Google Shopping

1
Product Listing Ads
Start to finish

Table Of Contents
3 letter from the president
By Pat East, CEO of Hanapin Marketing
4 The Dos and Don’ts of Setting Up and
Optimizing Product Feeds
By Christina Hall
17 Product Listing Ad Optimizations in
AdWords
By Jeff Allen
26 Strategy and Analysis For PLAs
By Amanda West-Bookwalter
ABOUT
Hanapin Marketing is a paid search agency based in Bloomington, Indiana.
Founded in 2004, the company manages and optimizes clients’ paid search
programs. From ad copy composition to keyword research to landing page
optimization, Hanapin’s core objective is to maximize our clients’ return on
investment. Hanapin Marketing publishes the industry leading blog,
PPC Hero.

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Letter from
the president
About the President
Pat East is the President and
CEO of Hanapin Marketing.
By Pat East, President and CEO of Hanapin Marketing
If you get the sense that PPC management gets
more complex with every ad network update or
new feature — even those meant to make things
easier — you’re not alone. That feeling is exactly
why we feel it’s important to provide this
quarterly update. We’re constantly reviewing the
trends of the paid search industry and its ad
networks, which gives us a sense of where things
are right now, where they’re going, and what
people need to know to remain competitive and
relevant.
That knowledge often coalesces into a critical
mass that calls for a deep dive into a particular
subject, and this quarter’s Compass answers
that call. The articles in this Compass deliver
a thorough examination of the Product Listing
Ads (PLAs) feature in Google’s AdWords
network.
Every step is explored in detail, from
setup to optimization.
Whether you’re just getting started or
you’ve been running PLAs for a long
time, there should be something for
everyone in these pages.
We love to see our clients and innovative
colleagues enjoy continued success in
their paid search efforts, and we enjoy
providing this type of industry leadership
to you. On behalf of our entire team here
at Hanapin, thank you for reading our
latest version of the Compass!

The Dos and Don’ts of
Setting Up and Optimizing
Product Feeds
By Christina Hall
Data feed definition and formats
Google defines a data feed as “a file
made up of a list of products which
use groupings of attributes that define
each one of a merchant’s products in a
unique way.”
By describing your products using these
attributes, users can search and find
your products more easily. One of the
first important decisions you’ll make is
choosing the format of the data feed.
The format needs to be selected accord-
ing to your needs as a merchant as well
as your ability to create the file. Google
supports data feeds in two general for-
mats: text (.txt) and XML (.xml).
The text file format
Smaller merchants will likely prefer to
use a .txt format, as it requires the least
technical knowledge and can easily be
created by using a spreadsheet editor,
such as Excel or a Google Doc.
The screenshot below shows the
spreadsheet version of a product feed.
Attribute names need to be included as
headers in the first row, while the rows
thereafter describe your items according
to the attributes. When done adding all
the products and corresponding attri-
butes to the feed, the file needs to be
saved as a tab-delimited file.
While many ecommerce websites are already utilizing Product Listing Ads (PLAs), it is
very important to understand the “dos and don’ts” of how to set up a product feed and
optimize it accordingly—particularly in the light of the change from product listing ads to
Google Shopping ads.
The advantage of this file format is that it is simple to create and edit as long as you have
a spreadsheet program. It is also easier to view multiple items. However, one major
disadvantage is that it is easier to make formatting mistakes.

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The Dos and Don’ts of Setting Up and
Optimizing Product Feeds (Continued)
Besides declaring the Google Merchant Center namespace (see yellow highlighting),
a prefix within every attribute tag must be added to distinguish attributes from elements
defined in RSS 2.0. Without the prefix, all the attributes and values would be ignored.
Atom 1.0-based data feeds differ from RSS 2.0 feeds in that they require five pre-defined
elements at the entry level—title, id, link, summary, and updated.
The XML file format
For more technically advanced merchants, the data feed can also be submitted as an
extended version of RSS 2.0 or Atom 1.0. These files can be created and edited using
any text editor.
When using RSS 2.0, there are three pre-defined elements at the item level: title, link,
and description—all three are required for product data feeds.
In order to include additional required elements as well as more detailed information
about each product, Google extended RSS 2.00 by adding the Google Merchant
Center feed namespace.
Below is an example of a basic RSS 2.0 document for a single item:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0"
xmlns:g="http://base.google.com/ns/1.0">
<channel>
<title>The name of your data feed</title> <link>http://www.example.com</link> <descrip-
tion>A description of your content</description> <item> <title>Red wool sweater</title>
<link> http://www.example.com/item1-info-page.html</link> <description>Comfortable and
soft, this sweater will keep you warm on those cold winter nights.</description>
<g:image_link>http://www.example.com/image1.jpg</g:image_link> <g:price>25</g:price>
<g:condition>new</g:condition>
<g:id>1a</g:id>
</item>
</channel>
</rss>

