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Advanced Google Shopping: Is price a proxy for Quality Score in product ads?

Columnist Andreas Reiffen shares insights about price sensitivity and user behavior in Google Shopping, based on an analysis of 15,000 conversions across the German, UK and US markets.

Andreas Reiffen on August 9, 2016 at 1:45 pm

In June, I spoke as part of the “Mad Scientists of Paid Search” panel session at SMX Advanced in Seattle. During the session, I presented Crealytics’ latest research on Google Shopping. The presentation included some findings relating to user behavior within the channel and uncovered how much product price really impacts performance.

We’ve had a lot of questions as to how we came to those numbers, so I would like to share some answers with you now.

Consumers don’t buy what they search for

For a deeper insight into what is actually going on in Google Shopping, we analyzed a data set of more than 15,000 Google Shopping conversions across the German, UK and US markets covering several international retailers from the fashion, sports, outdoor and luxury sectors. We looked at search queries, clicked product ads and products purchased.

Surprisingly, the vast proportion of consumers don’t buy the products they search for (and click on). Analysis of the data found that only 34 percent of products purchased via Google Shopping match the product ad that was clicked on. We could also see that 30 percent of users bought a product by the same designer, but from a different product category, and 36 percent of users bought a product from a completely different designer.

What does this mean for advertisers? Understanding the link between what was clicked and what was bought becomes very important. This way, advertisers will be able to raise bids on the ads that actually lead to sales of the products they want to push.

[Read the full article on Search Engine Land.]

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Marketing Land. Staff authors are listed here.

About The Author

Andreas Reiffen

Andreas Reiffen is an entrepreneur, marketing technologist and thought leader in data-driven advertising. Between 2006 and 2008 Andreas operated as a PPC super affiliate working for Zappos and other retailers. In 2008 he founded crealytics, the Berlin-based provider of camato, the leading Google Shopping Tool to automate PLA campaigns and improve performance. Several of the largest international Ecommerce retailers are using camato to manage Google Shopping in more than 100 markets across the globe, generating over $3B in revenues per year. camato has been shortlisted for numerous awards in 2016 including European Performance Marketing and Drum Search.