Google Closing PLAs to Focus on Shopping Campaigns

According to a recent Google announcement, Product Listing Ads (PLAs) will be completely stamped out by August 2014. All advertisers who have been using PLAs will be forced to upgrade to shopping campaigns. If advertisers fail to upgrade on their own, Google will automatically upgrade each campaign before the set date.

Other than that, Google has added some new and exciting features in order to help advertisers promote their shopping campaigns even better. Some of these features include:

• The Bid Simulator

  The Bid Simulator allows you to evaluate how your bid changes affect impressions, clicks or revenue. This feature is now available on all types of shopping campaigns within Google AdWords.

• Ability to create shopping campaigns from scratch

  This new feature will offer you options to create your own shopping campaigns including tips on how to get started. This feature makes it simpler to use one of your product listing ad campaigns to create shopping campaigns with the same product targets and keywords.

• Multiple ad groups

  Additionally, Google will offer Advanced Retailers multiple ad groups to choose from. As of now, you can't create multiple ad groups within a shopping campaign. However, when this new feature is introduced, retailers who feel like they need to get more ad groups from Google will be able to.

If you're an advertiser currently running a PLA campaign, this is the time to start preparing for the shift. You need to get your shopping campaigns up and running before August.