Blending Product Performance: The best way to scale your Google Shopping account
Have you ever questioned how much of your inventory Google is promoting?
It’s frustratingly hard to work out, right?
That’s why in this article we’re going to lift the lid about what is the typical % of inventory Google promotes, and more importantly, why that is.
First of all, let’s talk about attribution models
Improving this has long been recognised as the best way to increase Google’s understanding of what conversions it’s ad interactions led to, so it can improve it’s placement of future ads.
However, this is never going to be 100% accurate due to the fuzzy logic used. In fact, when we match a client’s conversion value rates against their orders generated, the difference between the two is remarkable.
The most accurate conversion value rate we’ve seen to date is ~25%. The worst offenders, and more typical, measure <10%! And that’s just the average across an account.
The challenge with inventory visibility
Google doesn’t have an accurate understanding of how products perform. Over time, this problem exacerbates as Google continues to promote products it thinks convert well, and so creates a self-serving (performance) bias.
“On average, our Google Shopping account audits show that Google doesn’t give enough visibility to 70%+ of products to make a sale. That’s a huge wasted opportunity.”
If you think about it, when Google is tasked with hitting a ROAS target, for example, it’s going to pick products it’s most confident in hitting that target. And unless something tells it actually, we have data to prove that these other products sell well, if not better, then it will never promote them.
Whilst not every product Google dismisses may be worth advertising, a good % of it will. The key is to ensure that as much of your inventory gets visibility to gather enough data on whether they can make you revenue within allowable targets.
This can be done manually, through a painstaking process of matching your ads performance against order data, everyday… and making the necessary campaign adjustments to capitalise on opportunities.
As you can imagine, particularly if you have a large inventory and audience, this is almost impossible to manage without technical assistance.
This is where Upp steps in. A fully automated AI solution that blends order data and 70+ variables so it can educate Google on true product performance, thereby drastically improving understanding and ad performance.
If you’d like to understand how accurate Google is in measuring your conversion value rate, get in touch today to arrange your free Google Shopping audit.
