Monica Axinte
With ads taking up more and more real estate on the SERP, it is of primary importance for advertisers to be present in both shopping and regular search campaigns.
This combination can increase brand visibility and awareness, chances to get clicks, to generate traffic and ultimately sales. Also, don't forget that the more room your ads occupy on the Google search result page, the less your competitors' do.
Following our feature, DataFeedWatch Product Text Ads, we wanted to get a bit deeper into the topic of Feed-Based search campaigns on Google.
Get your own copy of Automate Google Search Campaigns Using a Product Feed
Table of Contents
What Feed-Based Text Ads Are
How Feed-Based Text Ads Work
Why Should you Care About Feed-Based Text Ads
How to Benefit from Feed-Based Text Ads
How to start with Feed-Based text ads
Best practices
How to Optimize Feed-Based Ads
Conclusion
What Feed-Based Text Ads Are
Feed-Based text ads, also known as feed-based text ads or inventory-aware text ads, are search ads that advertisers can dynamically create to show relevant product information like name, price and availability against product-specific search queries on Google.
These ads usually complement Google Shopping Ads and increase chances for e-commerce businesses to show their products and maximize traffic and revenue.
In fact, while Google Shopping is an essential part of every online retailer's advertising strategy, advertisers can also show search text ads alongside shopping results.
There is no trade-off between focusing on either shopping or search. Both, Google Shopping Ads and Search text ads can be shown at the same time.
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How Feed-Based Text Ads Work
Feed-Based text ads campaigns are created automatically and they are based on your product feed.
There is a possibility to create and synchronize ads and keywords for numerous products in a few minutes.
Your text ads are created based on product data. This guarantees that you are using the most current product information
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Why Should you Care About Feed-Based Text Ads
Do you still consider generating text ads using data feed? Take a closer look at reasons why Feed-Based search ads are worth using.
1. Saving Time
Creating even a single text ad manually is time consuming. Especially because they have to be rich with information. Utilizing information you already have in your data feed can dramatically cut the time.
Necessary attributes are already available and just need to be optimized to fit the structure of the campaign.
2. Calling out Promotions and Discounts
If your feed includes both a product's original and sale price, you can decide to include them both in your text ads or to show the percentage off.
As you e-commerce marketer might have already found out, online shoppers are very sensitive to promotions.
Nothing generates high click-through rates better than highlighting a sale.
3. Simplified Customizing
If you’re familiar with Google Ads, you probably know all about Google Ads Editor.
Essentially these help you dynamically adapt your text ad based on who is searching and how they are searching. Currently, this requires you to define your attributes via CSV templates.
But since Feed-Based text ads are dynamic by nature and fueled by information within your data feed, highly customized text ads may not always require external template handling.
4. Building Social Proof
You can get more advanced with including the sales performance in your feed.
This way you are able to insert the number of last week's sales into your ad so people become aware of the popularity of the product you are advertising.
5. Increased relevance
Using your product feed to generate Text ads means that you’ll be able to easily create ads for every single product – even if you have millions.
When a user searched for “black running shoes size 42,” you can make sure they see exactly the product they are looking for instead of a general ad for running shoes of all types.
High ad relevance will help increase CTR and your overall Quality Score.
6. Building Urgency
Adding inventory numbers in the ad generates urgency, which is another well-known online marketing tactic for securing click through rate and sales.
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How to Benefit from Feed-Based Text Ads
1. Increase your click share on the google search results page
Text ads are getting bigger and bigger, especially after the latest 3-headline and responsive ads updates. If you couple product-specific text ads with Google Shopping you will be the king of the SERP and wipe out competitors.
2. Be always found when users search for specific products and expand your keyword set
Manually creating keywords for thousands of products is not feasible. This is where feed-based text ads come in.
The product title is used to automatically create unique-per-product keywords and can also serve as an ad copy.
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Truncation of the product name creates a list of keywords from generic to more specific ones and allows your product to appear in search results for both - detailed and non-specific search queries.
