Google Shopping Campaigns: Building Smarter Feeds and

Campaigns for Retailers

6/5/2014

Today’s PresentersSoren GodbersenProduct Marketing Manager, Mercent

Debra CarrolDirector, Paid Search Programs, Mercent

Nicole PremoPartner Education Manager, Google

Agenda

Introduction: About MercentBenefits and New Features - GoogleKey Steps for Google Shopping Campaign success with MercentQ&A

The 3-2-1 on MercentMercent ensures the world’s leading retailers are visible, competitive & profitable where consumers

shop.

Mercent Approach to Google

Campaig

nManage

ment

Feed Managemen

t

Success on

Google PLA

Gaining Market Share of Channel Sales

2012 Q1 2012 Q2 2012 Q3 2012 Q4 2013 Q1 2013 Q2 2013 Q3 2013 Q4 2014 Q1

59% 67% 62% 58% 53% 52% 51% 52% 47%

18%14% 20% 26%

28% 27% 31% 32% 36%

23% 19% 18% 16% 19% 22% 18% 16% 17%

Amazon Google Shopping Shopping

Mercent Portfolio BenchmarksSales distribution of “Trifecta Stores”

Google Shopping Campaigns: The Basics

New paradigm for campaign structuring and managementMore closely parallels product feed structureCame out of beta in March 2014, will fully replace old Google PLA model by late AugustCompetitive Benchmarking and Impression Share metrics provide new insight and direction ‘Custom Labels’ replace AdWords Labels/Groupings

The Results So Far:

ROAS CPC$0.00

$1.00

$2.00

$3.00

$4.00

$5.00

$6.00

$7.00

$8.00

$9.00

$7.09

$1.00

$8.97

$0.84

CTR Conv. Rate0.00%

0.50%

1.00%

1.50%

2.00%

2.50%

3.00%

3.50%

4.00%

2.23%

3.57%

2.28%

3.69%

= Legacy PLA = Google Shopping Campaigns

Agenda

Introduction: About MercentBenefits and New Features - GoogleKey Steps for Google Shopping Campaign success with MercentQ&A

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Current advertiser experience

Shopping campaigns

Opportunities

Tips to get started

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Promote your products to interested shoppers

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Retailers are finding success

Current experience

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Retailers are finding success

Desire for operational improvements

Better insights for optimization

Current experience

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Retailers organize, plan and price their inventory

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

What if you could manage your campaign like a store?

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Current advertiser experience

Shopping campaigns

Opportunities

Tips to get started

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Summary of benefits

• Browse your products in AdWords• Product groups

Retail-centric Campaign Management

• Performance data by product attribute• And individual products

Advanced Reporting

Competitive Landscape Data• Benchmark CTR and Max. CPC• Impression Share• Bid Simulator

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Retail-centric campaign managementStreamline how you manage and bid on your products

Browse your data feed directly in AdWords

Select the products you want to bid on more granularly with product groups

Ensure all products are covered within your campaign

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Advanced reportingView performance by product attribute or individual item

Identify new opportunities to optimize your campaign

Analyze and export performance metrics

Able to track item-level performance regardless of product group structure

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Competitive landscape dataOptimize with your competitors in mind

Get insights into your competitive landscape with impression share

Track against your competitors with benchmark max. CPC and CTR

Estimate your opportunity with a bid simulator

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

In late August 2014, all PLA campaigns

will be upgraded to a Shopping campaign

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Current advertiser experience

Shopping campaigns

Opportunities

Tips to get started

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

1

2

3

Create a Shopping campaign

Pause your regular PLA campaign

Customize your Shopping campaign

How to upgrade your Shopping campaign

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Follow basic steps to set up a campaign

Create a “Shopping” campaign in AdWords

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

To avoid duplication, pause your regular Product Listing Ads campaign

Switch to your new Shopping campaign

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Break out your product groups and set different bids for different products

Subdivide your inventory

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

● Ensure your data feed helps you subdivide and bid effectively

● Review these bidding-related attributes in your data feed:

*Custom labels are new attribute

Google product category

Brand

Item ID

Product type Condition

Custom labels*

Optimize your data feed to bid effectively

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

● Custom labels are new attribute for your data feed

● Ideal for setting unique bids for your sales, bestsellers or items with different margins

● Create up to 5 custom labels per product. Each custom label can have multiple values

Custom label Definition Possible custom label values

0 Seasonal spring, summer, fall, winter

1 Promotions flash sale, clearance, co-marketing deal

2 Selling rate bestseller, low seller

3 Margins high margin, low margin

4 Holiday back to school, christmas

Create a custom labels strategy

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

● Data quality and optimization is still important and helps match your products to the shoppers who are looking for them

