complicated science. One of the fastest ways to fail with the DIY approach is to get overwhelmed with terms and practices that are beyond your scope or capabilities. Handling your PLAs on your own is limiting, but if you maintain a small-scale approach, and focus more energy on the tips listed above, you should see some success.

If, however, you’re looking for a more in-depth approach to your PLAs, we can help. Learn more about what we can do for your Product Listing Ads, by calling us at 1-888-277-5429 or filling out our contact form.

There was a time when listing products on Google was free, and bidding wasn’t involved.  While many people still pine for those days, in reality, not being able to bid meant that you had far less control than you do now in Google Shopping.

Before Google introduced Product Listing Ad (PLA) bidding, you had absolutely no control on where Google showed your products. And, if you had a product that was performing extremely well, there was little you could do to give it the level of exposure you’d want. You were at the mercy of Google’s algorithms.

However, now with bidding, you have much more control over your Product Listing Ads. What this means is you can take a look at all of your products, and assess the bids for each one. Then, you can assess how each product is converting. Armed with this knowledge you can actually adjust your bidding accordingly.

This gives you far more control over your own products than ever before.

Some drawbacks to bidding on Google’s Product Listing Ads

Of course, with anything new and different, there’ll be some drawbacks and opposition. Inexperience is one of the biggest drawbacks. With new control and power, the potential to be a strong competitor is there; however, if you’re a small business or merchant without the experience of, for example, data feeds, you may find yourself in over your head.

Properly assessing the performance of your products, and making decisions accordingly, is a complex task for anyone, particularly someone not familiar with this type of setting. You may be inclined to forego the whole affair, concerned about the amount of time and resources it’s consuming.

However, making the most of your product listing ads can absolutely make or break your business. In reality you cannot afford to avoid taking control over your product listing ad bids. While this may seem like a burden to you, it doesn’t have to be. Companies such as OperationROI make it their business to help you sift through the data to maximize profits without wasting valuable time and resources. Learn more by calling our experts at 1-888-277-5429 or filling out our contact form.

The eBay Commerce Network sent out an announcement today presenting their new tracking metrics and reporting improvements. These additional improvements are a welcome sign of things to come out of Shopping.com. eBay also released revised feed specification, including new fields earlier in April. We expect to see more upcoming changes as eBay continues to improve the interface for merchants.

 

Dear Greg,

We are excited to announce several enhancements to the ROI Tracker tool, which will provide you with deeper insights into your campaign. By implementing this upgraded version, here’s what’s you’ll benefit from:

Advanced Tracking

• Merchant SKU: Make data driven bidding and optimization decisions using granular performance data.
• Order notes:  Capture any relevant order information for future reference, such as ‘in-store pickup’ or ‘new customer’.
• Unit price: Calculate critical performance metrics including cost of sale (COS) and average order value (AOV).
• Item quantity: Better understand customer value with visibility into transaction details including number of units sold for a unique SKU and incremental items placed in the same order.

Improved reporting

Leverage the new ‘Order’ report which contains campaign metrics including quantity, time from click, SKU, and custom order notes.

Ready to upgrade?

Simply remove all previous code and follow a few simple steps in our implementation guide to integrate the new version. And if you don’t wish to upgrade at this time there is no action needed as eBay Commerce Network maintains full backwards compatibility.

Sincerely,

Merchant Services
eBay Commerce Network

Staying on top of the ever evolving shopping engines can be confusing, but we can help. We are always reviewing and gathering information on how these and other changes may affect your account. You can always contact our experts for advice, by calling us at 1-888-277-5429 or filling out our contact form.

In a startling announcement Google said it is retiring the Google Affiliate Network to focus on other products that are driving better results for their clients. According to a post on the Google Affiliate Network blog, the company states that it will continue to support the network and customers as they  deprecate the service over the next few months.

Google stated that the rapidly evolving cost-per-action (CPA) market lead to this difficult decision. Also at play is the significant investments Google has placed in other CPA tools like Product Listing Ads (PLAs), Remarketing and Conversion Optimizer.

Google states “We’re constantly evaluating our products to ensure that we’re focused on the services that will have the biggest impact for our advertisers and publishers.” They go on to say “These areas are growing rapidly and we’re continuing to invest heavily in them.”

What now?

Affiliate publishers can continue to achieve revenue and goals via the AdSense network. For marketers, Google is suggesting other CPA-oriented solutions. They feel that the rapid growth of Product Listing Ads, Remarketing and Conversion Optimizer to will continue to prosper, drive conversions, and revenue.

