Benefits

• More traffic: Many businesses experience significantly higher clickthrough rates (CTR) with Shopping ads compared to text ads shown in the same location for shopping-related searches. In some cases, advertisers have experienced double or triple standard clickthrough rates.
• Better qualified leads: As a merchant, you can increase the quality of your leads by featuring product information directly in your ads to help shoppers make informed purchase decisions. This makes shoppers more likely to complete a purchase on your site. For example, when Sally does a Google search for "fish bowl," she might see Shopping ads from merchants selling fish bowls. She can tell which fish bowl fits her taste just by looking at the picture. She can also quickly see whether the fish bowl fits her budget by looking at the price. This means that by the time Sally clicks on the ad, she has a good sense of the product and its cost, which puts her further down the purchasing funnel compared to the average web user.
• Easy retail-centric campaign management: Instead of keywords, Shopping ads use the product attributes you defined in your Merchant Center data feed to show your ads on relevant searches. Browse your product inventory directly in Google Ads and create product groups for the items you want to bid on.
• Broader presence: More than one of your Shopping ads can appear for a given user search and, if relevant, a Shopping ad and a text ad can also appear at the same time. This means your reach with shoppers for a single search could double.
• Powerful reporting and competitive data: See how your products are performing at any level of granularity you want. For example, you can see how many clicks a particular brand of high-heeled shoes got just by filtering your products view -- no new product groups needed. Use benchmarking data to get insights into your competitive landscape. Identify growth opportunities with impression share data and the Bid Simulator tool.

How Shopping campaigns and Shopping ads work

Shopping ads use your existing Merchant Center product data -- not keywords -- to decide how and where to show your ads. The product data you submit through Merchant Center contains details about the products you sell. We'll use these details when we match a user's search to your ads, making sure to show the most relevant products.

You manage your Shopping ads in AdWords using Shopping campaigns, a simple and flexible way to organize and promote your Google Merchant Center product inventory within AdWords.

Cost

Just like other AdWords ad formats, your Shopping ads participate in an ad auction, but you'll only be charged whenever someone takes one of these actions with your ad:

• The user clicks an ad that leads directly to the landing page on your website
• The user clicks an ad that leads to the Google-hosted landing page for your local inventory

This is known as cost-per-click (CPC). When you're creating your Shopping campaign, you'll decide how much you're willing to pay for each click.

You'll only pay the minimum amount necessary to rank higher than the advertiser immediately below you, and you'll often pay less than your maximum bid. Learn more about cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.

Where your ads appear

Here's where you might see your Shopping ads across the web:

• Google Shopping (in select countries)
• Google Search, next to search results and separate from text ads
• Google Search Partner websites, including YouTube and Image Search in some countries (if your campaign is set to include search partners)
• The Google Display Network (for local catalog ads only)

Your Shopping ads can appear at the same time as text ads, because we want to give shoppers access to the full variety of products that match their search. This means that shoppers can find the best match before clicking through to make a purchase, which might help you close the sale.