Over the past nine years, mobile traffic has increased from 0.7% to 52% of total website traffic. However, mobile traffic is notoriously more difficult to convert than desktop traffic—there are difficulties with accidental clicks and with people’s reluctance to buy on mobile devices, to name a few challenges. Nevertheless, phones have become an integral part of peoples’ lives and have greatly influenced consumer shopping behaviour.
Recently, Google has put a larger emphasis on mobile shopping in order to ensure that users have an optimal experience. Enter the Showcase Shopping ad: an ad format created with the mobile searcher in mind. These ads are a great tool for attracting new customers to your brand, educating them about what you have to offer, and driving them to your site. Additionally, advertisers are not charged for the initial click to expand the ad to see the brand offering.
Putting Showcase Shopping ads to the test
Last year, DAC leveraged this ad format for a retail client with a high volume of mobile traffic. We noticed that 63% of all new users were coming in through mobile devices—11% of which came from paid search. The conversion rate for this channel was over 1%, per Google Analytics. This represented a huge opportunity for both brand and revenue growth.
We implemented Showcase Shopping ads for a small sampling of products during a high-traffic time when mobile traffic became even more prevalent. We saw an immediate CTR increase in the sampled category. After ramp-up, we saw a 20% lower CPC and a 115% higher CTR than the traditional shopping ad format. Considering that this was a high competition time, these were fantastic results!
Using this information, we were able to build on this performance for the holiday season. We built out more categories in the mobile showcase format, resulting in large increases in revenue and traffic during the important holiday time period. We saw an overall year-over-year increase in mobile users during this time and capitalized on this shift. We saw higher ROAS coming through Showcase Shopping ads as compared to the traditional shopping formats during Cyber Weekend. This surge in revenue continued throughout the holiday season. Going forward, we are shifting more heavily towards this ad format and a more mobile-focused shopping strategy.
So how can you take advantage of Showcase Shopping ads and see awesome returns?
- Determine if there is enough volume to support a differentiated mobile strategy.
- Segment out a top-performing category to test performance.
- Select branded creative and write branded copy to familiarize users with brand offerings.
- Implement test and keep an eye on performance.
- Optimize based on performance.
Want to learn more about driving greater performance in mobile shopping? Get in touch with DAC’s digital experts today!
