How Much Do Google Shopping Ads Cost?
“Only pay for ads that pay off.” – states the slogan on Google Ads website. Have you ever wondered what does it mean? Is this indeed the reality in Google Shopping Ads (and Google Ads in general)? Do we really only pay for the ads that bring us some profit?
The cost of Google Shopping Ads
Unlike with the regular, old school advertisement – in the newspaper or on the billboard, where retailers pay for space, regardless of the effect – in Google Shopping Ads, Google only charges per click. This system is usually referred to as PPC (pay-per-click) and the price as:
- CPC (cost-per-click) for Shopping Ads (PLAs)
- CPE (cost-per-engagement) for Showcase Shopping Ads or Local Catalogue Ads
Effectively, this means that it’s not possible to determine the cost of Google Shopping Ads campaign in advance. However, it is possible to decide about the budget to be spent on one.
Here comes another question then – what should be the budget allocated to Google Shopping Ads campaign? Well, the response is not straightforward – it depends on many factors.
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Factors that affect the cost of Shopping Ads
1. The maximum CPC bids – one may think “the bigger, the better” and usually great players on the market have huge budgets, but it is not 100% correlated. When Google decides which ad perfectly matches the search query, it takes into consideration the maximum bid (the upper limit of what campaign owner decided to spend on a searched keyword) and so-called quality score. The quality score includes, among others, CTR (click-through-rate), relevance for customers and the quality of the website. So, the point of the above is, that the budget should fit the size of the company, however, it is not the only important factor to consider. Even small or mid-sized companies can accomplish a lot by preparing the website and product feed accurately.
Google Shopping Ads market is like an auction – the best offer wins
2. Number of products in the campaign – the more different products there are in a shop, the higher budget is necessary, as the CPC will multiply by the higher number of items.
3. The sector of the products is also crucial – there are some very competitive and demanding sectors on the market, which means the CPC for keywords leading to them is higher, sometimes extremely high. The owner of a campaign should asses the competition in their sector, the popularity of Shopping Ads as a marketing tool within this sector and the demand for their product.
4. Strategy – Google Ads allows for a bit of tailoring when it comes to setting up a campaign. There are three aspects of targeting that can be changed for each campaign depending on the specificity of a product and shop: geotargeting, device targeting and dayparting. The first lets you decide which geographical area is a priority for you. Device targeting allows to split the budget between different types of devices (i.e. computers, tablets, mobiles). Last, but maybe the most powerful, dayparting gives the opportunity to allocate the budget equally for the whole day or to focus only on some parts of the day, which are the most profitable for your business.
Observation of the results and reacting to them is a key to success
5. There are as well some “outside costs” which may impact the budget, like marketing agency (if you decide to entrust running your campaign to the experts) or Google Shopping Ads software. In case of this last point, you can avoid spending money on software by trying out Heraldbee application which is free!
See related article: Transferwise vs. Paypal: Which is better for Your Business?
Conclusions
There is a lot of decisions to be made with regards to the budget and for sure everybody would love to have some kind of a reference. To give you a general idea about the average CPC – in the US it is between 1-2 dollars. However, there is no minimum or maximum limit set by Google.
We recommend you to just give Google Shopping Ads a chance. Analyze the cost of your product. Start with a budget that seems reasonable and affordable for you and then observe the results. Google suggests starting with 10-50 dollars for a day. Based on the initial results, adjust the parameters to make the campaign more and more profitable. Observation is a key to success in this matter!
Start your marketing campaign with Heraldbee App today!
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