● Actively ensure you’re submitting high-quality product information and correct unique product identifiers

Revisit your data feed and submit high-quality info

Keep datafeed fresh

Provide clean product info

Optimize product

attributes

Make images glamour

shots

Check Feed Summary & Data Quality

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

● Differentiate bids across product groups so they’re specific to each product group’s value based on ROI, ROAS, or margins

● Use more granular product groups to bid aggressively on your “best” products like bestsellers or best margin items

● Ultimately, your highest bid should be for the fewest products

Bid based on your product group’s relative value

Bids# of products

ID bidding

Top performers

High-value segments / brands

Product type / category-level bidding

Everything else – low ROAS catch all

Google Confidential and Proprietary Google Confidential and Proprietary

Update your data feed

Create & build your Shopping campaign

Finish upgrading to Shopping campaign

Auto-upgrade

Upgrade before end of August

Today

Near future

Before late August

End of August

Holidays

Agenda

Introduction: About MercentBenefits and New Features - GoogleKey Steps for Google Shopping Campaign success with MercentQ&A

1. Clean up your Categories, Brands, and other Key Attributes

Good Categorization Bad Categorization

Categories should be complete and reflect a clear hierarchy

Brands are uniform throughout your feed

Color, Gender, Age Range, Margin and other attributes are complete and accurate – both for discovery and use as Custom Labels

If not, use Mercent’s data optimization tools

Clean Product Category is central to success

ISSUE: Often product type is not clean division of products― Seasonal categories ― Sale/Clearance category

tree separate from regular price

― New product category that will change over time

SOLUTION: Put like products together using Mercent Retail― Create custom groups of

products to better dynamically leverage custom fields in the Google field

Good Categorization

Bad Categorization

Clean Brand Classification is Central to Success

ISSUE: Brand data is inconsistent, preventing uniform use of Brand as a campaign-building parameter

SOLUTION: Put like products together using Mercent Retail― Create custom groups of

products to better dynamically leverage custom fields in the Google field

― OR, use logic-based data optimization rules to standardized brand data

Good Brand Classification

Bad Brand Classification

2. Structure Top-Down, Semantic Campaigns

Be deliberate with the intent of each campaign: make sure campaigns discretely reflect a subset of your catalogUse ‘Include/Exclude’ to meet the needs and goals of the campaignLeverage Custom Labels to refine product groupsFor legacy PLA campaigns or duplicate GSC campaigns, be aware of the campaign priority settingsAlign with merchandising goals

AllShoesNike

Featured#1 SellerAll othersAll others

AsicsAll othersAll others

Total Catalog

Category(Campaign)

Brand

Custom Label

SKU

Simplifying Campaign Structure in Mercent Retail – Another Example

All ProductsWatches

RolexWatches

High Margin Rolex Watches Over $5,000

Know your top products and use them

ISSUE: Retailers often do not leverage custom fields or breakout top performing products

SOLUTION: Use Mercent Retail to fully evaluate SKU level performance and apply rules to populate a custom field to keep top sellers grouped correctly

3. Bidding gets a new perspective

Ensure that bids reflect each product group’s relative contribution with respect to your retail goalsLeverage granular revenue, margin, and LTV reporting to analyze performanceUse benchmarking metrics to fine-tune bidsUse ‘Dimensions’ to inform product group creationContinue splitting out granular product groups to match with new feed values

Leverage Granular KPI Reporting

4. Maintain Focus on Data Quality

Update Data as close to Real-Time as possibleKeep your feed completeIdentify and address errorsOptimize Product Content to best match with shopper search intent

Update Data as Frequently as Possible

Intraday API calls update inventory and price data

Keep Your Data Clean and High QualityQuickly Identify & Resolve Major Data Quality Issues

Identify errors at the SKU level Use Mercent’s content management tools to resolve data errors, such as ‘Missing Required Attribute’Get more SKUs live on Google by resolving errorsImprove AdRank and discoverability by addressing Warnings and Errors

Example: Missing or Non-Standard Product Attributes ISSUE: Missing

attributes keep products off Google or compromise discovery

SOLUTION: Use content rules to populate or sanitize product attributes

Automated Content Optimization Using Mercent Content Rules

Original TitleGretsch G6121 Nashville Solid Body

Mercent Optimized Title

Gretsch G6121 Nashville Vintage Bigsby Electric Guitar

Mercent’s content rules allow you to optimize any outbound data attribute on a per channel basis.

Agenda

Introduction: About MercentBenefits and New Features - GoogleKey Steps for Google Shopping Campaign success with MercentQ&A

CONTACT MERCENT TODAYhello@mercent.com

206.832.3971

Thank you for your time