Google offer business support for SMEs

Google offer business support for SMEs – Ad grants and free shopping listings

Unless your name is Jeff Bezos or Reed Hastings, the lockdown period has likely been a challenging time. Physical stores have the doors closed and while demand has surged online in some verticals, in others it has ground to a halt because demand has dried up. A small piece of good news, Google have announced two initiatives to help SMEs.

Ad Grants

“Small and medium-sized businesses globally, who have spent with a Google Ads account in ten out of twelve months of 2019, and in January and/or February of this year” are eligible to receive a slice of $340mn in ad credits, which are being credited into ad accounts over the upcoming months.

Google have not stated the exact parameters of how they measure an SME, however they are updating this help page here: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/9803410 regularly, with new information being added to add clarity.

Free shopping listings on Google

The recent announcement by Primark has set out a stark reminder on the importance of an eCommerce presence, with their turnover decreasing from £650m a month, to £0. Google is heavily invested in the success of eCommerce and with Amazon still increasing significant market share on the eCommerce space, the ecosystem needs to be there for their auction-based platform to continue thriving.

However, beginning next week in the US and rolling out further afield in the coming months Google have announced they are adding free listings on the Google shopping tab, which will be blended in with the current paid adverts.

Requirements

The essential requirement will be a merchant centre account with Google that sends a product feed of your products into the system. This is the same platform which the paid adverts are generated from and there will be a separate opt-in to Google surfaces to make the listings eligible for the free results.

The product feed itself carries certain requirements to be eligible to display listings in the Google shopping experience, with the information used to match to user search queries and display relevant results.

If you’d like to discuss how your organisation could benefit from this initiative, need a merchant centre account or shopping feed contact us today.