Retailers: GTINs Required By May 16 For Google Product Listing Ads

Last year, Google announced it would begin requiring advertisers to include the GTINs for products from 50 brands in their Merchant Center product feeds. More recently, though, Google has said the GTIN requirement will be expanding beyond those 50 brands.

“If you sell brand-name products that are sold by multiple merchants, you should take a close look at the new requirements and double-check that your product data is correct and up-to-date.”

Bottom line: If you are promoting products that have GTINs, now is the time to make sure your feeds are updated to include them.

May 16, 2016, is the date Google will start disapproving relevant products that don’t meet the GTIN requirements.

GTINs will be required when targeting ads in Australia, Brazil, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the UK or the US.

Google has begun showing item-level warnings in the Diagnostics tab in Merchant Center for products that are missing or have the wrong GTIN.

More information about unique product identifiers is available on the Merchant Center help page.

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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 writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land 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.