There is also the other option of jumping ship to another affiliate network. LinkShare, Commission Junction and Share-A-Sale are all smiling a little bigger today.

If you are a current or a previous Google Affiliate Network member, we are curious on your feelings and how it affects you website?

We’re are monitoring this development to see the impact moving forward in the ever evolving e-commerce world. You can always contact our experts for advice, by calling us at 1-888-277-5429 or filling out our contact form.

How you choose to fund your CSE accounts is a major decision that’s often made without any thought. But if you choose the wrong funding method, you could wreak havoc on your online ROI. Get informed with the types of CSE funding, before making a decision you might regret down the road.

Choosing a manual payment plan

Manual payment plans are like gift cards. A seller loads up money on an account, and the CSE withdraws that money based on the click cost. In this format, a merchant must refill the account based on the balance of the account. Once the account dips below a certain level, the merchant has to refill it.

This comes across as rather straightforward and a likely avenue for most merchants. It’s always nice to have control over as many areas of your business as possible, but there are downsides to this method.

For starters, what if your account goes beyond that threshold at an extremely inconvenient time, such as when you’re on vacation, during holidays, or when you’re just away from your computer. What? You think you’re safe because of those automatic account reminders? Don’t rely solely on these reminders. They aren’t 100% timely, and chances are you’ve been the victim of lost e-mails at least one point in your life.

That being said, as a vigilant merchant you’ll likely check your CSEs regularly (since you don’t trust the automatic account reminders). Most merchants, however, don’t have this extra time to spare, thus checking their CSE accounts becomes a burden, or falls to the wayside.

So, what if my balance falls below that level?

This can have drastic effects on a number of your online efforts. Unlike a bank, you’re not going to be charged a fee for letting your account fall behind your threshold. However, what can (and does) happen is your account will be suspended. Even if you fix the issue immediately (meaning you fund your account), a suspended account could take up to two full days to be restored, and it can take up to 30 days to regain the positioning you have lost. This will also affect other online efforts, including ad campaigns and your rankings on SERPs (search engine results pages).

The continuous plan

The continuous method of funding your CSE takes control out of your hands, which may sound horrifying (or welcoming) to you. But if you have multiple CSEs, this method is sure to save you time and headaches. With the continuous plan, you, the merchant, gets to choose how much you’d like to load back onto your account once it falls below a certain amount.

Okay, you say, what if things get out of hand and I start incurring massive charges? Sure, that’s a fear any business owner has, however, if monitored regularly you’re going to catch these spikes when the occur.

With the continuous (or rolling, or whatever name your CSE uses) method, you free yourself up for other tasks, including periodic monitoring of your accounts to see if your set refill amounts should be adjusted. This way your CSE accounts are tools, rather than annoyances.

In the end it’s up to you

A large number of merchants prefer to have their CSE accounts funded continuously, so that they have one less issue to worry about. With the continuous method, you won’t ever have to worry about a pause on your accounts. But other merchants (particularly those with fewer CSEs) prefer to have complete control of their month-to-month spending. Whichever method you choose, the most important things to remember are, monitor you clicks and conversions, track the ROI, and KEEP THE ACCOUNTS FUNDED!

Choosing the right method can be confusing, but making the right decision will surely impact your ROI. You can always contact our experts for advice, by calling us at 1-888-277-5429 or filling out our contact form.

Over the past couple days we have had several clients showing conversions in Google Analytics attributed to Google Adwords, however Adwords conversion tracker was not reporting these conversions. Today we received this explanation from Google via email. Apparently the issues were not wide-spread and only affected a small number of accounts. Google is also reporting that the lost data cannot be recovered. From what we can tell, the data collect in Google Analytics for Adwords during the outage was accurate.

Dear Advertiser,

From approximately April 4th 10:00am PDT through April 8th 4:00pm PDT, a technical issue affected a small number of accounts using AdWords Conversion Tracking, including your account (XXX-XXX-XXX). As a result, AdWords failed to record all conversions that occurred during this timeframe. We have resolved the issue, and AdWords conversion tracking is again recording conversions normally in your account.

Unfortunately, it’s not possible for us to reconstruct missing conversion data. Any AdWords reports, metrics, or dashboards that include the April 4th-8th outage period will understate the actual number of conversions that occurred on your web site. As a result, metrics like conversion rate may appear lower than normal, while average cost per conversion (CPA) may appear higher than normal.

