PLA 2.0Strategies to Improve Your Program and Your Performance

In 2015, the number of mobile searches doubled1 and overtook the number of searches taking place on desktops for the first time in history. This influx of traffic has also translated to more sales, with 30% of purchases now being sourced by these devices.

Because mobile searchers respond well to Google’s image-based ads, PLA click share surpassed text ads in 2015 and they accounted for 54% of clicks in the first half of 20162. Advertiser budgets were quick to re-spond to this shift in traffic, with 53% of paid search ad budgets now being directed to this high performing ad type2, and we expect this figure to grow.

While the majority of retailers have established PLA programs, there’s a huge (often untapped) opportunity to improve them. Many accounts hit a performance plateau, leaving marketers struggling to figure out how to shake things up and reach new levels of success. Even PLA programs that are performing well have op-portunities to generate more revenue.

Introducing: PLA 2.0. We partnered with Google to develop advanced strategies to take product ad pro-grams to the next level of performance. You’ll learn tried and true ways to reduce wasted ad spend and identify new growth opportunities in your PLA program. Let’s get started.

MOVE ASIDE, DESKTOPS

54%PLA % Clickshare in 2016

53%

PLA % of Paid Search Ad Budgets

30%of all purchases are now being sourced bymobile

The first step to taking your PLA program to the next level is to focus on improvements to the product feed. It may seem te-dious but the foundation of an outstanding PLA program is a highly optimized product feed. Without it, retailers waste count-less dollars serving the wrong ads, or no ads at all. You can’t achieve outstanding PLA performance without a solid feed.

The objective of your product feed attributes is to match your product ads to a user’s search query. Here are a few tips to ensure the most relevant match:

Optimize product titles, descriptions, product types, and other attributes to ensure that ads will show for relevant search queries.

Continuously optimize your feed. Improved ad performance requires continuous testing and editing of product attributes and ensuring that stock levels are kept up to date.

Keep product feed attributes consistent and include product types that are as detailed as possible.

Identify products with titles or descriptions that are not robust enough to show in comparison to your competition.

Utilize top queries from PLA and search, and capitalize on trends by adding them to titles to maximize traffic.

FEED MANAGEMENT & OPTIMIZATION

OPTIMIZATION

A leading fashion specialty retailer struggled to show for PLAs due to insufficient product titles. Their titles lacked brand names, gender, retailer name, and product descriptors. Once we began optimizing their feed, revenue and traffic increased substantially. Within three weeks, revenue had increased 2.47x and traffic nearly tripled (2.97x).

Feed Optimization Results in Triple-Digit Growth for Fashion Retailer

Leverage opportunities to grow your product feed and increase your visibility across the web. Here’s how:

EXPAND THE FEED OF ELIGIBLE PRODUCTS

Ensure that top products sold in search, in stores and through other channels are also being advertised with PLAs.

Find and resolve products or product groups that are not currently in the feed because they are unecessarily surpressed. Those that are in the feed may not be showing because the feed quality does not meet Google’s requirements.

Add products that may have geographic restrictions by creating geo-targeted campaigns. Some retailers have manufacturer agreements in place prohibiting them from advertising certain products outside of a specified geographic area. Geo-targeted campaigns are also great for driving local awareness of a brand and in-store sales for specific products.

Leverage the Google Shopping Assortment Report to help identify new products to carry and those that may be missing from your feed.

Fashion Specialty Retailer

Revenue Clicks

New PLA strategy implemented

The Google Shopping Assortment Report in Merchant Center helps retailers identify new products to carry. Retailers can find the top 100 products they don’t currently offer for each Google Product Category. This report also includes benchmark selling prices. This data is pulled from real-time popular products on Google Shopping.

Be as granular as possible with your account structure in order to uncover important insights and drive needed performance gains. Here are a few tips to help you create and leverage a more granular account structure:

ACCOUNT STRUCTURE

Create an account structure that groups products based on similarities in how theyperform.

Use this dynamic account structure in your bid management to strategically bid for each product group based on their unique performance.

A more granular account structure will provide data on each type of product, rather than a wider group of products, making the data more actionable.

When a large electronics retailer was struggling to remain competitive for PLAs, they were able to uncover important insights and drive much needed performance gains after a more granular account structure was implemented.

The electronics retailer struggled to grow their PLA program because their account structure didn’t take advantage of grouping like-products together. Some of their products, such as freezers and gas ranges, were grouped together based on brand. Adlucent restructured their PLA account using product types built from the feed attributes, resulting in a traffic increase of 63% and a revenue increase of 48%. This was accomplished with a minimal increase in CPCs, but resulted in a 49% increase in converted clicks.

Changes to Account Structure Increases Conversions for Electronics Retailer

Read 14 Ways to Optimize Your Product Feed Like a Pro for more details and tips on feed optimization*

AUTOMATIONAutomate your feed update process to ensure 100% coverage of feed updates when new products are added.

Safeguard your account so there is no disconnect between site data and corre-sponding Google Merchant Center status.

