Collect later enables you to provide a direct online to offline experience for your customers. For items that can be picked up in-store within a specific SLA regardless of shop availability, collect later enables you to use your shops as an omnichannel asset and differentiator. Unlike other local inventory ads products, pickup later doesn't require full inventory information.
Collect later for Shopping ads run in conjunction with Shopping ads, only surfacing when customers are more likely to engage with collect later based on user intent.
In order to implement collect later for Shopping ads, you must meet the following requirements:
- You must be active for Shopping ads.
- You must be able to identify your shop locations which are eligible to fulfil online orders.
- You must be able to fulfil shop collection orders even when a product isn't physically in stock at your shop locations.
Implementation guide for collect later for Shopping ads
Follow the steps below to implement collect later with Shopping ads:
- Review the website requirements for pick up later. Once you're certain that your website meets the requirements, submit your example product landing page.
- Set up your accounts.
- Enable local inventory ads.
- Link your Business Profile and select your location group.
- Under 'Countries with Business Profiles', select the country where you want to request an eligibility review for pick up later for local inventory ads.
- In the 'local inventory data' section, select No, I don't know what's in stock at my shops, but I can ship products to my shops.
- In the 'Pick up later' section, select If a product isn’t in stock, deliver to shop is available.
- Submit your example product landing page URL in the 'Example product page for pick up later' field.
- Click Save.
- Google will conduct an eligibility review of your website.
- Add the required feed attributes to your product data.
- Verify your About page (Austria, Germany and Switzerland only).
- Link Google Ads and enable your campaigns.
Website requirements
To be eligible for collect later for Shopping ads, your website must meet the following requirements on both desktop and mobile devices, including tablets:
- Display the option to collect a product on your landing page or in your checkout flow.
- Allow customers to select the shop where their order will be delivered.
- Shops can be displayed after clicking on a link (for example, 'check availability') or by entering a postcode or address.
- Alternatively, shop selection can occur in your checkout flow after a customer has added an item to their basket.
- Display the item’s price on your product page.
- Note: the price must match the value of the price
[price]attribute in your primary feed. For a more detailed overview of what constitutes a misrepresentation, please consult our misrepresentation policy.
- Note: the price must match the value of the price
- Indicate pick-up date and pick-up fee (if a pick-up fee will be charged).
- This may be displayed in your checkout flow alongside shop selection. For a more detailed overview of what constitutes a misrepresentation, please consult our misrepresentation policy.
- Provide an option to select other shop locations.
- This may be displayed in your checkout flow alongside shop selection.
- Provide a pick-up confirmation message when the order is ready (for example: email or SMS).
- Don't require customers to enter payment information before showing your fulfilment options. For a more detailed overview of what constitutes a misrepresentation, please consult our misrepresentation policy.
- Allow customers to complete their order (for example, complete the purchase or reserve the item) on your website.
Website recommendations
In addition to the website requirements above, we recommend the following:
- Don't require customers to create an account before showing your fulfilment options (for example: provide a 'checkout as guest' option).
- Don't require customers to enter address information before showing your fulfilment options.
Select participating Business Profile locations
By default, Google will show local inventory ads for all shop locations in the linked Business Profile location group.
If all of your shop locations are eligible to fulfil online orders, select the Business Profile location group that contains all of your shop locations during account linking.
If only a subset of your shop locations are eligible to fulfil online orders, organise these shops into a separate location group. During account linking, select this location group.
If you're unable to re-organise your shop locations into groups, please reach out to our support team by filling out the contact us form and selecting 'I want to implement additional features'. Under 'Summary of issue' please specify the shop codes and addresses of the locations that aren't eligible to allow users to pick up your products.
