Google is including functionality to click-to-message ads and offering attribution and bidding capabilities to enable retail advertisers to follow store visits which have been garnered through online activities. The features were among the updates which have been announced at SMX East in New York City yesterday.

What is new about Click-to message updates?

Google will be introducing two new updates-automatic reply and email forwarding and new reporting details for message extensions in the months to come, before the start of the holiday season.

  • By using email forwarding, texts which are sent by users via click-to-message ads can now be sent through email. So, advertisers won’t have to provide their contact number to utilize message extensions.
  • Advertisers can now set up automatic replies to reply to users instantly by using preset messages. You can inform users that you got their message and when they are likely to receive a response from you.
  • Message reporting will comprise message conversions which shall be denoted by the total number of communications needed by a user to complete a specific conversion action. Google offers the instance of a car dealer who found out that generally takes a user two or more interactions before booking a test drive.

MM.LaFleur, an online clothing retailer utilizes message extensions in order to reply to queries from customers about style and fitting and also share links and images. Michaella Kurdziel, MM.LaFleur the Director of Experience Excellence & Learning stated that the firm will make use of message reporting for analysis of specific parts of their campaign which are generating worthwhile conversations with stylists and where there is scope for enhancing performance.

Introduction of store visit tools

Data-driven attribution and Smart Bidding, which come with Target ROAs, Target CPA, Maximize Conversions and Enhanced CPC, will now be offered to all advertisers who have access to data related to store data in their accounts.

Data-driven attribution is based on probability modeling of all touch points created by ads in an account. It provides fractional conversion credit to each interaction made in a conversion path. Added-driven attribution was first introduced in Google Ads in 2016.

Store Visits in Google Analytics from beta

Store Visits Data will be introduced in Google Analytics to all entitled advertisers in the next few weeks. By using Store Visits reporting in Google Analytics, marketers can now measure the offline effect on other digital platforms instead of focusing solely on Google Ads.

Google announced in August that it had assessed over 10 billion store visits from ads. The measurements of store visits are computed by using anonymized location data from users which have Location History enabled on their Google Accounts.

The significance of this update

The click-to-message updates will ensure more transparency in message sharing. Online-to-offline measurement is still an area of prime attention for Google. The growth of data-backed attribution and measurement with multi-channel reporting in Google Analytics signifies that further work needs to be done in this domain to provide retailers with greater visibility and management in the way online ads generate traffic.

Author

Ritu from PageTraffic is a qualified Google Ads Professional and Content Head at PageTraffic. She has been the spear head for many successful Search Marketing Campaigns and currently oversees Content Marketing operations of PageTraffic in India.