Common Mistakes with Google PLAs

January 29, 2014 By BJ Cook,

Since it's introduction, Google’s Product Listing Ads (PLAs) have rapidly gained speed and PLAs are now well established as a "Must Have" for any e-commerce marketers’ pay-per-click (PPC) strategies. The combination between regular Search and PLAs has developed into a "walled garden" approach to the SERPs and the results? Amazing. Google reports users who see a retailers text ads in combination with their PLAs were "83% more likely to make a purchase than those who only saw text ads". - Google AdWords Blog The competition for position and managing spend has gotten fierce! So what can you do to make sure you don't make costly mistakes? We recently had a Q&A session with Steve Lerch, Google AdWords Account Manager; about just this and decided to share with all of you!

Q: What is the #1 Most Common Mistake you see Advertisers do when setting up PLAs?

Only having one product target setup to target All Products. Think of product targets like ad groups. By separating products into these different buckets, you can raise or lower your bid for different products, apply negative keywords to products where they don't make sense, and target level reporting will be much more useful in understanding product performance

Q: What is the #1 Action an Advertiser can do to Optimize their PLAs for search?

Once you've broken out your product targets, and created an All Product target as a catch-all, you really want to make sure the titles of your products are optimized. Include common search terminology to ensure the system recognizes that your products are relevant for the most frequent searches

Q: Any additional ideas or thoughts you have for an Advertiser on making their PLAs perform at its' best?

PLAs don't use keywords, but that doesn't mean you can't see where your traffic is coming from. Use the details button on the keyword tab to find your search queries. Regular keywords have no effect on a PLA campaign, but negative keywords still work, so exclude the traffic that doesn't make sense.

If you haven't included Google PLAs in your e-commerce strategy yet, you may be missing out on a major opportunity! Google is putting its' best foot forward in 2014 with new insights and PLA products with new Google Shopping Campaigns and even a 360 degree product spin. Make sure your team is ready to take advantage of all these features.

Here at Digital Operative we love PLA's and getting our hands on all the new features Google is constantly rolling out. If you have any questions regarding PLA's, PPC or anything Marketing - don't hesitate to contact us at Digital Operative. We're always here to help!

This blog was written by our PLA wiz, Mandy! She may be a nice girl from the mid-west - but, she is all business when it comes to online marketing!