New features to help you grow demand with Discovery ads

Consumers nowadays spend time shopping across many different touchpoints online. More than half of them use YouTube, Discover, and Gmail alongside other platforms when researching products or brands to try.¹ 91% of them took action right after discovering something new.² It’s important for advertisers to capture audiences in moments where they are ready to make a move. We’re excited to announce the latest improvements to Discovery ads to help your brand stand out on our most engaging ad surfaces:

• Spark audience interest with product feeds.
• Turn data into results with product-level reporting and data-driven attribution.
• Measure incremental impact with Conversion Lift experiments.

Spark interest with more engaging layouts

Discovery ads offer a variety of layouts to help advertisers craft rich and meaningful ads, like carousels, square, and portrait. Today, we’re excited to announce that product feeds have expanded its availability to all Discovery advertisers. You can show consumers items based on their interests and intent. Specifically, retailers can use lifestyle images and short text with their Google Merchant Center catalog to deliver more relevant ads. 

Data has shown that by adding product feeds to Discovery ads with sales or lead gen goals, advertisers can achieve 45% more conversions at a similar CPA on average.³ What’s more, you can pair them with your Video action campaigns to drive deeper consideration and engagement with consumers who are exploring content on YouTube.

An example of Pandora using product feeds for Discovery ads.

Many businesses are also extending their social strategy to grow customers on Google’s platforms. Partnering with iProspect, Pandora turned to product feeds for Discovery ads in Q3 2022. By pairing their catalogs with engaging lifestyle images and Google’s unique audience solutions, the leading global jewelry brand was able to create a highly tailored ad experience for potential customers like luxury travelers and beauty mavens. As a result, they saw 94% increase in sales from prospecting customers, with a 28% year-on-year increase in return on ad spend.

“Utilizing product feeds for Discovery ads is a great way to improve ad relevance and customer interaction.” 
— Olav van der Lans, Digital Performance Lead, Pandora NOEU   

Turn data into results with better reporting and measurement 

To maintain sustainable growth, advertisers need to improve their optimization efficiency with durable measurement and transparent insights. We're pleased to share the latest updates in reporting and measurement to help advertisers better understand their performance in Discovery and Video action campaigns. 

With product-level reporting launching later this month, advertisers can track how their Google Merchant Center catalog items are performing in product feeds against metrics like impressions or clicks. For example, a retailer who’s promoting a wide range of products can now see which types of products are generating more interest and take business-related actions.

A UI screenshot of product-level reporting within Google Ads. 

Starting in Q2, Discovery advertisers can get a more accurate view of their campaign performance within the Google ecosystem through data-driven attribution (DDA). It gives credit for conversions based on how people engage with your ads, and uses your account data to determine which campaigns have the greatest impact on your business goals. You can then pair those insights with automated bidding strategies like Max Conversions to get even more conversions. Advertisers who switch to data-driven attribution from another attribution model typically see a 6% average increase in conversions.⁴ 

Finally, to really understand whether your campaigns are making an impact, last year we introduced Conversion Lift experiments. It is one of Google’s latest measurement solutions that lets advertisers measure the incremental conversions based on either users or geography.

In March 2022, HP inc. tested Conversion Lift based on users with Max Conversion to grow their Instant Ink business. This campaign saw a significant increase in mid-funnel conversions with 945% and 564% uplift in page views respectively in the UK and Netherlands, proving Discovery ads’ capability to drive net new conversions. Seeing the success, HP decided to scale the test to 14 new markets with Conversion Lift launched in parallel.

For advertisers who are running both Discovery ads and Video action campaigns, you can use Conversion Lift based on geography to measure their impact together. Reach out to your Google account representative to learn how you can participate.

We're looking forward to sharing more opportunities to help your brand drive customer demand with Google and YouTube in the coming months. In the meantime, we recommend that you follow our best practices guide to create, manage, and optimize your campaigns more efficiently. 

Posted by Tobias Maurer, Group Product Manager, Google Ads

 

 

1. Google/Ipsos, Consumer Feed Behavior Research, August 2022, Online survey, US consumers aged 18+ who browse feeds (feeds defined as: Google, Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Pinterest) monthly or more often. Base: Consumers n=2,000)
2. Google/Ipsos, Consumer Feed Behavior Research, August 2022, Online survey, US consumers aged 18+ who browse feeds (feeds defined as: Google, Chrome, YouTube, Gmail, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Pinterest) monthly or more often. Base: Consumers n=2,000)
3. Google internal data, Global, November 2022. Based on an analysis of 458 advertisers who used Product feeds in 731 Discovery campaigns from August to November 2022.
4. Google Data, Global, Ads, Jul 11th 2022-Aug 25th 2022