Google Shopping Express now available to Northern California shoppers with overnight service

Attention Northern California shoppers -- Need a quick birthday gift from Toys"R"Us but there isn’t one nearby?  Or heading out on a camping trip tomorrow and need some last-minute gear from REI?  Google Shopping Express is introducing convenient overnight delivery to shoppers throughout Northern California - from Fresno and Porterville in the south to Eureka and Crescent City in the north.  This new overnight service complements Google Shopping Express’ growing same-day offering which recently expanded from the San Francisco Bay Area to West Los Angeles and Manhattan.

Overnight delivery coming throughout Northern California

Overnight service is available today in East Bay cities including Berkeley, Concord, Danville, Dublin, Fremont, Oakland, Pleasanton, Richmond, Walnut Creek, and more.  We’ll be rolling out Google Shopping Express’ overnight service to most of Northern California over the next few months, from the California-Oregon border to cities like Fresno and Visalia in the south.  Customers will even be able to get products delivered to places like Big Sur and Yosemite.  Visit our website to see if overnight delivery service is available where you live today.

And if we’re not yet in your area, let us know and we’ll notify you when Google Shopping Express becomes available in your neighborhood.

Fast, convenient delivery from stores you love

With overnight delivery from Google Shopping Express, customers are able to shop from some of their favorite retailers on one site (google.com/express) - from well-known brands like Target, Walgreens and Whole Foods Market, to San Franciso-based favorites they might not have convenient access to, like Blue Bottle Coffee, Dodo Case, PhotoJojo and Timbuk2, among others.  

Simply place your order by 7:00 PM and you’ll receive your delivery the next day.  You can also easily shop while you’re on the go through our Android and iOS apps.  Once you’ve ordered your items, we’ll work with major shipping carriers to deliver them from the store to your doorstep.

Shoppers in Northern California can order from a range of stores including Blue Bottle Coffee, Cole Hardware, Costco, DodoCase, Fry’s Electronics, Google Play, Guitar Center, Hassett Hardware, L’Occitane, Nob Hill Foods, Office Depot, Palo Alto Sport Shop & Toy World, PhotoJoJo, REI, Smart & Final, Staples, Toys"R"Us and Babies"R"Us, Target, Timbuk2, Walgreens, and Whole Foods Market.  We continue to add more stores to the service, so stay tuned.

Same prices as in stores

With Google Shopping Express, there are no surcharges or mark-ups, products cost exactly what they do in stores.  You can also take advantage of in-store discounts and accrue loyalty points by providing your store rewards card information.

For a limited time, we’re also offering shoppers six months of free, unlimited deliveries.*  And shoppers in our new overnight delivery area can also enjoy a free $10 to spend on us.**  Happy shopping!

Posted by Brandon Trew, Product Manager, Google Shopping Express

*Six-month subscription of free delivery. Your account must be in good standing to remain eligible. Subscription offer expires 6/30/2014.

**Applies only to first purchase (whether or not it is the coupon amount or more) made before today's end and not to delivery fees or in-app purchases. Valid while delivery slots last. Your account must be in good standing to remain eligible.

For complete terms and conditions see g.co/shopexpressterms.  

Google Shopping Express expands same-day delivery to Manhattan and West Los Angeles

Suddenly realize that you’re designated snack mom tomorrow and don’t have time to run to the store? Or need to bring a new board game to this week’s game night but would rather avoid traffic altogether? Whether you’re in need of some pretzels or a game of Monopoly, Google Shopping Express offers convenient same-day delivery from some of your favorite local stores, delivered to your door in a matter of hours. We opened the service to shoppers in the San Francisco Bay Area last year and now we’re ready to bring the service to both coasts, starting with West Los Angeles and Manhattan.

See it, click it, get it today

With Google Shopping Express, there’s no need to schlep around town in a cab or sit in traffic while carrying home clunky, heavy items. All you have to do is browse products from many of your favorite local stores at google.com/express, select a delivery window that works for you, and receive your order later that day. You can also order easily through our Android and iOS apps to shop even when you’re on the go.

Low cost, everyday affordability

With Google Shopping Express, there are no surcharges or mark-ups, products cost exactly what they would in-store. You can also take advantage of in-store discounts and accrue loyalty points by providing your store rewards card information.

