When Covid-19 brought the world to a grinding halt, it seemed almost as if a death knell had been sounded for industries like manufacturing, logistics, airlines, and travel, etc. On the other hand, e-commerce, banks, insurance companies, etc. thrived. We know that Amazon’s shares skyrocketed during the pandemic.CEO Jeff Bezos’s net worth grew by $72.7 billion in 2020, increasing by 63.3% over the course of the year, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index. (Source –Business Insider, 24th December 2020)
The ones who made it big during this pandemic-induced recession were those with connectivity and delivery capability. For them, the pandemic, together with increased social media consumption and interactive shoppable ads, presented a great opportunity for the maximization of sales.
When e-Commerce arrived, everyone thought it was the death of retail. But smart retailers embraced e-Commerce and moved into the category of e-tail. Now Shoppable Ads have extended the e-tail industry. Brick and Mortar stores are just a step away from reaching their audience now. With Shoppable Ads, anyone can become an e-tailer regardless of whether they own a physical store or not, thanks to the extended yet targeted reach that these ads offer. As long as you have the ability to ship products within promised time and provide good customer support, nothing stops anyone from becoming successful. In fact, Shoppable Ads are a boon for brands with niche product offerings, thanks to the finer targeting options with significantly lesser costs.
Let’s take a look at Shoppable ads. What are they? Where can you find them?
What are Shoppable Ads?
“A shoppable ad is usually an ad inventory with single or multiple product images or tags (or markups) that will enable users to know more about the product or purchase it in or outside the advertising platform, as the case may be”
A shoppable ad is nothing but an image or a video, illustrating products with tags (or markups) and checkout capabilities. So customers can check out a product, know how much it costs and then go on to buy it. Google’s Image Ad feature launched in 2019, is a great example.
Shoppable ads are easily trackable, attributable, and should be a part of retailers’ media mix for higher Return on Advertising Spends (ROAS).
Some popular shoppable ads
Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs)
Product Listing Ads (PLAs) allow you to place your products in front of millions of online shoppers searching on Google for the products you offer.PLAs show shoppers exactly what you have for sale before they even reach your site, which will have a significant impact on your portal’s overall conversion and shopping cart abandonment.
Google Showcase Shopping Ads
Google Showcase Shopping Ads allow you to combine a selection of related products aka your product catalog with vivid, high-quality images or videos to influence your audience to make purchases.
YouTube Shoppable Video Ads
YouTube Shoppable Ads is a new direct response ad format that makes ads on YouTube more “shoppable” by adding browse-able product images that link from the video directly to a brand’s own product pages.
Facebook Collection Ads
Facebook Collection Ads allow you to advertise a primary video or image with four smaller accompanying images in a grid-like layout that will allow your audience to tap on your collection ad, so they can browse or learn more about your products without leaving Facebook.
Instagram Ads with Product Tags
Instagram Ads with product tags allow you to navigate your audience that clicks the ad on Instagram, directly to a product detail page to learn more or complete purchasing the product.
Instagram Ads with Product Tags and Checkout
Instagram Ads with product tags and checkout allow a US checkout-enabled business to help those who click the ad to directly purchase the product without leaving Instagram
Pinterest Shopping Ads
Pinterest Shopping Ads allow you to advertise either single image ads that promote a product relevant to people’s interests or multi-image ads that display a lifestyle image of your choice, followed by a group of products relevant to people’s interests
Shoppable Snap ads
Shoppable Snap Ads are also known as Collection Ads allow you to feature a collection of products within a single ad. The audience can tap on each product image to get more product details.
Shoppable Ads are poised to be one of the fastest-growing advertising categories, more so with a pandemic for a backdrop. Retail brands are aggressively seeking customers who do their shopping online. And the percentage of marketers who use shoppable video ads grew to 40% in 2020 from 33% in 2019 and is only on the rise. Social media platforms have all added shoppable ads into their mixes, simply because of the way they boost conversion – it is instant gratification and convenience all rolled into one.
According to Net Solutions,’ merchants using shoppable video search results see an increase of 30% in conversion rates. In the very first week of Ted Baker using shoppable videos on its site, they were able to track $70,000 worth of clothing sales through them.
So why are shoppable ads so effective? Watch this space as we talk about why shoppable ads are the next big thing for retailers.
