As shopping behaviour shifts in new ways this festive season, more consumers are finding gift ideas in their favourite personalised feeds – while exploring Web Stories on Discover, watching product reviews on YouTube or checking the latest holiday deals in Gmail.
In fact, 91% of Google feed users say that they took some kind of shopping or product-related action immediately after discovering new products, services or brands on their feeds.1 Discovery ads now offer two new immersive layouts to help you spark consumer interest across Discover, YouTube and Gmail, plus a revamped audience workflow that makes it even easier to connect with the right shoppers as they scroll for festive inspiration.
By pairing your Discovery ads with existing campaigns – like Google Search, YouTube or even social – you can now engage audiences with richer, more personalised ad experiences across more of the consumer journey. New data shows Search advertisers who add Discovery ads see 5% more conversions at their target CPA.2
New visually immersive ad experiences
Discovery ads now include two layouts that optimise the mobile canvas on Google's feeds to help you drive action with consumers: a new 4:5 portrait aspect ratio helps you visually showcase your products and services more prominently with consumers as they scroll, while lead form extensions let people share their information with you directly from your ad in Gmail.
An example lead form extension for Discovery ads
BFGoodrich, a performance tyre brand under parent brand Michelin, used lead form extensions with Discovery ads to drive more leads and signups for its Tradesmen worksite programme in early 2020. The brand used visually inspiring assets from its social campaigns, promoting key benefits like programme discounts and 24/7 support for audiences like construction professionals and do-it-yourselfers. As a result, BFGoodrich saw 30 times more leads and a similar conversion rate compared to its Search campaigns.
'Discovery ads offer a very efficient and scalable new leads solution alongside our social and Google Search campaigns,' says Jordan V. Tucker, Director of Commercial Communication at Michelin N.A.
A simpler audience workflow with richer insights
Advertisers who use audience expansion with Discovery ads see 52% more conversions at a comparable cost per acquisition to their originally selected audience.3 In the coming weeks, it will be even easier for you to find more of the right audience and scale your campaigns quickly with detailed forecasting to help you make more informed decisions. You can now also set up audience exclusions during campaign creation, which can be especially helpful if you're seeking to drive new customer acquisition rather than re-engage existing customers as they shop for the holidays.
Audience expansion and exclusion in Discovery ads
Tips to drive growth with Discovery ads into the new year
As you monitor your campaign performance this season and start planning for next year, make sure that you're set up for success with our latest resources and best practices for Discovery ads:
- Start with your best creative: Use high-quality images (1200 x 628 and 1200 x 1200) that put your products front and centre, and upload at least five assets. Check out our updated Discovery ad format requirements to get your ads up and running quickly. Lastly, download our creative asset guide to learn more about creating high-quality visuals that inspire consumers to take action.
- Choose the right budget: To give our systems room to optimise performance for your campaigns, choose a daily budget at least 10 times the value of your target cost-per-action (CPA) bid and wait for at least 40 conversions before making changes to your campaign.
- Give your campaigns time to scale: Wait 2-3 weeks before making any additional changes to give your campaign time to learn and adjust to deliver optimal performance to meet your goals.
For more help setting your campaigns up for success this festive season and beyond, review our best practices checklist to learn how you can drive inspiration and action with consumers as they 'window shop' on Google's feeds this festive season.
Posted by Tarun Jain, Director of Product Management, Google Ads
1. Google/Ipsos, Google Feed Consumer Insights, June 2020, Online survey. Americans 18+ who made a discovery on at least one Google feed (feeds defined as Google app, Chrome app, YouTube, Gmail) on a mobile device. Base: Feed users n=1,053
2. Google Internal Data based on median performance, June 2018–2020
3. Google Internal Data, Sep 2019 – Jul 2020
