Filter on ‘Special Offers’
Thanks to the sharp eyes of the team at CommerceHub, an ecommerce vendor, we see that Google is testing a new filter that accompanies Shopping ads. Take a look.
This is a basic search for “amazon fire,” with a single text ad from Amazon.com — a good job, by the way, by Amazon’s pay-per-click team for covering the bases on brand searches. On the right side there’s a large Shopping ad format with two drop-down choices. The first is storage size, with either an 8 GB or 16 GB version. That makes sense.
The second drop-down menu defaults to “with Special Offers” and the additional choice of “Item Only.” This seems subtle. But if we look deeper it’s important.
Google’s perspective. The second drop-down menu improves the user experience because it shows the products with special offers, which are likely more desirable, which means they’re more likely to be clicked. That means additional ad revenue for Google.
Consumer’s perspective. Items with special offers are highlighted. A consumer-shopper gets the best offer without having to think. It’s fast and easy.
Advertiser’s perspective. If you don’t have a special offer, you don’t show up. If you have a special offer, you receive preferential placement. Google is not so subtly telling you to include special offers with your Shopping campaigns.
This example shows the power of a default option when consumers are making choices. The drop-down filters aren’t designed to jump out. Most searchers probably won’t notice them. That means the default option will be seen by a higher percentage of users. In this case, that means items without a special offer just got bumped.