Google PLA comes to Europe

Select Euro­pean coun­tries, includ­ing the UK, Ger­many, France, Italy, Spain, the Nether­lands and Switzer­land, will see the arrival of Google Prod­uct List­ing Ads (PLAs) from Feb­ru­ary 13th, 2013. The move will be the end to free traf­fic from Google shop­ping and search but does open up a huge oppor­tu­ni­ty for adver­tis­ers. The intro­duc­tion of PLAs will mean more gran­u­lar con­trol over prod­uct list­ings, bids and traf­fic, allow­ing adver­tis­ers and mar­keters to work out what’s going where and when, and dis­trib­ute bud­get as necessary.

The US com­plet­ed Google’s Shopping’s tran­si­tion from a free to a paid PLA mod­el back in Novem­ber 2012 and, so far, it’s been a suc­cess as both a sig­nif­i­cant and prof­itable source of traf­fic. The addi­tion­al costs involved with PLAs mean adver­tis­ers must con­sid­er spend effi­cien­cy when think­ing about their strate­gies, and this is some­thing that the UK can look to the US to learn what has and what hasn’t worked.

Watch the video below to see what Jonathan Bee­ston, direc­tor, new prod­uct inno­va­tion at Adobe has to say on what mar­keters and adver­tis­ers can expect from Google PLAS, look­ing at:

• What are PLAs?
• How are PLAs implemented?
• What have we seen in the US?
• What do you need to do?

Fur­ther reading:

• Down­load our on-demand webi­nar and whitepa­per on cre­at­ing, man­ag­ing and opti­mis­ing PLAs effectively
• Read Jonathan Beeston’s blog on Econ­sul­tan­cy for more insight