To be able to include additional required elements as well as more detailed information
on products, Google also extended Atom 1.0 and added the Google Merchant Center
namespace.
Here is an example of a basic Atom 1.0 document containing a single item:
<?xml version=”1.0”?>
<feed xmlns=”http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom”
xmlns:g=”http://base.google.com/ns/1.0”>
<title>The name of your data feed</title>
<link href=”http://www.example.com” rel=”alternate” type=”text/html” /> <updat-
ed>2006-06-11T18:30:02Z</updated>
<author> <name>Google</name> </author>
<id>tag:example.com,2006-06-11:/support/products</id>
<entry>
<title>Red wool sweater</title>
<id>1a</id>
<link href=”http://www.example.com/item1-info-page.html” /> <summary>Comfortable and
soft, this sweater will keep you warm on those cold winter nights.</summary>
<updated>2005-10-13T18:30:02Z</updated>
<g:image_link>http://www.google.com/images/google_sm.gif</g:image_link> <g:-
price>25</g:price>
<g:condition>new</g:condition>
</entry>
</feed>
As with RSS 2.0, the Google Merchant Center namespace declaration (see yellow
highlighting) and a prefix within every attribute tag are required, or any attributes and values
will be ignored.
Google also recommends running through a checklist to ensure that the file is properly
formatted:
1. Filename must end with the .xml extension
2. The feed filename you register in your Google Merchant Center account must match the
name you assign to your file.

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3. Remember to include namespace declarations. These values should match exactly as
shown: RSS 2.0: xmlns:g=http://base.google.com/ns/1.0 and xmlns:c-http://base.google.
com/cns/1.0 and Atom 1.0: xmlns:g=http://base.google.com/ns/1.0 and xmlns:c=”http://
base.google.com/cns/1.0”
4. Verify the prefix included in the Google Merchant Center and Custom Google Merchant
Center attribute tags matches the prefix defined in the namespace declaration.
5. Remove attributes that do not contain any values.
Product Feed Specifications
The screenshot below shows an overview of required and recommended attributes that
need to be included in the data feed before it can be uploaded to Google Merchant Center.
As the screenshot shows, some attributes are required, while others are recommended.
Items like clothing/apparel or media might also need additional attributes.
• If you do not include required attributes for an
item, that item will not show up in Google Shop-
ping results.
• If you do not include any of the recommended
attributes for an item, that item will show up less
frequently in Google Shopping results.
It is also important to understand that item refers to a single variation of a product as a
product might come in multiple variations – different color, material, pattern, or size.
Required attributes:
• ID: Each item has to have a unique identifier and the ID cannot be re-used between
feeds.
• Title: This describes your item, so include any characteristics such as color or brand
to differentiate your item form others. The title can be up to 70 characters long.
• Description: Use up to 10,000 characters to include further information about your
item. Be aware that this is displayed in the shopping search results.
• Product type: This field categorizes the category of the product submitted. You can
Tip:For a detailed list of attri-
bute requirements, visit: http://
support.google.com/merchants/
bin/answer.py?hl=en&an-
swer=188494#US