If you’ve been using optimization tools (such as conversion optimizer or enhanced CPC) that are based on AdWords Conversion Tracking data, your campaigns might have seen lowered bids and fewer clicks during the past few days. In most cases, any impact should be temporary, as fresh conversion
data is once again available.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this issue may cause you. Systems reliability is a top priority for us, so our engineering team is conducting a thorough review to help avoid any similar interruptions in the future.

Please contact Adwords support or your Google representative if you have additional questions, or would like to discuss how best to work around the missing data.

Sincerely,

The AdWords Team

So, if your missing some conversion data on Adwords over the past couple days, now you know why!

So, you setup your search campaigns to advertise your all-natural dietary supplements, detox powders and power vitamins. Sounds pretty straight forward right? WRONG! Google recently instituted a “Family-Safe” guideline that excludes certain drug names, regardless of your status as an online seller, from being displayed on their paid placements. Don’t feel singled out, several other categories, including Alcohol (hard liquor), Tobacco and Weapons were affected by this change. The good news, you can get your products on Google Search. The not-so-good news is it will take time, some effort and a whole lot of patience.

Review Google’s Advertising Policies on Pharmaceuticals and Supplements

To avoid the back and forth that will surely come your way, be sure to review the ingredient list of all your products, this will definitely save time when submitting certain ads, keywords and landing pages in your Google Adwords campaigns. There are several terms that are eligible for exception (usually generic like capsules, pills and supplements), so all is not lost and you can profit from running your campaign with a select combination of generic terms.

Google allows the use of these terms/products:

• OTC products
• Vitamins
• Dietary supplements

However, Google will not allow the use of the following:

• Dietary supplements containing harmful ingredients
• Products containing Ephedra
• Prescription drugs sold by unauthorized and unregistered online pharmacies

Google provides a pretty well detailed list of pharmaceuticals and supplements not allowed for advertising in their Advertising Policies section: Unapproved pharmaceuticals and supplements - http://goo.gl/T7Uov.

Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites

While there is a vast array of health products for sale, certain terms, and even ingredients will get flagged automatically and only a Verified Internet Pharmacy Practice Sites (VIPPS) online pharmacy certification will allow said products on Google (for both search and shopping ads). Unfortunately, this will happen whether you sell those particular “drugs” or not. The issue lies in whether you are an online pharmacy or just a reseller/manufacturer. Once Google sends out their notifications or you see them at the top of your Google account, they will at least provide the reason for disapproval. You can then communicate and get your keyword, ad, product reviewed and hopefully approved to run. Another downside is that it could take up to a week to get the final reply from the review team.

For more information on the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy VIPPS program, visit the NAPB website – http://www.nabp.net.  In addition, you will also need to be certified by Google, Google’s online pharmacy application form – http://goo.gl/bkGm4.

If you are having issues getting your ads approved there are a couple things you can do. First, review and adhere to Google’s “AdWords Policy Center” which can be reviewed here. Review Google’s “Restricted Products and Services” list here . If you are still having issues with disapproved ads or keywords, you can contact Google Adwords at 1-888-2GOOGLE.

So, check your email at least once a week to ensure you haven’t received any notifications from Google about disapproved ads and keywords. If there still issues, you can always contact our experts by calling us at 1-888-277-5429 or filling out our contact form.

Merchants now have even more options when it comes to advertising their products on Google Shopping. A beta program (Affiliate Advertising) now allows affiliates to participate in Google Shopping, meaning they can advertise products from a merchant’s site.

This beta program is limited to US-based retail affiliates and US merchants targeting the US.

Affiliates who participate in this beta program will be allowed to upload products and bids that link users to a merchant’s product page using Merchant Center and AdWords.

But just because affiliates will have new access to this form of advertising does not mean that a merchant will lose control of their Google Merchant Center account. Merchants will be shown which affiliates are interested in advertising their products and decide whether those affiliates are permitted to advertise their products on Google Shopping.

What happens if an affiliate wants to advertise my product?

Once an affiliate decides to advertise a merchant’s product, an Affiliates section will appear in the General Settings tab of their Merchant Center account. This new section will list all the affiliates attempting to advertise products featured on your site. This list will provide the contact information from the affiliates as well, allowing you, the merchant, to contact individual affiliates and request that they no longer target your site. Currently some of the larger affiliates who participate in the program are Shopzilla, NexTag, PriceGrabber and eBay Commerce Network (formally Shopping.com).

In addition to contacting individual affiliates, you can also choose to completely opt out of the Affiliate Advertising program by navigating to the General Settings tab, unchecking the box in the Affiliates section of the page, and saving your changes.

By opting out of the Affiliate Advertising beta program, you prevent future affiliates from uploading products from your site, and your choice to opt out will be visible to your affiliates.

