Zak Stambor says, “Google PLA spending grew 30% during the fourth quarter, while text ad spending grew just 12%, according to a new report.

Google’s efforts to drive marketers and consumers to its Product Listing Ads—the ads that present product images, prices and business names to users searching on Google—appear to be working, according to search marketing firm Merkle RKG’s “Merkle Digital Marketing Report Q4 2016.”

Marketers boosted their PLA spending 30% during the fourth quarter, while text ad spending rose just 12%. In each quarter of 2016 PLA spending rose at least 30% while text ad spending never grew more than 15%. That increased spending helped drive a 43% rise in PLA clicks and a 9% decline in the cost per PLA click. For the sake of comparison, Google text ad clicks rose 8% and the cost per click rose 4%.

PLAs accounted for about 48% of retailers’ total Google search ad clicks during the quarter, according to the report. However, they accounted for 74% of non-brand PLAs, which aren’t tied to a specific brand name”.

A big quarter for Google’s PLAs, including Amazon’s entry into the market

Internet Retailer

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