During a search last week, Ginny Marvin came across something interesting. When she was searching to find out whether the promotions extension Google is testing is also showing on mobile (which it is). She came across an example of what appears to be a Showcase Shopping ad for the first time in the wild.
The idea behind Google introducing Showcase ads, was to spotlight retailer collections on broad, nono-brand search queries. One of the weird things about what Ginny had found is that these examples are showing on retailer brand terms, not broad, non-brand queries. This format appeared on brand+outlet queries: “talbot outlet,” “banana republic outlet” and “ann taylor outlet.”
When Ginny first saw the Shopping result on the Talbots query, it was assumed that the ads linked to a Shopping page featuring the items shown in the ads, among other items in the category was sold by Talbots itself. But with the “banana republic outlet” and “ann taylor outlet” results, it featured used items in this ad format.
Ginny wasn’t able to find the products that where shown in the ads on the Shopping pages. The used items are being sold by Poshmark, eBay, Thredup, along with others.