Google extends Shopping ads to more YouTube inventory

Just in time for the holiday shopping season, Google is expanding the visibility of Shopping campaigns on YouTube. Showcase Shopping ads are also going more places and opening up to more categories. Finally, sitelinks are coming to TrueView for action ads, the company announced Tuesday.

New Shopping ad inventory on YouTube. Shopping ads can now show on the YouTube home feed and YouTube search results. On mobile, users will be able to scroll through a carousel of “Suggested Products” that will appear between videos on the home page or at the top of the search results.

How to opt-in. Your Shopping campaigns are eligible for this new inventory if you’re opted into YouTube on Display Network. This will also opt your Shopping campaign into the relatively new inventory on Discover. Earlier this year, Google announced that Showcase Shopping ads would extend to Discover.

New inventory, categories for Showcase Shopping ads? These ads are now eligible to show in Google Images as well. In addition, the multi-image Showcase Shopping ads designed to run on broad product category terms — primarily for apparel and furniture queries — are expanding to categories like beauty and electronics.

Sitelinks for TrueView for action ads. Sitelinks will be available for these ads “in the coming months,” which will enable users to access additional landing pages from your video ads. Google says it’s currently testing sitelinks with 30 advertisers and that they have seen a 23% increase in conversions after adding them.

Why we should care. Google has long made the argument that users display shopping intent on YouTube just as they do on Google Search. It first introduced TrueView for Shopping and Shopping ads on YouTube in 2015. The company says it has seen watch time for “holiday shopping” videos on YouTube increase by more than 4X in the past two years, for example. These announcements are further indication of the power of Shopping ads and Google’s eagerness to keep finding more places to show them.

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About the author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was Third Door Media’s former Editor-in-Chief (October 2018 to December 2020), running the day-to-day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin wrote about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, MarTech and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.