either use Google’s category taxonomy or your own classification.
• Link: This is the URL that links directly to your product.
• Image link: This attribute will display an image of your item. The accepted image formats are
GIF, JPG (or JPEG), PNG, BMP, and TIF.
• Condition: The condition attribute lets the buyer know if your item is ‘new,’ ‘refurbished’ or
‘used.’
• Availability: This attribute declares whether your item is ‘in stock’, ‘available for order’, ‘out of
stock’ or ‘preorder’.
• Price: The price attribute needs to contain the most prominent price on the landing page and
must include a currency according to the ISO 4217 Standard.
• Brand: This needs to be the brand name of the item, not the store name, unless the product is
manufactured by that store.
• GTIN: This is the Global Trade Item Number for the specific item.
• MPN: This is the Manufacturer Part Number of the item, and it identifies the product to its man-
ufacturer and specifies each item.
• Gender/age group/color/size: This is required for apparel products.
• Tax: This attribute is only accepted in the US and can be used to override any merchant-level
settings in your Google Merchant Center account.
• Shipping: Provide specific shipping estimates for your items or override the shipping settings
you submitted in your Google Merchant Center account.
• Shipping weight: This attribute is required if you set up a shipping rule in the Merchant Center
that is based on weight.
• Item group ID: This is required for all variant apparel products in the US.
• Color: This defines the dominant color of an item but multiple colors can be added by using a
‘/’ in order of prominence.
• Material: This attribute describes the material or fabric that an item is made out of.
• Pattern: Pattern or graphic print featured on your item.
• Size: Specific size of your product.
Additional attributes:
• Google product category: This attribute is recommended as long as it is not required to
further describe your item by category.
• Additional image link: Any images that show your product/item from a different angle, images
of packaging or variants of the product.
• Sale price: This attribute shows the advertised sale price of the item and is recommended for
items that are on sale.

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• Sale price effective date: This is used in conjunction with the sale price attribute and
indicates the date range that applies to the sale price.
• Adwords grouping: This attribute groups products in an arbitray way. It can only hold one
value and can be used with CPC or CPA bidding.
• Adwords labels: This attribute only works with CPC bidding but can hold multiple values.
• Adwords redirect: This attribute allows advertisers to specify a separate URL that can be
used to track traffic coming from Google Shopping.
• Gender/age/size: While these attributes are required for all apparel items, it might also make
sense to include it for any other items to further describe your products.
• Color: This attribute describes your items by color.
• Online only: This attributes clarifies whether an item is available for purchase only online.
• Excluded destination: By default your items appear in Google Commerce Search or Google
Shopping.
• Expiration date: This attribute shows the date that an item listing will expire.
Uploading your data feed
Once you have successfully created your data feed, it is time to upload it to your Merchant
Center account. All you have to do is the following:
1. Sign into your Merchant Center account.
2. Go to Data Feeds > New Data Feed.
3. Choose the country in which you want your products to display (if you want to target different
countries, you have to submit a feed for each individual country as some countries have
different attribute requirements).

4. Choose Googlebase as the format and enter a name for your .txt file.
5. Save your changes, then go to “manual upload” to upload your feed.
Once you have uploaded your feed, Google will process and test your feed.
Depending on the size of your file, it may take a while to
process the feed. You can check back on the status of your
data feed upload by clicking on the dashboard in the
Google Merchant Center. A linked status will appear next
to your file. Just click on this link, which will give you details
about the feed validation. It will show any errors that need
to be fixed before you can upload your feed again.
To review the quality of your data feed, go to the Products link in the left navigation bar within
Merchant Center. This page displays the status of each product and will display up to 10,000
products randomly. If you have more than 10,000 products and want to see the status of specific
products, you have to search for their status.
Tip:
It may take up to 24 hours for
your products to start ap-
pearing in Google Shopping
results.

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Automating the Process: Feed Schedules and Upload Formats
Once you have uploaded the feed, it is scheduled to expire after 30 days. In order for your
products to continue showing in Google Shopping results, you need to re-upload your feed.
You can also upload your feed on a daily basis or as frequently as your products or prices
change.
While manual feed uploads are easy and usually don’t take a lot of time (processing the feed,
however, may take longer depending on the size of your feed), you can also create a
schedule to have your feed uploaded automatically without having to worry about it.
To accomplish this, click “create schedule” in your data feed overview, and the following
window will appear:
Just fill it out with the
desired frequency, timing
and location of your feed.
Then click “schedule” to
complete the set up
process.
This upload method
requires the size of your
file to be less than 1
gigabyte, and the
user-agent

