Methods for E-commerce Companies to Improve Google Ads Through Merchant Center

This week, we're back with Ulaş Gökhan Gümüş! We're focusing on the Google Merchant Center topic and sharing the final episode of 2023 with you.

Google Merchant Center is a critical tool for dynamic shopping ads. Although shopping ads are currently inactive in Turkey, they are actually a very important advertising type. It is also a very important tool for e-commerce companies.

So what does this provide you with? It enables businesses and online e-commerce companies to find their place in the Google Shopping tab. At the same time, your products can appear as dynamic ads in PM Campaigns (Performance Max) or Performance Campaigns. For this, you need to send your data feed from your e-commerce website to Merchant Center or create your catalog manually. However, there are some technical details you need to pay attention to in this process. The products you upload go through an approval process initially. It specifically aims to filter out non-original, counterfeit, or replica products. Google subjects products to an approval process to detect and filter out such issues, especially non-original, counterfeit, or replica products.

As is known, Google decided on August 10, 2020, to remove shopping ads from search results. These ads, previously listed above or next to search network ads, are now located within the Shopping tab. This situation indicates a serious lack of feedback in research regarding user behavior. Particularly, when a product is searched, it has been observed that click-through rates to the shopping tab have decreased. This situation has caused an increase in keyword competition.

In standard shopping ads, ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) was quite high. However, with the removal of shopping ads, achieving the same success in PM (Performance Max) campaigns became very difficult. Since user click-through rates to the shopping tab were very low, everyone turned to search network ads and keyword-based advertising work; this caused CPCs (Cost Per Click) to increase incredibly. This situation is the same not only in Turkey but also in several countries. The closure of shopping ads was a process that negatively affected both digital marketers and businesses.

However, transferring our products to Merchant Center still forms the first step for businesses. In the second step, we need to properly integrate Google's remarketing code into our website or mobile app. Data layers are quite critical in this process, and matching Product IDs or unique IDs is important. This way, it will be possible to display a product that your user visited as an advertisement on another platform again.

However, for Remarketing, you absolutely need to set up your products dynamically in Merchant Center, that is, your catalog. Of course, you can carry out this process not manually, but by using feeds to provide integration in the background and create a correct, useful remarketing campaign.

You can access the episode's resources and content from faruktoprak.com.