3. Programmatically target long-tail, high-value keywords
Product-specific keywords are what marketers also call "long tail keywords". They usually count more than 2 words and might have a lower search volume than generic and broad keywords.
However, they do have a way higher purchase intent. This is what performance marketers look for.
With feed-based text ads you can automatically target all those keywords and show super-relevant ads against them.
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How to start with Feed-Based text ads
So how can you get started with Feed-Based text ads? You basically just need a product feed and a Google Ads account.
You might want to edit your feed specifically for this purpose. DataFeedWatch allows you to modify through the creation of a data feed function. DataFeedWatch integrates with Google Ads through its APIs and update new ads every time the attributes in the feed are updated.
Also check: [Case Study] 620% Increase in Conversions with Automated Text Ads
It doesn't use ad customizers and for this reason, you don't need any non-customized ad in the AdGroups.
Also, you can not upload any feed into Google Ads or create customized ads. Our system does everything automatically for you!
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Best practices
Your ad needs to be relevant, specific & attractive. There are few basic tips on how to create an ad template :
- Highlight what makes you unique
- Include Prices, Promotions & Exclusives
- Have a CTA like Order Now or Get a Quote
- Include keywords and product name’s in the Title
- Optimize your ad for Mobile Customers
- Create multiple ads with a different message to compare their effectiveness
- Check for common text mistakes & forbidden words
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How to Optimize Feed-Based Ads
1. Long-tail keywords might be flagged as "low search volume"
Long tail keywords might have a low search volume. Unfortunately, Google Ads flags the least searched keywords as "low search volume" and prevents them to show.
You have to be careful about that and always make sure your keywords are eligible to serve. The new DataFeedWatch Feed-Based text ads feature smartly cuts too-long keywords down one by one until it finds the first eligible longest keyword for you and make them eligible to show.
2. Keywords with high-purchase intent might be more expensive
The other side of the coin of long tail keywords is that, given their high-value, they might also be more expensive. This brings the average CPC to be higher than other generic keywords.
Although they generally convert better and therefore have a higher conversion rate than generic terms, the return on the ad investment might not be as good as you could have thought.
This is why we would argue that Feed-Based text ads are particularly recommended to merchants who sell high-value products. After a google search with a long tailed keyword we redirect your client to that specific product URL.
With DFW all your products will have a seperate ad with separate product URL in a separate ad group. It may cost you more to advertise with long tail keywords, but your Google Ads Quality Score can be higher because they will be more relevant, as clients will lend specifically on that product URL.
3. Beware text ads characters limit
Something that you must be aware of is the search text ads characters limit. As of October 2018, text ads are made of three 30-character headlines and two 90-character descriptions.
Your product names and feed attributes might be longer than 30 characters and this might cause the ads to be disapproved.
You have to beware this issue and make sure you cut the text in a smart way. This is particularly relevant as Google Shopping ads allow for 70-character titles.
It means that, more often than not, you can't use the same title for both Shopping and Feed-Based text ads. You would likely need two separate feeds or two different versions.
With DataFeedWatch you can extend your product name from the first to the second headline. This is an amazing feature as your product name will be extended instead of cut down.
Next to the first headline extension, we can cut down your second and third headline and your description as well. With these features you can again improve your Quality score, as the whole product name will be visible in your ads.
Next recommended read: 11 Google Search Ads Optimization Tips for B2B Advertisers [EXPERT Level]
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Conclusion
If you are a brand, online retailer, or anyone with a massive amount of data, you’re likely already familiar with data feeds and product catalogs. Essentially, the term “Feed-Based” is when something is automatically infused or generated directly with information from these sources.
Feed-Based text ads are generated through the product information already stored in your data feed. This method of ad creation is extremely useful if you already have a data feed, have a ton of products, and want to start advertising with google search campaigns.
Instead of starting from scratch and manually creating each ad, you’re able to use the information you already have as a building block for the perfect ad copies.