“googlebot” cannot be blocked from the directory containing your feed. Moreover, the feed
URL has to point directly to the data feed file in one of Google’s supported file formats.
Important: The URL of your file location must begin with http://, https://, ftp://, or sftp://
Google Spreadsheet
Data feeds can also be submitted via Google Spreadsheets. For this option, either use the
existing template that Google provides or submit a Google spreadsheet that you created
yourself:
• Click on new data feed and provide the target country, format and data feed file name
• Check the checkbox next to “I want to use Google spreadsheet” to store, edit and upload
your feed.
• Either upload your data by generating a template feed or by using an existing Google
spreadsheet that contains all of your product information.
The spreadsheet must be viewable to everyone with a link. The advantage of this option is
that it is simple to create and to update as content is uploaded directly from the information
given in the spreadsheet. However, this format cannot be used to upload a large volume of
data: no files larger than 20MB.
FTP
FTP is an advanced method to submit data feeds to Google Merchant Center. This format
has to be used for files larger than 20MB. The file also needs to be smaller than one gigabyte.
If your file is larger than one gigabyte, you can split it up and upload it in several parts.
To use FTP, go to the Settings link in your Merchant Center account and click FTP:

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Enter a username and password for the FTP account and click Save Changes. It may take
several hours before the account creation takes effect. Also, once the FTP account is
created, the chosen username cannot be changed.
There are three methods for submitting your file via FTP:
• FTP your data feed using a web browser:
- Open a browser window
- Type ftp://uploads.google.com and click enter
- Enter your FTP username and password, then select log on
- Drag and drop your feed into the browser window and wait for the file to transfer.
Once the icon for the file appears in the browser window, your file is uploaded.
• FTP your data feed using an FTP program:
- You need an FTP program installed on your computer to use this method. The client
will need to be configured so that you can connect to Google’s FTP server:
• Host name: uploads.google.com
• User: the FTP username you set up in Google Merchant Center
• Password: the FTP password you set up in Google Merchant Center
• Logontype: it should be set to normal, not anonymous.
• FTP your data feed using a DOS prompt
- You can send your feed using DOS command prompt without having to use a FTP
client:
- From the Start menu, select Programs, then select MS-DOS Prompt, or from the
Start menu, select Programs, then select Accessories, then select Command Prompt
- When the black prompt screen appears, use ‘cd’ to get to the directory of your file is
saved in.
- Type in ftp uploads.google.com
- When the FTP connection is made, the prompt will ask for your username. Enter the
FTP username of your Google Merchant Center account.
- Next enter your password, which you set up in Google Merchant Center.
- Type put <filename>. This command will send the file from your computer to
Google’s FTP server.
- After you get the “transfer complete” acknowledgement, you are done.

Google Cloud Storage
Developers can also use Google Cloud Storage to submit products to Merchant
Center. However, some technical know-how and experience in programming applications
is a must for this method.
Google Cloud Storage is similar to an FTP server—you submit and access files with a file
transfer client. Once you set up your Merchant Center account with Google Cloud
Storage, Google automatically assigns a private bucket for your shopping data. The
benefits of using this service are the enhanced security, you can have files up to 10
gigabytes in size, and you have a flexible infrastructure that can be used for other
applications as well.
Submitting your product feed via Google Cloud Storage:
1. Link your Google Cloud Storage and Merchant Center accounts.
a. Go to Settings > Google Cloud Storage in Merchant Center account
b. Select either Current user, or Different user with your Google Cloud Storage login
email address.
c. Once you click on Link Google Cloud Storage, you will automatically be assigned
a bucket for your product data listed under Google Cloud Storage bucket name.
2. Prepare your data feeds:
a. Create your data feed: http://support.google.com/merchants/bin/answer.
py?hl=en&answer=187892
b. Register your data feed in Merchant Center before submitting the feed.
3. Submit data feeds via Google Cloud Storage:
a. Use either gsutil or gs python library to schedule uploads or most S3-compatible
clients.
4. Verify your submission.
Feed Performance and Optimizations
Once the product feed is created, it has been uploaded to Google Merchant Center
without any errors and has been running for a few days, the optimization process of
your feed begins.
Besides constantly monitoring your data feed for errors, you should also ensure a
high-quality shopping experience for your customers. This can be achieved by accurately

