January 29, 2020
Shoptimised wanted to discover new ways to help their agency and online retailer clients increase revenue from Shopping Ads. They knew that visibility posed a challenge: in an average 30-day period, 54% of products were receiving no clicks and 34% were receiving clicks but no conversions.
Rather than only increasing sales on already converting products, Shoptimised set out to increase product visibility across more products. Shoptimised identified campaign structure as their starting point. They calculated that the average client’s product feed contained 2,637 products. For many clients, the diversity and size of the feed was making it difficult to create a campaign structure capable of servicing all products.
Shoptimised analyzed Shopping Ads performance data to isolate products that were either receiving no clicks or spending but not converting. They performed the analysis across a set time period that varied depending on the size of each client’s budget (last 30 days, last 60 days or last 90 days). They classified any product currently receiving no clicks or spending but not converting as an “incremental product.”
In developing their solution, Shoptimised collaborated closely with Google to create a secondary Merchant Center under the Shoptimised CSS. By using the Google Ads API, Shoptimised’s software could plug into advertisers’ existing Google Ads accounts to analyze Shopping product performance data multiple times per day based over a 30-, 60- or 90-day period.
With this data in hand, the Shoptimised technology allocated products into four buckets -- above target, below target, non-converting and no clicks. The software then filtered non-converting and no click products into a new product feed that was audited and optimized with Shoptimised’s existing feed optimisation software. Once it had been optimized, the incremental product feed was then passed into a new Google CSS Merchant Center connected to each advertiser’s Google Ads account. Smart Shopping Campaigns were created to target only those products that had not sold in the past 30, 60 or 90 days.
Existing campaigns continued to run separately, selling products that were already converting well. In this way, revenue driven through Shoptimised’s additional campaigns could be defined as incremental, since these sales come from products the advertiser could not sell through existing campaigns. When a product did start to sell through an existing campaign, it would automatically be excluded from the incremental product feed -- minimising any crossover, interference or cannibalisation.
According to Shoptimised internal data, every client has seen an uplift in Shopping Ads revenue through the new solution. For instance, Stoves Are Us saw their overall revenue increase by 50% alongside a boost in product impressions of 29%. Eon Clothing’s product impressions grew by 42%, helping to drive a revenue increase of 133%. And Designer Outlet Sales saw a jump in product impressions of 36% with a revenue increase of 27%.
At Get The Label, product visibility went up by 27% as revenue increased by 19%. “Working with Shoptimised has given us that absolute focus on the commerciality of our campaigns,” says Get the Label Marketing Director Liz McNamara. “They bring that big picture thinking to our campaign performance as they work with a wide range of clients and can see trends emerge that we can respond to in real time.”
“Our key takeaway has been that there is so much growth to be unlocked in Shopping Ads,” Shoptimised Director and co-founder John Cave affirms. “We’ve made use of technology and collaboration with Google to offer merchants growth on products that were previously not getting traffic. Being extremely data focused has enabled us to drive much stronger revenues and growth. What’s more, 80% of the time we’re seeing our new incremental campaigns demonstrating a stronger return on ad spend than existing core campaigns.”
Going forward, Shoptimised is intent on helping more and more clients unlock previously unrealized growth by opening up their product visibility across Shopping Ads and generating sales from products that are currently underserved and not sold. They’re continuing to add more innovative feed optimization features to continue growing their unique service offering throughout Europe and the UK.