You can choose to opt back in, of course, but all changes (opting out and opting in) may take up to 48 hours to be processed.

For affiliates, what will happen is that you’ll need to create a sub-account in AdWords for each merchant you work with. When you choose a specific product, the links must direct to the merchants landing page for the product being advertised.

Merchants who fear that they’ll lose precedence on Google Shopping as a result of this beta program need not worry. Whereas on Google.com the algorithm chooses the “best offer,” (which factors in quality score and bid), on Google Shopping, if the merchant is participating, that merchant’s PLA (Product Listing Ad) always takes precedence.

This beta program opens up a world of potential and issues for both merchants and affiliates. Looking for more clarification or help in how to best use the Affiliates Advertising program to your advantage? Contact us or call us at 888.277.5329.

Is your small or mid-sized business about to feel the wrath of Google? Earlier in the month, Matt Cutts, the head of Google’s Web Spam team, spoke at a panel at the South by Southwest (SXSW) Festival, saying that Google is “looking at the quality of merchants and whether we can do a better job on that, because we don’t want low quality experience merchants to be raking in the search results.”

The comment was in response to a question one online retailer had, where she was concerned that a disreputable competitor was ranking higher than she was.

This is, of course, not the first time Google’s made an effort to rid the SERPs with poor-quality online sellers. Back in 2010, Google aimed to penalize merchants who offered extremely poor user experience, but not much has happened since then.

This comment by Cutts comes as a relief, and scare, to many small to mid-sized businesses. His brief comment does not provide any insight into how Google will qualify a merchant as “high quality.” As a result, much speculation has been circulating about what changes will come with this ensuing Google merchant quality algorithm update.

One look at Google’s Search Quality Rating Guidelines will give us some insight into what Google already deems as a quality merchant. Online features such as a shopping cart icon that when clicked doesn’t send users to another site; a return policy that provides a physical address; a way to track shipped orders and so on.

But of course with every potential Google algorithm update comes the fears that well-intentioned sites will be harmed. This particularly update is no different. For example, many online sellers use an outside site to complete transactions, thus users are sent to an external site when they click on the shopping cart icon.

Also, how much will reviews affect a merchant’s quality? If a start-up online seller joins the fray, how can she possibly compete with competitors who have accumulated thousands of reviews?

Google’s intention, of course, is to increase user experience, but does it come at a risk? Will this algorithm change favor sellers like Amazon and Wal-Mart and do harm to the small shops that are individually owned?

Whatever the answer, expect this algorithm to come to fruition later in the year. And when it does we will be prepared to help, so talk with one of our experts by calling us at 1-888-277-5429, or by filling out our contact form. We’ll be sure to help you prepare for these upcoming changes.

Many beer and wine sellers took a hit last year when Google decided to no longer allow these “adult products” to be sold on the Google Shopping engine. There wasn’t much notice, and retailers were left scrambling to figure out how to recoup these lost online sales. However, that ban is about to be lifted.

When the ban was set, Google stated that alcohol belonged in a class of products deemed “not-family-safe.” The result was that these products lost out on one of the three listing options available to retailers on Google’s homepage. Google Products (Base) has proven to be a way for retailers to get a step ahead of review sites and comparison shopping engines. The other two options that remained for these sellers were:

1. Organic Search (SEO)
2. Search Marketing (SEM) or Adwords

The overturn of the ban will once again allow wine and beer merchants to optimize their ad and marketing campaigns on a multi-tiered basis.

What to know about this change

First, it’s important to know what is allowed back on Google Shopping:

• Beer
• Wine
• Cider
• Sake
• Champagne

Hard liquor is still not allowed.

These products will be referred to as “adult products,” and requires some work by the merchants in order to be listed, but it can be done!

For starters, you must log into your Google Merchant Center, and head to Settings > General, and click the box that says, “This site contains adult products as defined by our policy.”

Checking this box is a vital step. Without it, your products will not be listed.

In addition to the adult products listed above, Google is also opening up the market to accessories such as containers, packaging, wine storage, and alcohol-making kits.

The last vital piece of information you need to know as a merchant is that your intended country of sale must be one of the following in order to abide by their policy:

United States, Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Making the most of your online campaign

This recent ban-reversal opens up a world of possibility to beer and wine merchants. But it’s important that you take this opportunity to create effective campaigns that not only abide by Google’s policy, but also gets you the greatest return on investment. Talk to one of our experts by calling us at 1-888-277-5429, or by filling out our contact form. We’ll be sure to help you create the most effective campaign for your business and products.