What makes up a Showcase Shopping ad

30/11/2019

You can help people discover and explore your brand and products with Showcase Shopping ads. Showcase Shopping ads let you group together a selection of related products and present them together to introduce your brand or business. These ads help the user decide where to buy when they search for more general terms like “backpacks” or “furniture”.

Showcase Shopping ads are available in Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Hong Kong, Ireland, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, South Africa, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, the UK, and the US. You may create Showcase Shopping ads using the new Google Ads experience and the Google Ads API (AdWords API). If you want to advertise individual products, check out Product Shopping ads.

This article explains the details that make up a Showcase Shopping ad.

As of October 31, 2018, only a small group of click measurement providers have been approved to measure specific ad interaction events on Google-hosted properties for Showcase Shopping ads, local inventory ads (LIA), and Model Automotive ads. To make sure your ads don't serve without measurement, the Google Ads team has paused all ad groups making third-party calls to unapproved providers.

Unless you have authorized your account to continue running the impacted ads, previously created ads will be paused to prevent them from serving without measurement.

Learn more about measuring ad interactions on Google-hosted pages with click measurement providers

Benefits

Show ads that help people decide where to buy. Many searches on Google Shopping use broader search terms that don’t include a specific brand or product - for example, women's athletic clothing or living room furniture. Terms like these are broad and usually mean that a person hasn't decided what product to buy or from where to buy it. Use Showcase Shopping ads to reach these potential customers and get them thinking about your brand and products while they're still trying to make a decision.
Control which products appear in your ad. You pick the products that appear in a Showcase Shopping ad. For example, you might highlight your best sellers or seasonal picks.
Track engagements and conversions that result from your Showcase Shopping ads in real time. You can use comprehensive reporting tools to track the performance of your ads.

How it works

A Showcase Shopping ad appears on Google when someone searches with a more general term, such as “backpacks”. Then, Showcase Shopping ads show relevant products together with lifestyle images that you choose to represent your brand or business.

When someone clicks a Showcase Shopping ad, it expands revealing your products that are most relevant to the search terms they’ve used, which you connect to the ad using product groups. You can advertise a few dozen products or a whole category of your inventory with your Showcase Shopping ad.

We recommend that you start with a larger set of products (hundreds) first, and then create smaller groups as you see what works. To see how many products are targeted in a Showcase ad group, use the Products active column on the Product groups page.

Create ads to meet your business goals. The more ads your create, the better the chances are for your ads to appear on many different types of queries.

Bidding

Showcase Shopping ads use maximum CPE (cost-per-engagement) bidding, which means that you set the highest amount that you're willing to pay for an engagement. Specifically, you're charged when someone expands your Showcase Shopping ad, and spends 10 seconds within the ad or clicks a product or link in the expanded ad before then. Learn more about Engagement metrics.

Unlike Product Shopping ads where you set your bids on product groups, you'll set a bid for an engagement with your Showcase Shopping ad on the ad group that contains your ad.