Bad Product Type Structure Good Product Type StructureSummer Sale - Blue Patterned Duvet Cover - Knit Throw Blanket - Square Serving Platter - Large Glass Pitcher - Wooden Deck Chairs - Outdoor Glass Dining Table

Home > Furniture > Outdoor Furniture > Seating > Chairs - Wooden Deck Chairs

Home > Furniture > Outdoor Furniture > Tables - Outdoor Glass Dining Table

Home > Bedding > Duvet Covers - Blue Patterned Duvet Cover

Home > Bedding > Throw Blankets - Knit Throw Blanket

Home > Table Settings > Dinnnerware > Serveware - Square Serving Pitcher

Home > Table Settings > Dinnnerware > Serveware - Large Glass Pitcher

STRATEGIC PLA MANAGEMENTThe second step to taking your PLA program to the next level is to review your overall PLA strategy to find new opportunities for growth and to increase efficiency.

BID MANAGEMENTBid management should be constant and very strategic, not handled sporadically or only at pre-designated times. Here are a few tips to improve your bid management strategy:

Incorporate additional data sources such as intent, past performance, cross-de-vice, cross-channel, demographics, time of day, seasonality, and others that are unique to your business.

Take device data into consideration when setting bids. In many cases, higher AOV items are found on mobile, but are purchased on a desktop. Bids should be set appropriately for each device on your campaigns.

Develop a customized bidding strategy to minimize wasted ad spend and ensure you’re growing efficiently.

Ensure that you are advertising for best-selling products as soon as they are back in stock.

Utilize an API connection with the Google Merchant Center to keep important account information such as inventory and price accurate and up to date.

INTENT MAPPINGIntent mapping helps ensure that consumer queries are being mapped to the right products and solutions. Use consumer, product, and feed data to understand the intent behind a consumer’s search and then match it to products with the highest probability of leading to a conversion. Here are a few ways to make sure your products are aligned to customer intent:

Product and customer behavior is unique to each retail site, so segment traffic based on how customers search for products on your site.

Use search query data to prioritize ads based on a consumer’s intent. In some cases a subset of products will perform better than the wider product group. By isolating this traffic, you can bid manage more strategically.

Funnel high purchase intent queries to campaigns with competitive bids to save cost on head terms in low CPC campaigns and improve overall conversion rate.

RESTRUCTURE YOUR ACCOUNT FOR IMPROVED SEGMENTATIONRestructure your accounts product target schema by creating highly segmented product targets that are unique to your busi-ness. Here’s how:

Segment beyond brand and non-brand by looking at which manufacturers, brands and categories are selling versus general search terms.

A large shoe retailer was looking to reduce their wasted PLA spend and reinvest it into higher performing areas of their PLA program. By creating a bid strategy based on more granular product targets, ad spend decreased 38% while revenue grew 50% in just three short weeks.

Optimizing Cost Allocation to Drive Efficiency

Cost Revenue

38%

50%

Post-AdlucentPre-Adlucent

Ensure that top brands have aggressive bids, regardless of category bids, to ensure you remain competitive.

Major Home Goods Retailer Restructures Account and Grows Revenue 132% YoYPerformance for an international home goods retailer was wavering. They knew that digital—particularly PLAs—could help them protect their market share and grow revenue, and they turned to Adlucent for help.

Major Home Goods Retailer

Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2

Revenue ROI

New PLA strategy implemented

Create a granular product target schema to take advantage of trends and seasonality.

Incorporate highly segmented product targets into your bid algorithm to optimize spend allocation.

Q2

LEVERAGE STRATEGIC OPPORTUNITITESLeverage opportunities to reduce wasted ad spend and increase conversions. Isolate SKUs with high click volume but low conversion rates and give them high priority ID targets with low CPCs. This ensures that when Google shows product ads for these particular SKUs, it will be at a low bid.

A major electronics retailer has an inventory of premier televisions that cost over $60,000. An analysis showed that these televisions were showing for generic high traffic mobile queries like “Samsung TV.” As you can imagine, many people were interested in clicking these ads but they had no intent to buy on mobile devices. By isolating these SKUs and giving them high priority, low CPC bids, we were able to significantly reduce wasted ad spend.

Reducing Wasted Ad Spend for High Click, Low Conversion Products

After studying the ways consumers shopped for their products, Adlucent created a new PLA strategy. By using consumer intent mapping, traffic was segmented based on how their customers search for products and prioritized based on their intent. Their product target schema was restructured to take advantage of highly segmented product targets unique to their business, such as segments based on specific manufacturers, as well as seasonality. This was applied to the bid management strategy enabling us to bid aggressively for high priority terms and pull back on specific segments. This strategic approach to managing Google Shopping campaigns drove significant growth for the home goods retailer, increasing revenue by nearly 50% YoY while also improving efficiency by 17% in the first quarter.

Adlucent 2130 S Congress Ave, Austin, TX 78704 1-800- 788-9152 solutions@adlucent.com www.adlucent.com

1 Google data Sept 2015 versus Sept 20152 Adlucent data 1/1/16-6/30/16

WORKS CITED

About AdlucentWith 15 years experience in search marketing, Adlucent is the agency of choice for many of the Internet Retailer’s top brands. As the first Certified Google Shopping Partner and the first to build PLA management technology, Adlucent is a leader in PLA strategy and performance, delivering significantly higher PLA growth than their peer set. Their insights and strategies are often featured in leading publications like The New York Times, Inc, AdvertisingAge, MediaPost, and Digital Marketer. To speak with an Adlucent PLA expert, please email solutions@adlucent.com.