For a limited time, we’re also offering shoppers six months of free, unlimited deliveries.* So order as much as you want, as often as you’d like.

Your favorite stores, brought to you

In the Los Angeles area, shoppers in Culver City, Inglewood, Marina Del Rey, Santa Monica, Venice, West Los Angeles, and Westwood can now shop from some of their favorite retailers like Costco, Guitar Center, L’Occitane, Smart & Final, Staples, Target, Toys“R”Us/Babies“R”Us, and Walgreens. In the coming months, we’ll be expanding delivery to other parts of Los Angeles, Bel-Air, Beverly Hills, Pacific Palisades, Playa del Rey, Playa Vista and West Hollywood.

In New York, we’re starting with service to the entire island of Manhattan with Babies“R”Us, Costco, Fairway Market, L’Occitane, Staples, Target, and Walgreens. We’re also working to bring Shopping Express to shoppers in Queens and Brooklyn in the coming months.

We're looking to add even more national and local merchants to bring more of your favorite brands and products right to your doorstep - so stay tuned. And if we’re not yet in your area, let us know and we’ll notify you when Google Shopping Express is available in your neighborhood.

Ready to try?

If you live or work in one of our new markets, you can enjoy a free $10** to spend on us. Big or small, rain or shine, we’ve got it covered. So kick back, relax, stay in your comfy loungewear and start shopping.

Posted by Jenna Owens, General Manager of Operations, Google Shopping Express

*Six-month subscription of free delivery. Your account must be in good standing to remain eligible. Subscription offer expires 6/30/2014. For complete terms and conditions see g.co/shopexpressterms.  

**Applies only to first purchase (whether or not it is the coupon amount or more) made before today's end and not to delivery fees or in-app purchases. Valid while delivery slots last. Your account must be in good standing to remain eligible.

A look at the Bay Area's same-day shopping list

In today’s fast-paced world, many of us are looking for ways to get the things we need fast, and checking off our shopping lists with same-day delivery services is no different. To better understand what kinds of products people are getting delivered same-day, we took a look at what San Francisco Bay Area shoppers are buying from some of their favorite local stores using Google Shopping Express.

Some of the most popular items that Bay Area shoppers get with same-day delivery are everyday essentials like toothpaste and toilet paper, as well as heavy or bulky items like canned soup and potting soil. In fact, in a single day, people around the Bay Area buy enough cat food through Google Shopping Express to feed about 1,500 cats! While a lot of people are buying everyday essentials, they’re also using the service to buy some rather unexpected items like Sriracha hot sauce and tennis balls, which are among some of the most popular products ordered.

But not all neighborhoods around the Bay Area are filling their carts with the same items. For instance, in San Francisco, people in Potrero Hill buy more cereal than any other neighborhood, while shoppers in Bernal Heights buy the most sunscreen. People in The Marina love getting protein powder delivered on the double, while Mountain View shoppers buy the most rock climbing gear. And when it comes to same-day spreads, people in San Jose buy more mayonnaise than any other city, while Palo Alto tops the list of Nutella purchases.

Check out the full infographic below for more:

Want to give it a try? For a limited time, you can get six months of free, unlimited same-day delivery when you sign up for our free membership.* To get started, visit google.com/express.

Happy shopping!

Posted by Jenna Owens, General Manager of Operations, Google Shopping Express

*Six-month subscription of free delivery. Your account must be in good standing to remain eligible. Subscription offer expires 6/30/2014. For complete terms and conditions see g.co/shopexpressterms.  

New upgrade option for Shopping campaigns

Earlier this month, we shared a few success stories on Shopping campaigns, our new campaign type for Product Listing Ads (PLAs), and that the regular PLA campaign type will retire in late August 2014.

To upgrade to Shopping campaigns, we encourage you to create a Shopping campaign from scratch and then customize your product groups and bids from there. That way, you can choose how granular you’d like to get and ensure all your inventory is included in your Shopping campaign.

However, if you would like to base your Shopping campaign on a regular PLA campaign, we’re introducing an option today to help you upgrade.