Feed requirements
In addition to the feed requirements for Shopping ads, you must add the following attributes to your primary feed:
| Attribute | Optional or required? | Possible values | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
Collection method [pickup_method] |
Required Optional starting from 1 September 2024 |
Text/tab delimited example XML example |
Don't submit the following values:
For each product that's eligible to be fulfilled at one of your shop locations, submit 'ship to shop' For all other products, submit 'not supported' |
Collection SLA [pickup_sla] |
Required |
Text/tab delimited example XML example |
Don't submit the following values:
Submit the maximum amount of time that it will take for you to fulfil an online order to one of your shops. If the item's collection method Tip: You can set the collection sla |
Link [link] |
Required | URL parameter or URL path | The link [link] attribute that's used for Shopping ads will also be used for pickup later for Shopping ads. |
Mobile link [mobile_link] |
Optional | URL parameter or URL path | If you have a mobile-optimised page, submit the mobile link [mobile_link] attribute |
FAQs
How does pickup later for Shopping ads work?Google will create inventory entries for each product for each of the shops in your linked location group. Since you're able to ship your products indicated in your primary feed to each of your shops, Google will allow you to advertise those products for each of the shops along with the SLA on how long it will take you to ship the product to the shop.
No, products with the availability 'out of stock' in your primary feed aren't eligible for pickup later for Shopping ads.
Collect later for Shopping ads enables you to create ads that show your local products for your online available items. Since your online available products can be shipped to your shops, you can advertise the products along with the SLA on how long it will take to ship these products to all of your shops. For this feature to work, the product needs to be fulfillable online. This will allow Google to guarantee that the product can be transacted on.
Products enabled through collect later for Shopping ads only allow you to showcase products that can be collected at your shops regardless of whether the item is in the shop when the order is placed. Pickup later for Shopping ads doesn't allow you to advertise actual inventory within your shops. To be able to advertise through pickup later for Shopping ads, you will need to enable the local inventory ads programme card within your Merchant Center account. To be able to advertise any in-stock items within your shops, you will need to set up local inventory ads as indicated in our implementation guide.
[pickup_SLA] and collection method [pickup_method] refer to how to implement pick up later using local inventory ads.[pickup_SLA] and pickup method [pickup_method] please see how to implement pickup later using local inventory ads.Pickup later for Shopping ads will appear as Segment Click type 'Shopping – Product – Local'. Ads enabled through pickup later for Shopping ads will be represented in Google Ads exactly the same way as local inventory ads. Learn more on how to include local inventory in a Google Shopping campaign
Yes, you can submit product information for pick up later to Shopping ads. However, you will need to re-submit all of the required product information, including the ID [id], title [title], image link [image_link], etc. via the product.insert method with the channel set to 'local'.
By using localinventory.insert API, you can also submit the pick up later attributes, collection sla [pickup_sla] and collection method [pickup_method]. Note that the field 'storeCode' is required. You can add the relevant shop codes within your Business Profile account or add it directly from Google Search. Learn more on how to submit product information via the Content API for Shopping
Keep in mind that the attributes required for pick up later for Shopping ads are not supported with the channel set to 'online'.
Our team will be happy to assist you. Please contact us using this form. Note that we require both ‘quantity’ and ‘availability’ information in the inventory feed.
If the pick up later inventory that’s automatically created from your product exceeds our quotas, our support team will contact you to discuss the next steps.
The quotas have been set to be sufficient for the majority of retailers and we expect the quota to be exceeded only in rare instances.
Even if the pick-up attributes have been submitted, not all of your products will be able to create pick up later inventory automatically once the quota limit has been exceeded.
These products will be identified through the missing inventory issue in the 'Diagnostics' page of the local inventory ads.
If your account has exceeded the limit for the automatically generated pick up later inventory, our support team will either contact you directly or your Google representative.
If your limit has been exceeded, our support team will guide you through the next steps. This may involve removing the pick-up attribute from several products or limiting the number of shops for which inventory can be automatically generated. If the quota can’t be reduced through these methods, we may need to pause the automatic inventory generation for all the products, resulting in the removal of all automatically created inventory.