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describing all of your items, updating the status of your products on the website at all times,
and complying with Google’s Shopping policies.
While most advertisers would now stop and focus on building out their Product Listing Ads
campaign in Google and optimizing the product ads within AdWords, the product feed needs
to be constantly optimized as well to guarantee a strong overall performance.
Just like your approach to website/content/ad copy optimization, product feed optimization
includes incorporating keyword research and testing different product images, titles and
descriptions.
The most important attributes to focus on tend to be the following:
• Product type attribute
This attribute classifies your product. So you probably want to closely match the organization
of products on your website. However, it is also important to choose a powerful description
to reach the highest potential of traffic but with the least competition. So for example if you
were a clothing retailer, you want to research whether it is best to use “clothing”, “clothes” or
“apparel” to classify your products.
• Title and description attributes
The text of the title attribute will be shown on the general search results and Shopping results
pages. The description will only be shown on the Shopping results page. So first of all, you
have to make sure that your title and description is consistent with the image of your product.
Secondly, make sure that it includes an exact description of the product you are offering.
Include trends, holidays, or other current events in your description to gain an advantage over
your competitors. The titles and descriptions need to also fit within Google’s character limits.
• Image attribute
This is a very important attribute that often gets overlooked. To ensure an excellent customer
experience, the image needs to exactly match the product that users are looking for, down to
the color, size, material, etc. You may also want to use unique product images in case you are
selling the same product as one or more of your competitors. Just as you would test
different ad copy in AdWords, also test different images and build on the results you see.
These tests need to be performed on a regular basis to keep your product feed fresh
and attractive to customers.

As a rule of thumb, it is important that the customer who clicks through to your website sees
the same product information (price, availability, etc.) as is presented in your Google Shop-
ping results.
Google provides the following tips to ensure fresh data:
• Create or update your product feed right after you updated your database.
• Submit your feed to Google at the same time as you update your website.
• If you update your website multiple times per day, also submit your feed multiple times
per day.
• Try to minimize the amount of time that your data is being processed, if you are using a
third party feed provider.
• Make sure that any scheduled feed fetch from your server happens at the same time as
your website is updated.
• Use the Content API for Shopping if your product information changes very frequently
such that four updates per day are not enough to meet quality standards.
Conclusion
Some aspects of managing your PLA feed can be complicated, but the guiding principle is
simple: Providing as many relevant attributes as you can and keeping your product feed up
to date allows Google to show the most relevant products to customers, and thus will lead to
more product sales for you.

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Product Listing Ad
Optimizations in AdWords
By Jeff Allen
Although the optimization options in
AdWords are sometimes limited, they
can be essential to the success of the
PLA campaign as a whole. Just
remember: The Product Listing Ads
should be a separate campaign from
all other search and display network
campaigns in the account. This lets you
establish different settings and budgets
for PLAs and track PLA-specific
performance metrics.
There should be an “All Products” ad
group as well as product categories
separated by ad groups in the PLA
campaign. Product feed data has been
reviewed and is accurate and up-to-
date.
Product Targets
An “All Products” product target is
created by default when initially
creating the campaign as well as when
adding new ad groups to the campaign.
It is a best practice to set up an All
Products product target as it targets all
of the products in the Merchant Center
product feed, and it can feature any
products on Google Search and/or
Google Shopping that are not covered
by the product-specific ad groups.
However, it is also recommended to
add separate ad groups for product
groups/categories defined by using the
attributes that are set up in AdWords
and Merchant Center accounts.
Product Listing Ad (PLA) campaign optimizations don’t end with simply creating a
PLA campaign in AdWords. In fact, setting up a PLA campaign is just the beginning.
Once you give the campaign some time to gather relevant data, you can start
optimizing for better results.

Product Listing Ad Optimizations in AdWords
(Continued)
AdWords gives you the following attributes by which you can segment your products:
These categories help you to define your products in a unique way, and they come in
handy to organize your campaigns with any one attribute or a combination thereof.
Moreover, by adding AdWords labels and/or AdWords grouping attributes to the product
feed, products can be defined in customized groupings/labels. With PLAs in AdWords
being automatically generated and targeted based on the data and feeds set up in
Merchant Center, product targets or filters need to be exactly matched to the attributes
within the Merchant Center account. You can check this in the AdWords account by
following these steps:
1. Navigate to the Auto Targets tab of the PLA campaign:
2. Select the product target within an ad group and click validate:

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(Continued)
This will tell you if your product target is valid and can be targeted via AdWords.
Another best practice is to create a separate ad group for each product target to gain
maximum visibility into search queries triggering each product target.
Bidding Strategy
Do you want to bid on different brands, conditions or product types? While ad group
bids need to continually be adjusted just like keyword or placement bids in usual
search and display campaigns, it is recommended to set the “All Products” ad group
bid lower than the product-specific ad group bids in the PLA campaign. This is to
ensure that product-specific ad groups will be shown rather than the All Products ad
group. The All Products ad group is, however, in place to feature any products that
are not covered by the product-specific ad groups.
When using maximum CPC bidding, set the same
max CPC bid that is used for existing ads of the
same product category. Monitor it to see how the
Product Listing Ads perform and adjust the bids
accordingly. Just as with keyword bids, PLA bids
can be changed as often as you like. The key is to
experiment with it and monitor the results that
increased bids or decreased bids have on the PLAs.
Messaging
Separate product
target ad groups also
allow for product-
specific promotional
messaging:
Tip:
Bids for the best performing
products, however, should be
increased to influence Google’s
decision on showing these
products more often.

(Continued)
Although it is optional to enter a
promotion for your ad group, it is
highly recommended to further make
your products stand out from other
merchants. Compared to a text ad, this
promotion is limited to the call to action
that highlights anything special that
applies to all of the products that are
targeted in a particular ad group.
This promotion should be used as an
“actionable alert for customers” to get
them to make a purchase on your site.
With this being said, it is important that
the promotional message is true for all
the products in an ad group and that it
is updated on a regular basis as
promotions tend to change over time.
The ad is limited to 45 characters, but
it gives you the opportunity to highlight
the unique selling point of your product
that differentiates it from the competi-
tive products on the market. However,
keyword insertion won’t work with
this promotional ad or the product
information text provided dynamically
from the Merchant Center account. If
you are running more than one special
at a time, you can always add
additional promotions to your ad group.
This is a good strategy for testing how
different promotions affect the CTR and
conversion rate as well.
Performance Data
Ad group organization should allow for
an easy view of performance data that
is helpful to the business. For
example, if you sell both new and
vintage products, organize them by
brand and condition. This will help you
quickly see the conversion volume,
conversion rate and other important
performance data for each ad group.
Based upon ad group performance,
bids might be changed or there may
be an obvious need to test different
product targeting. Nevertheless, with a
too-granular set up of your ad groups,
data can become meaningless. So it
is recommended to use up to three
product targets per ad group and to use
distinguished descriptions for each of
the ad groups.
Tip:
You want your ad group
measurements to be
statistically significant —
to achieve this, use
multiple product targets
per ad group.

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(Continued)
You can always use the Merchant Center page in AdWords to review product
information as well. On the Merchant Center page you have read-only access to the
product data for all of the Merchant Center accounts that are linked to the AdWords
account. Click the Tools and Analysis drop-down menu and then navigate to Google
Merchant Center. A table with the following columns will appear:
• Merchant Center Store Name: All the Merchant Center stores that are linked to the
AdWords account.
• Total Active Items in Product Ads: The number of active products in each Merchant
Center store. Active stands for all products that have been submitted and were
accepted.
By clicking on the link for each store name, a site with more detailed product
information will open up:
• The “Data health” graphs shows whether the products are eligible to appear or are
currently appearing in product ads. This graph displays the number of products that
are active, awaiting review, or are disapproved.
• The “Data feeds” table lists the most-recently updated data feeds, including the data
and status of the most recent upload.
• The “Data quality signals” table shows whether there are any errors with the data

(Continued)
On the products tab, a table with a list of all the products that are in the Merchant
Center account will appear. It shows information about the condition of the product,
language of the product as well as whether a product is eligible to appear in the
product ads.
This is what each symbol means:
• Green check mark: The product is active and eligible to appear in the product ads
• Yellow hourglass: The product is being reviewed to ensure it complies with policies
• Red circle: The product has been disapproved
Filtering the products by their statuses by making a selection from the “status”
drop-down menu will give more insights into whether a product is active (“active”),
whether it has been processed and is eligible to appear (“searchable”), or whether it
is under review or has been disapproved (“inactive” for both).
For further information on a product, click on the link for the product. The following
screen will open up and reveal additional information on the URL, technical details
about the product and data feed, and any product attributes that have been added to
Merchant Center:

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(Continued)
This information is useful to check attributes of various products and optimize
accordingly in the PLA AdWords campaign. Moreover, recommendations can be
made to improve product feed data as well.
Keywords
Product Listing Ads do not use traditional keywords, so you don’t need to worry about
creating a keyword list. Nevertheless, most people forget about negative keywords.
Once enough data has been gathered, run a search query report and use keyword
research and common sense to build a negative keyword list for your PLAs. The
process of running a search query report for PLAs is quite similar to any other
campaign. The search query report can either be generated on the keywords tab or
the auto targets tab:
1.Select the PLA campaign and go to either the keywords tab or the auto targets tab.

