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Adwords showing product images
27 October 2008
by
admin
Filed under
Articles + Google
Just found this interesting article on seroundtable about how Adwords has started to show images of products next to Adwords adtexts. I have not noticed this before so I assume this is fairly new phenomena and is restricted to Google.com at the moment. Below is an example of how this works in practice…
These product pictures have been expanded by the user who has the option of whether they wish to view the products or not. As you can see, the images when expanded take up a significant portion of the SERP’s. From Google’s perspective, I guess they are making their search platform more targeted so that users can navigate to the page they want more quickly. Similar tactics have been implemented in the natural listings as well with users being able to search a website from Google, Youtube being an obvious example (below).
What does all the means for advertisers? Well if you are lucky enough to have the drop down function on your ad, it is likely that you will experience a higher CTR, merely from the fact that your ad will attract more attention from users.
Also by opening the product box, users are pushing down other advertiser’s ads. It also looks as though the drop down will only function when the ad is in the top three positions (with a yellow background). Does this then mean that the advertiser’s who have the best quality score or highest Max CPC or even both will be rewarded? If this takes off, will everyone scurry to be in in position 1,2 or 3? Conventional wisdom often suggests that positions 1, 2 and 3 are not the most efficient for an ad as (a) the CPC is highest, (b) the user has not read the ad as carefully and so a better conversion rate can be gained in position 4 or 5. This is not a hard and fast rule but could be seriously undermined should the drop down box become the norm
Paradoxically though, if your product offering is not relevant (over priced for example) then you surely will not get a high CTR from the drop down. But then again you’ve prevented unqualified traffic and so saved money right? However you harm your quality core from less click throughs. Swings and roundabouts.
I would like to find out how Google decides which advertisers get the drop down button. One way would be to rotate the button between the top three advertisers and then measure the CTR from users that have clicked on the drop down. It would make sense to reward adtexts with a high CTR from the drop down to be attributed with the functionality more often. I would imagine that this process is being trialled to see how users react to the changes. If successful, I am sure they will roll this out accross all the Google extensions - especially if it means more revenue for the big G.
