Win Customers in the New Online Consumer Journey | Google Ads

Key Takeaways

hello everybody welcome to the win customers in the new online consumer journey session i'm stephanie shum and i lead google's commercial experiences for shopping and retail my colleague nikki reckey and i are here today to talk to you about the new ads innovations that can help you reach more customers and drive online sales for your business in this session we want to share with you the latest and greatest of new ways for you to build your brand and win loyal customers covet 19 has caused established habits and routines to break and in their place new consumer behaviors have sprung up fundamentally transforming the way people shop online became the default purchasing channel for many customers during lockdown and will continue even as restrictions begin to ease in fact searches for for sale online have grown globally by over a hundred percent year over year with so much information and choice available online the decision-making process has become even more complex through the lens of behavioral science our decoding decisions research which you can find on our think with google website reveals how customers manage this complexity we call it the messy middle and the research codifies behavior into two mental models exploration and evaluation people loop through these two stages repeating the cycle as many times as they need to make a purchase decision during covid19 this process became even more messy as consumers navigate new needs new categories and new variables since discoveries made in the messy middle often determine the outcome it's more important than ever for brands to connect with customers in this space and assist them with relevant and timely information did you know that every day hundreds of millions of people turn to google for help with their shopping people turn to google and youtube for ideas inspiration and information on where they can buy products or services for example over the last year we've seen phenomenal increases in mobile searches globally for things like best affordable growing sixty percent year over year curbside pickup growing by over three thousand percent year over year and available near me growing 100 percent year over year these trends confirm what we've already predicted that is becoming increasingly challenging for customers to find the right product or service and make decisions because of information overload now here's my colleague nikki who leads product for youtube's direct response ad business she will talk through all the ways we are activating on these insights and building our solutions to meet customer needs thanks for the introduction stephanie i'm thrilled to share how our solutions are evolving to better serve customers and advertisers throughout the entire shopping journey we can all agree that the shopping journey has become more complex especially as we navigate uncertainty through covet 19 and explore new categories and brands over the past year at home my family and i have been doing a lot more cooking together so i've been intentionally seeking out new recipes to try and new ingredients for us to use but i don't always know what to look for so i appreciate it when i stumble upon inspiration i love this example from kitchenware brand our place who utilized a combination of visual ad solutions to educate customers on their brand and inspire them to buy their products throughout the path to purchase from youtube to search to the shopping tab let's see how they accomplish this i grew up in pakistan and food was very central to my family and to my culture now far away from home cooking something from my childhood is the way that i reconnect with my family my name is shaza shahid and i'm co-founder and co-ceo of our place we noticed that all the other cookware brands were selling elaborate expensive bulky difficult to use 16 piece cookware sets so we created the always pan to replace eight traditional pieces of cookware we had created a brand and a product that we really believed in and we wanted to share that with the world for us google's ad solutions offered a way to show people our product to show it in use its design but also to show how it feels to cook a meal and share it with someone you love we saw this tremendous spike in new customers during the holidays for every dollar we spend on google shopping search in youtube we earn almost five dollars in return i think my identity as a female founder as an immigrant as a woman of color informs the way that i have built and shaped our place i know what it means to not be seen and me and my entire team want our customers to always feel seen to feel like they belong to feel like our place is their place [Music] our place did a phenomenal job of reaching customers as they browse across many touch points and jump between discovery research and purchase building on momentum from last year we want to unify our shopping experience across the board and simplify the interactions customers need to take with your ads shortening their decision making in moments that matter we're focused on enabling you to better visually showcase your branded products in moments of exploration and evaluation and saving you time with automation solutions to reach the right customers and drive better results to achieve this first we're unlocking new youtube ad inventory across a few of our campaign types like smart shopping and video action campaigns globally telling customers to have a seamless shopping experience no matter where they are on google or youtube we know that increasingly customers are turning to youtube throughout more of the shopping journey whether that's looking for inspiration through unboxing videos or seeking purchase advice by watching product reviews in fact seventy percent of viewers say they bought a brand after seeing it on youtube to reach these potential customers with your rich product information