(Continued)
2. Click on the “Keyword Details” drop-down and select “All”:
Once completed, you can get some insights in the search queries used to trigger the
product listing ads. Based on this keyword data, you can implement the following
optimizations:
• Adjust ad group level bids based on cost, average CPC, and conversion data
• Add search queries as negative keywords to filter out any irrelevant queries that are
generating costs, but no conversions
• Add keyword phrases to your product feed that are converting, but do not appear in
your feed yet
Product Filters
Product filters restrict which products from the Merchant Center account appear with
ads. By adding product filters to the PLA campaign, ad groups can be further defined.
But remember, Product Listing Ads and product extensions share the same product
feed data at the campaign level. Therefore, if a product filter is added to the PLA
campaign, it applies to both the product extensions and the Product Listing Ads.
Here’s how to add a product filter:
1. Navigate to the campaign where you want to add product filters
2. Select the Ad Extensions tab and then select Product Extensions from the
drop-down menu
3. If a Merchant Center account is already associated with the campaign, click on its
entry to edit it. Otherwise, click “new extension” to begin.

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(Continued)
4. Check the Filter box in the panel that appears
5. Select up to 10 “OR” statements as requirements to determine which products from
the feed are eligible to appear in ads in the campaign. Up to five conditions within
each “OR” statement can also be specified.
Note:
The values entered in the conditions must match the Merchant Center feed attributes
exactly, or the conditions will not match any products, and Product Listing Ads will not
be served for this campaign.
Conclusion
Depending on the data feed and how often products are being updated, added or
removed, always remember to update your product targets in the PLA campaign as
well.
Be sure to regularly review your bids, the promotional text, and the validation of your
product targets to ensure smooth performance with your PLA campaigns going
forward. And don’t forget to add negative keywords to the PLA campaign to keep your
PLAs from showing up for irrelevant queries.
Following these guidelines will ensure the long-term performance of your PLAs and
allow you to focus on the more specific optimizations discussed above.

Strategy and Analysis
For PLAs
By Amanda West-Bookwalter
Once you have all of the
requirements for creating Product
Listing Ads (PLAs), such as the
Google Merchant Center account and
an error-free data feed, and you’ve
set up your initial campaign, the next
part to a successful Product Listing Ad
initiative is strategy development.
Of course, after you have a strategy,
you’ll also need to test, analyze, and
develop new strategies based on your
analysis results. This article will cover
all of these vital parts of your Product
Listing Ads initiative.
There are several strategies you can
employ for your PLAs. Picking the
proper strategy, as with anything, will
depend entirely upon unique factors
such as the vertical of your company,
your existing goals, etc.
Targeting
The most important thing, which I will
reiterate throughout this article when
discussing targeting, is to target by the
differences that make performance
change. For instance, if you find
performance is about the same for
each brand of dog food you sell, but
each brand name is different from all
of your other brand names, then you
should target by this attribute.
I’ll go through some of the more
successful and most commonly
useful targeting strategies to begin
with, and hopefully you’ll find one that
matches your needs or could
be altered slightly to match them.
Set up targets by brand
If you sell items that have different
brands, and you see different
performance by brand, this is a great
option for you. You will want to set
up an ad group for each brand, and
within that ad group, set up a target
for each brand. Start with a safe
minimum bid. I normally judge this
based on what I’m comfortable
paying in my Search campaigns. If
my average cost-per-click is $.75
in my Search campaigns, I will start
with that as my Max CPC in new
programs like Product Listing Ads.
During the Analysis section, I’ll focus
on how to tell you need to change
your bids in these campaigns.

