Show your products with your video ads

Turn your YouTube video ads into a virtual storefront when you add a product feed to your Video campaign. With this creative add-on, you can show browsable product imagery below your video ads and inspire customers to visit your website to learn more about your business or make a purchase.

On average, advertisers that add product feeds to their Video action campaigns achieve over 60% more conversions at a lower cost (Source: Google internal data, Global, March 2021 - compared 941 video action campaigns with product feeds to video action campaigns without product feeds). If you're running an awareness or consideration campaign, you can create a Brand Lift study to measure the overall lift.

How it works

• When a user sees your video ad, the panel below the ad automatically expands to showcase your products. At this time, products appear when the user’s mobile device is in portrait mode.
• Users can select a product image to immediately go to the product’s landing page for more information and to make a purchase.
• A minimum of 4 product images can be shown below the video ad.

Requirements

1. Set up a product feed in Merchant Center.
   • Include at least 4 products. For optimal performance with Video campaigns, we recommend adding more than 4 products to your feed.
   • Include images for each product that will be shown in the ad (aspect ratios can range from .6 to 1.4). Only the primary image will be used in the ad.
   • Your products should comply with our Shopping ads and personalized advertising policies.
2. Enable Shopping ads in your Merchant Center account. If you haven’t used Merchant Center before, sign up using your Google Account.
3. Link your Merchant Center account to your Google Ads account.

Best practices

• Make sure the product specifications are accurate in your feed.
• Make sure your product feed has items available for the countries that you’re targeting. Product availability for your campaign is based on the settings in your product feed.
• Use the item_group_id attribute for large merchant feeds that have identical or similar items. This attribute allows you to group product variants in your feed, so that we don’t show duplicate product images in your ad.
• New product feeds can take up to 3 days to approve, so take this into account when planning your campaigns.
• Include Google video partners to increase the campaign's reach. With Google video partners, your ads appear on high-quality publisher websites and apps (in addition to YouTube).

Keep in mind

• A call-to-action is required for all ads in campaigns using a product feed. If you don’t add your own call-to-action, we’ll automatically apply a “Shop now” call-to-action to each ad in the campaign.
• At this time, Google Ads Editor doesn’t support adding product feeds to Video campaigns.
• Ad serving isn’t limited to only showing impressions with the product. Some ads in the campaign may serve without products.
• If there are assets attached to your campaign (for example, sitelink assets), products from your feed will always show first (in locations where the products are eligible to show). If your goal is “Leads”, then lead form assets will show first instead of your products.

Instructions

Note: The instructions below are part of the new design for the Google Ads user experience. To use the previous design, click the "Appearance" icon, and select Use previous design. If you're using the previous version of Google Ads, review the Quick reference map or use the Search bar in the top navigation panel of Google Ads to find the page you’re searching for.

Add a product feed to a new campaign

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu, and the click Campaigns.
3. Click the plus button , then select New campaign.
4. Select the Sales, Leads, Website traffic, Product and brand consideration, or Brand awareness and reach goal.
5. Select the Video campaign type.
6. Click Next.
7. On the next page, scroll to the “Product feed” section and expand the box.
8. Click the checkbox, then select a product feed from your Merchant Center account.

   Note: Make sure that you select the right product feed, as you won’t be able to change it after you save your campaign.

9. For your ad group, scroll to the “Product filter” section and expand the box.
10. Choose the products that you’ll show in the ad group. By default, we’ll show all products from your feed (unless you choose a different option).

    If you choose to show all products, we’ll select products from your feed based on their potential performance. To show more relevant products to users, consider setting up a data segment on your account.

    • None - Use all products: All eligible products in your feed can be shown.
    • Choose specific products: You choose the products that can be shown below the video ad.
    • Create custom filters: Show products based on your custom labels in the ad.
    • No products: Opt out of showing your products from the ad group (for example, if the products don’t match the video ad). This is useful if you’re running multiple ad groups from within the same campaign.
11. If you see a warning icon next to any products, click the warning icon and resolve the errors. Otherwise, your products may not show in the ad. You need at least 4 approved products for the products to show in the ad.
12. Finish setting up your campaign. We’ll show a preview of what your ad looks like before you finalize the campaign.
13. Click Create campaign.

Add a product feed to an existing campaign

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu, and the click Campaigns.
3. Click the Settings tab.
4. Choose the campaign you want to edit.
5. Scroll to the “Product feed” section and expand the box.
6. Click the checkbox, then select a product feed from your Merchant Center account.
7. Click Save. By default, we’ll show all products from your feed. If you want to choose the products that you’ll show in your ad groups, go to your ad group settings and open the “Product filter” section.

Review product feed performance for a campaign

You can segment your ad groups to see how your product feed is performing or where people are going when they click on a product.

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon .
2. Click the Campaigns drop down in the section menu, and the click Campaigns.
3. Click the campaign that contains the product feed.
4. Click the segment icon .
5. Choose Click type.
   • “Click type” segments your ad groups by user interactions with your ads. Product feed metrics will be shown in the statistics table.

Avoid comparing product feed performance in the campaign to all campaign traffic, as the campaign includes traffic not eligible for product feeds with very different user behaviors and performance. If you want to compare performance of campaigns with product feeds to campaigns without product feeds, create a video experiment.

Related links

• About Video campaigns
• Optimize your Video campaign for more conversions