On Tuesday, Google has introduced Shoppable Ads on Google Images at the Shoptalk conference. The sponsored images highlights products that reveal brand, price and other details when they are moused over.
This is similar to ad units found on Instagram and Pinterest, but Google debuted Shoppable AdWords formats on YouTube in 2015. The company piloted an earlier version of Shoppable Ads for third-party sites, as well as Google search and image search.
According to Google, it is currently testing these new units “with select retailers” for broad, top of funnel queries, such as “shower tile designs” and home office ideas.” The following image reflects how they look and work.
Google is trying to enable retailers to reach shoppers in “inspiration phase” of shopping. The company would be rolling out these units across more categories in the coming months.
The company even announced that Showcase Shopping ads would be coming to Google Images. This will allow a richer product presentation for brand marketers. Google explained that Merchant Center feeds and content is going to be available “beyond advertising,” saying that “retailers can provide product data to Google, free of charge, so that we can start showing more of your product information to potential shoppers.”
Google wants to help brand and product sellers reach consumers in more ways during discovery rather than just lower-funnel search queries. Google also wants to make itself a richer visual shopping destination and prevent the defection of users to competitors’ sites that offer more “inspiration” and product discover experiences.