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Set up targets by product type
If you sell many different product types, and you see different performance based
on these product types, this is an excellent choice for you. The set up is the same
as the targeting by brand: set up ad groups based on product types. Within those
ad groups, you should set up targets based on product types. When I say product
types, I am referring to the Google product categories.
Example Google product categories:
Animals & Pet Supplies > Pet Supplies > Bird Supplies > Bird Food
Animals & Pet Supplies > Pet Supplies > Bird Supplies > Bird Treats
Animals & Pet Supplies > Pet Supplies > Cat Supplies > Cat Apparel
This attribute is not required in your data feed when setting up your initial data feed,
but it is useful for optimizing your campaigns. I would strongly suggest taking the
time to go through your product to find the most specific product category for each
product.
Set up targets by custom defined attributes
AdWords labels targeting and AdWords grouping targeting allows you to target by
whatever grouping you find relevant. This would allow you to group things by
season, for instance. You could have labels for “fall line” and “summer line”. You
could even include a designer’s name: “Gucci Fall Line”. The possibilities are
endless here. The key to utilizing this targeting method most effectively is to find the
biggest cause of performance change in your account. You need to analyze your
data in AdWords and any Analytics packages you use to find what attribute you can
separate your products by that cause performance changes, but everything within
each attribute has similar performance. So, while these targeting choices are the
most appealing because they allow the most customization, they also require the
most work and intelligent analysis to utilize properly.
There are a few differences to these targeting methods you should consider before
picking on. You must use the cost-per-click pricing model with the AdWords labels
target, but you can target up to 10 labels at a time. Whereas with the AdWords
grouping target, you can only target one grouping at a time, but you can use it for
whatever bidding method you prefer.
Strategy and Analysis For PLAs (Continued)

Set up targets by SKU or product ID
This is a targeting method that seems favored by many advertisers, as I’ve learned from
discussing Product Listing Ads on blogs and social networking sites. This allows you to
know exactly what product you are targeting. Instead of grouping several or many
products into one target, you can be sure the performance of each target is directly tied
to an individual product.
This strategy could be advantageous to any website with a small inventory, with a
handful of top performing products, or with an account manager that has a great
memory! For example, if you sell a small line of supplements, it may benefit you to
manage each product separately in your Product Listing Ad campaign.
As to the organization of this targeting method, you could either have an ad group for
each target, which would be beneficial if you’re doing cost-per-acquisition bidding at the
ad group level. You could also think of some other way to organize your products,
perhaps an ad group for each product type, and then have the individual product targets
housed within each ad group. This would be best for cost-per-click bidding.
Analysis
There will be another article in this edition of Compass that discusses optimizing in
AdWords, and yet another that covers optimizing your data feed. However, I’d like to take
some time to cover analysis of your Product Listing Ads as it pertains to your targeting
strategies.
As I covered earlier in this article, the key factor to a good strategy for this product is to
determine the key factor that changes performance, yet has similar performance within
the segmentation. Hopefully you were able to perform an in-depth and intelligent analysis
to find what this is in your account. However, you’ll want to make sure that you’ve found
the key factors to segment your targeting by through analysis of performance.
Download a full report from AdWords that includes all target performance for as long of a
date range as is available and makes sense. If you’ve had the same strategy in place for
30 days, and you’ve seen hundreds of clicks for each target, then I would pull data for 30
days. Just make sure whatever date range you select has had the same strategy for
the entirety and that you have enough data gathered to feel confident in the
statistical validity.

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Once you have this report downloaded, compare performance between targets.
Hopefully you see enough differences to justify continuing the segmentations you’ve
selected as your targeting strategy. If you see some similar segments have very similar
performance, you may want to consider grouping these into one target for easier
management.
Comparing keyword-triggering data is also vital in analyzing your strategy. Performance
comparison at the targeting level could be misleading if you haven’t set up good
negative keyword lists to limit cross-contamination between targets. Make sure keywords
are being sent to their most relevant target. You may need to perform analysis here and
continue adding negative keywords to ad groups to prevent cross traffic several times
before you can analyze your target strategy properly. Make sure you allow enough data
to accrue after the last time you add negatives so that you have clean, statistically
relevant data to analyze.

30
Hanapin Marketing:
“Hanapin” means search in Filipino and Hanapin Marketing’s forte is search engine
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Visit www.hanapinmarketing.com to learn more about Hanapin Marketing.
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realm. For more information visit www.heroconf.com.

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Phone: 812.330.3134 x 120
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