After setting up your Shopping campaign, you’ll be taken to a new page to create ad groups. Here, you’ll see two options: the ability to start fresh with one ad group or create one or many ad groups based on a regular PLA campaign.

Note that some parts of a regular PLA campaigns aren’t transferable to a Shopping campaign, like product targets that use AdWords labels or groupings. If none of your PLA campaigns are transferrable, you might not see this option.

Keep in mind

With Shopping campaigns, you no longer need to create separate ad groups or product targets to track your impressions, clicks and cost. You can analyze and report on your PLA performance by product attribute or by individual items in the Dimensions tab, regardless of your campaign structure.

As a reminder, all PLA advertisers will need to upgrade to Shopping campaigns by late August 2014, at which time all remaining regular PLA campaigns will be automatically upgraded. Over the next few months, we’ll continue to share more information and tools to help you upgrade your campaigns and manage them at scale.

To learn more about Shopping campaigns and how to upgrade, here are a few resources:

• Upgrade guide
• Learn With Google Webinar on May 15
• AdWords Help Center

Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping

What's next for Shopping campaigns and retailers

In February, we made Shopping campaigns available to all Product Listing Ad (PLA) advertisers and, in March, we released AdWords API support to help you manage your campaigns at scale. Shopping campaigns offer the ability to browse your inventory directly in AdWords, report on your performance down to the product-level, and bid competitively with new metrics like benchmark data and impression share. We’ve received great feedback from you so far and are excited to share what’s next:

• Size your opportunity with Bid Simulator - To provide more actionable insight into your PLAs, we’ve been rolling out a Bid Simulator that’s now available in all Shopping campaigns. With a Bid Simulator, you can now estimate how bid changes could impact your impressions, clicks or costs.
• Options to create a Shopping campaign - In the coming days, we’ll be adding some options to help you get started. You would be able to create a Shopping campaign from scratch or, for many of you, use one of your regular PLA campaigns to create similar product targets, negative keywords or promotional text.
• Multiple ad groups for advanced retailers - While many of you will be happy with your Shopping campaign as is, we’ve heard from advanced retailers that they’d like to create multiple ad groups. It’s now possible to do this within a Shopping campaign.

Continued Retailer Success

Since we made Shopping campaigns available to all PLA advertisers, we continue to hear many examples of how it helps you manage PLAs and effectively grow your business. Here are a few:

“The benefits of Shopping campaigns can’t be overstated – the ease of setup, the transparency of data, the ability to group products into logical categories and manage to the product level make it a must. All of these contribute to our clients’ ROI almost tripling, and there’s still room to improve.” -JumpFly

“The new Shopping campaigns allowed us to achieve a much higher-level of profitability, cutting costs by 13% and increasing return on ad spend by about 22% on average. Not only that, the new campaign type trims about 2 hours of setup time.” -Exclusive Concepts 

“We used the product-level data from our Shopping campaign to fine-tune our bidding strategy, focusing on the products that acquired the most traffic & lowered the ones that are less important. This helped us increase visits 25% & ROI by 16%.” -Wiggle 

“Shopping campaigns effectively reduced the time spent setting up product-specific bids and optimizing in half. We can now invest even more time into each client, and the results we’ve seen have been no less than amazing. A client selling home accessories saw a 301% increase in revenue after only one month. As a result, we are now changing our agency standards within PLAs to only use Shopping campaigns.” -White Shark Media

Future of Shopping campaigns and retirement of regular PLA campaign type

Shopping campaigns offer a truly retail-centric and seamless approach to PLAs. We're very excited by the positive feedback we've heard so far and will continue to build tools and features into this new campaign type to help you manage your PLAs. Thus, we'll be retiring the regular PLA campaign type and asking all PLA advertisers to upgrade to Shopping campaigns by late August 2014, at which time all remaining PLA campaigns will be automatically upgraded. Over the next few months, we’ll share more information and release more tools to help you upgrade your campaigns and manage them at scale. We encourage you to start planning your upgrade to Shopping campaigns today to take full advantage of the new features as soon as possible.



