Browse, Shop & Buy Direct From Google Shopping

A recurring theme over the past month has been the major players’ developer conferences.

Since the end of April, SMK has explored the latest 2019 innovations from Snapchat, Facebook, Instagram & Messenger.

Today we are shining a light on some of Google’s latest marketing updates, via its recent Google Marketing Live event.

Last week Google announced a slew of marketing updates aimed at helping businesses take a more holistic view of the user journey.

User journeys are messy, complex and often long, with both online and offline components.

For example, Google cited a study where a user’s decision to buy a video game involved more than 200 circuitous actions over several weeks.

With this in mind, Google has spent a large portion of the last 2-3 years unifying its properties and services in terms of interoperability, intelligence sharing and targeting, providing a fantastic base for smarter marketing activity.

At Google Marketing Live, some of the more intriguing new developments were related to commerce and shopping. With more than a passing similarity to Instagram (and even Pinterest) following Mark Zuckerberg's recent shopping and commerce innovations.

Google’s More Seamless Approach To Online Shopping

To begin with, Google announced a redesigned and revamped Shopping experience, alongside a new universal cart across Search, Shopping, Images and even YouTube.

Shoppers can now discover and compare products, then checkout instantly using their Google account.

Think Checkout with Instagram, but much bigger. And smarter.

With Amazon looming large for the Google and Facebook Duopoly, both are undergoing somewhat of commerce landgrab before Amazon’s marketing momentum builds.

The relaunched Google Shopping app will consume Google Express, now offering greater personalisation and a seamless user experience, emphasising omnichannel shopping.

For retailers and brands alike, much of the back-end behind these updates will take place within the existing Google for Retail system.

Consumers will see shopping recommendations based on their shopping histories, search histories and lists. 

Users will also be able to buy online or locally, with pick up in store available, if supported by the retailer. Google says it has mapped more than two billion products to local retailers.

Google Expands Popular Shopping Ads

To further drive greater brand awareness and traffic for retailers, Google has expanded its highly sort after Google Showcase Shopping ads.

Launched in 2016, Showcase Shopping Ads were created for Search to offer retailers the opportunity to “showcase” a curated list of products responsive to non-branded searches such as “summer dresses” or “outdoor furniture.”

Showcase Shopping ads are now being extended to Google Images, the Google Discover feed, and YouTube feed.

Allowing marketers to potentially convert YouTube video viewers into customers effortlessly (in theory anyway).

The ads can also carry location information for those retailers that have nearby locations and offer the featured product(s) in-store.

Google’s Big Push On Offline Retail

Google’s big move on offline retail is a fascinating one and widely viewed as a direct challenge to Amazon’s e-commerce juggernaut.

Worldwide e-commerce sales sit around $2.8 trillion per annum. And yet, online sales only represent 11.9% of the global retail market.

Despite the challenges that some bricks and mortar businesses are facing, most studies still show long term dominance for offline retail. With even King Of Kings Amazon now aggressively expanding offline, with 3,000 offline Amazon Go stores planned by 2021.

Following Google Marketing Live we can see the search giant is aiming to not only grab as much of the $2.8 trillion online retail pie as it can, before Amazon and Facebook does, but also to unlock a growing portion of the much bigger offline pie.