New Year Surprise: Amazon Testing Waters with Google PLAs?

Amazon is gearing up for the New Year 2017 in a rather unprecedented manner. The e-commerce giant was seen testing its Product Listing Ads (PLAs) on Google AdWords. This is the first time Amazon has put its product search using texts and images across all e-commerce platforms on AdWords since 2012. Most contemporary retailers are opting for PLAs as the primary platform for Google Shopping.

Amazon advertisers are keen on growing their PLA footing to dominate desktop and mobile search results. In 2012, Google’s Product Search reworked its organic product search engine into a pay-to-play advertising model. Since then, Amazon refrained from putting its products on Google’s PLAs. The recent update on Amazon’s growing interest in Google PLAs will boost the sale of products listed by third-party sellers too.

Using Google PLA, Amazon advertisers can promote their inventory on Google as well as monetize their advertising campaign. Whenever someone searches for an Amazon product on Google.com, the search engine shows the customer a series of relevant pictures of the item, their price and the store name. On clicking, the customer will be directed to the website where the item has been hosted. With PLAs, Google charges the Amazon advertiser for every click made on the search shopping.

Amazon testing on Google PLAs will not only benefit the e-commerce giant but also smaller retailers who can’t match budget of bigger companies. With PLAs, advertisers can compare their campaign’s performance using Auction Insights tool. Google offers Auction insights on different Search and Shopping campaigns.

The Auction insights statistics for search campaigns generates 6 kinds of data on:

• Impression share
• Average position
• Overlap rate

Position above rate

• Top-of-page rate
• Outranking share

Advertisers can leverage on Google PLAs auction insights tool only when keywords, product groups, ad groups and campaigns attain minimum threshold activity.

Google PLAs generate higher ad clicks on mobile than on desktop. Amazon Mobile Ad Networks integrated with Google PLAs will help monetize product listings. Ads on mobile apps and games across multiple device platforms—Android, iOS and Fire will generate more ad impressions and clicks.

Amazon ramping up its Google PLAs in 2017 will have major ramifications on retailer search advertisers as well as Google. It will force retailers to pay more per click or accept lower traffic levels to manage their PLA click volume required to run Google Auction Insights on search and shopping campaigns.

With its latest testing, Amazon will be able to power its Amazon Advertising Platform (AAP) to rule Google space using standardized images for full-screen interstitial app ads as well as banner ads.