For additional help, here are a few resources:

• Tutorial Videos to help you get started
• AdWords Help Center for more detailed information on Shopping campaigns
• Learn With Google Webinar (April 15) for upgrade tips
• Learn With Google Webinar (May 15) for more advanced upgrade best practices
• AdWords Ads Developer page for more AdWords API documentation

Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping

Automatically keep track of your online purchases right in the Google Wallet app

Want to spend less time worrying about your online purchases? With Orders, a new feature in the latest version of the Google Wallet app for both Android (v. 4.0+, US only) and iOS (v. 6.0+, US only),  you can automatically track your online orders. Google Wallet also notifies you about the status of your orders, plus shows your past orders all in one place.

How it works

Once you activate Orders in Google Wallet, you’ll be able to see any receipts sent to your Gmail right in the Google Wallet app. We’ve also worked with primary package carriers in the US so that when your order status is updated, you’ll get notified of the update through Wallet. So whether your order is shipped, out for delivery, or delayed, you’ll never wonder about the status of your order.


Easily find your order information

Google Wallet also makes it easy to see your order history and details of what you’ve purchased all in one place. You can view the products you’ve ordered, merchant contact information, and shipping details in the app. Plus, with just one click you can call or email the merchant if you have questions about your order.

Get the updated Google Wallet app today

Download the new version of the Google Wallet app for Android (v. 4.0+, US only) and iOS (v. 6.0+, US only) on the Google Play Store, rolling out this week in the US. To begin tracking your orders, open the Google Wallet app and click “Activate” under “Track your orders” or click on “Orders” in the menu.

In addition to Orders, the Google Wallet app lets you save your loyalty programs and offers in one place, send money to friends and family, and tap your phone to pay if you have an NFC-enabled Android device.



Posted by Amit Litsur, Product Manager, Google Wallet

A better e-commerce experience: Channel Intelligence and DoubleClick Search team up for enhanced feed management, optimization

In an earlier blog post, we highlighted how shoppers exposed to a brand’s Product Listing Ads (PLA) and text ads are more likely to engage with that brand. To take full advantage of this opportunity across ad formats, it’s important that retailers have both a complete, accurate product feed and the tools to manage their campaigns at scale.

Today we’re excited to announce that DoubleClick Search will integrate feed management and optimization capabilities from Channel Intelligence. As an add-on solution to the DoubleClick Search Commerce Suite, the first step in this integration combines the data feed expertise from Channel Intelligence with the core workflow and optimization features from DoubleClick Search. Especially with the announcement of Shopping campaigns, having a detailed product feed is crucial for retailers to run high-impact search campaigns. This integration benefits retailers in the following ways:

• Build optimized product feeds. Channel Intelligence works with retailers to refine product feeds -- ensuring that the feed is comprehensive, the data is organized, and product attributes are accurate.
• Use improved feeds to dynamically create and update PLAs and text ads. Channel Intelligence feeds can power DoubleClick Search inventory-aware campaigns for automated campaign management. Using these optimized product feeds, DoubleClick Search can generate customized PLAs and text ads at scale, and keep them up-to-date based on changes to a retailer’s physical inventory.
• Optimize in real time to maximize ROI. To further boost performance across these ads, DoubleClick Search bid strategies update bids up to 4 times a day, based on up-to-the-minute conversion information. This scale and speed allows retailers to respond to product inventory changes and market trends at the drop of a hat -- even during the busiest holiday shopping days.

Performics pilots solution for major retail client

Global leader Performics is one of the first agencies to take advantage of the integrated offering for one of their clients, a large department store retailer.

"We're really excited to team with Channel Intelligence and DoubleClick Search to optimize and fully integrate the search experience for our retail brands,” says Eric Papczun, President US of Performics. “The integration is greater than the sum of its parts, and we feel that these combined technologies will give our clients a clear competitive edge in the marketplace."

Even more to come

To learn more, join us for a webinar on March 10th where we’ll cover the integration, as well as discuss the power of moving toward real-time for retail campaigns. Sign up for the webinar here http://goo.gl/cBlAcx

Our teams will also be attending eTail West coming up March 3 - 6. Come meet us during the pre-day panels and roundtables, hear us present a keynote on Day 3, or find us on the conference floor.

Cross-posted from the DoubleClick Search blog