Google is continuing its march toward a more perfect union between advertising and user experience. As the media giant promised at Google Marketing Live, two more ad products have rolled out in beta form, Gallery Ads and Bumper Machine. Here’s what you need to know about the new tools at your disposal.
Gallery Ads
These ads combine compelling visual images with limited text for a highly interactive experience. Swipe-able images in a carousel format sit right below a traditional text ad in the mobile search engine results page (SERP). Google’s testing just the mobile format for now, although opportunities may come up for desktops and other formats.
Similar to Google’s responsive style ads, Gallery Ads allow up to three headlines with a 30-character limit, between four and eight photos of products your target demo would find compelling and a unique tagline for each image in the carousel with a 70-character limit.
It’s not news that images drive ad engagement, but Gallery Ads drive the point home. On average, Google says ad groups with one or more Gallery Ad have up to 25% more engagement — measured by paid clicks or swipes — at the very top of mobile SERPs.
As beta access to Gallery Ads continues into early 2020, the format is already available in multiple languages besides English, including German, Japanese, French, Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Swedish and Polish.
Bumper Machine
Staying with the visual creative theme, Bumper Machine is an ad tool that uses machine learning to create 6-second bumper ad spots from existing video ads of 90 seconds or less. Google launched the tool in gated beta this week (meaning you may or may not have access yet).
The brevity of bumper ads seems to make them memorable, as the numbers bear out. When Google examined 122 bumper campaign across the country from 2016, they found that 70% drove a significant lift in brand awareness, with the average lift at 9%. The ads performed even better in ad recall, with over 9 in 10 driving ad recall globally and an average lift of over 30%.
If you have videos that aren’t quite ideal for advertisements, this tool could help you maximize on it anyway. If you already have great instream ads, this tool can take you to the next level.
Next Steps
Success in selling online is more than just knowing what’s out there, it’s how to make the most of that knowledge and applying to your e-commerce business strategy. In an age where so much changes anywhere from hour to hour or week to week, consider a proven marketing agency to maximize your results. Get your free e-commerce analysis with EXCLUSIVE and see how a partnership with us will help you meet your business goals.
Olivia Prentiss is a Senior PPC Specialist at EXCLUSIVE. Her work days are spent finding new opportunities for her clients, while in her free time she enjoys testing new recipes and walking her Frenchie on the beach.
In another step toward what we believe will inevitably be Prime Week, Amazon rolled out Prime Day as a full 48-hour event. This was a jump up from last year’s Prime Day that lasted 36 hours (minus five hours of downtime). And for good reason: Amazon continues to shatter records with the event as it out-earned both Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2018 combined.
We naturally expected these record sales to apply to our Amazon clients, too. So we analyzed their Prime Day sales performance to see what sort of revenue growth the event brought in for individual Amazon sellers. Here’s what we found.
Overview
Illustration of the sales impact of Prime Day, by day, versus daily average for the week
On average, EXCLUSIVE clients saw a 103% increase in daily revenue for Prime Days compared to the daily average for the week leading up to the holiday. This year, while we saw the majority of sales lift come in on Monday, we also noticed that Amazon sellers that didn’t run promotions receive a large boost in ad sales on Tuesday. We chalk this up to shoppers who spotted a deal on Tuesday after not finding one they were eagerly awaiting on Monday. Much like Cyber Weekend, Prime Day showed us the power of consumers who want to spend.
Comparing to organic sales on Amazon, promotions on Tuesday played an even larger role in increased revenue. Sellers who ran some form of promotions saw a 591% lift in organic sales versus a 323% lift for those who didn’t. In both cases, Prime had a significant impact – but you just can’t deny how important promotions are for maximizing your Amazon revenue growth.
Correlation between sales impact and the use of promotions
Amazon Prime Day Takeaways
Prime Day is sure to continue its sales dominance in 2020. Since you want your business to be right up there with it, it’s crucial to prepare for the day with the following steps:
- Enable your account for promotions to help maximize sales
- For strategic products, apply for Lightning Deals to grow brand visibility and sales velocity
- Roll out a product-specific Sponsored Products strategy that can enable custom bidding for sale items versus non-sale items
You’ll notice Amazon sales and strategy go hand-in-hand for this process, and every step counts when it comes to a 48-hour sales window (maybe more in Prime Day next year). For help with this strategy and all of your Amazon campaigns, we offer a free analysis of your online store by one of our e-commerce pros.
Mike Frekey is the Director of Applied Data at EXCLUSIVE, and is always looking at the latest trends and changes within Amazon. When he’s not experimenting with the best strategies to grow Amazon merchants, he’s a fantasy football fanatic and is trying to trade away Coby Fleener.
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