we're enabling ads across more places where we've seen valuable viewer engagement like the youtube search page for when people are looking up how to fix a pipe or what's the best skincare routine the watch next feed so you can be there when people are looking for their next video and the home feed on the mobile app so you can inspire customers who are browsing new content and open to brand discovery all of these services are now globally available for your shopping ads and smart shopping campaigns for video action campaigns you have access to the watch next and home feed with a youtube search page coming later this year while we're excited to expand the placements available on youtube for our campaigns we're also introducing new ways to make our existing ad formats more shoppable to make it easier to deliver immersive product experiences while customers are looking for shopping inspiration we've made product feeds globally available for video action campaigns with support for discovery ads coming in the next few months your products will seamlessly appear in front of customers while they're watching videos on youtube exploring their interests on discover or checking for promotions in gmail once you've linked your google merchant center fee to your campaigns during campaign setup shoppers will automatically see details from your product catalog like images and descriptions that are more relevant to them for the launch of the galaxy note 20 in indonesia samsung wanted to build on its youtube campaigns by featuring more product detail and imagery to drive action with its video creative after adding product feeds to their video campaigns the brand saw a conversion lift of 39 percent with 16 lower cost per conversion advertisers already using video action campaigns are also seeing success pairing their campaigns with discovery ads to drive action with shoppers who don't have a specific brand or product in mind in fact more than 60 percent of advertisers who combine the two see incremental conversions if you're already using video and search to drive performance adding discovery ads to close the gap with shoppers in the messy middle can help you drive demand with interested audiences on average search advertisers who add discovery ads see 12 more conversions but showing up is only half the equation you've let us know how critical it is for you to optimize for your most valuable customers while more accurately tracking conversion value so you'll be able to do both for video action campaigns and discovery ads with target return on aspen bidding this is available now for all advertisers globally in video action campaigns and it'll be coming to discovery ads in the next few months as an early adopter of target return on aspen bidding for discovery ads beauty brand estee lauder has seen great results they saw a 146 percent increase on return on investment during the post-holiday season which is traditionally slow for retailers we look forward to seeing how these new features for video action campaigns and discovery ads help retailers build interest in action with shoppers while accelerating growth for their business and with that i'll hand it back to stephanie thanks nikki and we can't forget about search as we all know search is a critical part of the path to purchase people turn to search during the messy middle to make sense of all the available information and ensure they're making an informed decision eighty-six percent of shoppers in surveyed countries around the world say they expect photos to be a feature businesses offer them when shopping online last year we announced image extensions a new way to visually augment your search ads this beta allowed advertisers to upload relevant visuals that would complement their existing text ads helping potential customers learn more about products and services and take action faster i'm excited to announce that image extensions on search ads are now out of beta and available to advertisers globally since allowing advertisers to test this feature some brands have seen phenomenal engagement results as an early adopter of target return on ad spend bidding for discovery ads estee lauder was also one of the first brands to use image extensions by adding a library of relevant images to their google ads account their unbranded search campaigns using image extensions saw a 91 increase in click-through rate and 14 improvement on return on ad spend in addition to adding imagery to your search ads you can now create more compelling and relevant messages at scale with ad customizers for business data launching for responsive search ads this feature will dynamically show details about your products or services based on the information you provide for example let's say you offer a wide range of insurance products now you can insert the names of different types of insurance offerings and their rates in real time based on what is being searched utilizing these new features to add in rich imagery and a timely relevant message to your text ads helps you better assist customers as they evaluate their options by adding this value you can differentiate your brand in these critical shopping moments and win the messy middle so we covered a lot in today's talk from new ad inventory on youtube to product feed integration to new search features and i hope you're as excited as i am to see these new product innovations and features become available to use this high-level tour of some of the new ways we're helping you win customers in the new online consumer journey is just the beginning if you're a retailer looking for new ways to differentiate your offerings across google and take advantage of unique to google performance insights then i'd recommend checking out the highlight your brand assets and inventory to get discovered across google session available on demand thank you all for tuning in and i hope you enjoy the rest of google marketing live stream [Music] you