Introduced during 2018/19, Google Smart Shopping Campaigns use AI to advertise product listing ads on the search network as well as showing dynamic remarketing ads on the Display Network, YouTube and Gmail. By using automation and machine learning, Google's aim is not only to reduce the manual work involved in setting up and running campaigns, but also to let AI determine when to display ads to get best conversion results.
We were pleased to be involved early in the program in the UK, and measured the results after running it for a period of time across some of our clients. Here's what we found...
On very high value ad spend accounts, year-on-year ROI increased by a whopping 44% in a single quarter with an upward trend across the months giving a final improvement in the 3rd month of 77%. This would seem to reflect that Google’s machine learning with the passage of time.
On lower spend accounts, we also saw good results. For one in particular, we saw an incredible step-change in results with ROI improvement over 2 quarters of 967%. For example, that would see £500 per month spend create a revenue jump from £1,500 to £12,000. Whilst that was an outlier, other results for lower spend accounts also gave improving ROI uplifts.
Needless to say, we have been impressed by Google's AI technology and so have our clients. It's important to remember that Smart Shopping campaigns form one part of an overall set of campaigns to drive engagement throughout the sales funnel for best results.