5 Steps for Ensuring PLA Success This Holiday Season

As the autumnal sun wanes on the horizon, one thought grows stronger in the minds of retailers everywhere: preparation for holiday sales. Online retailing is gaining a larger portion of total merchandising sales, with paid search ads driving more traffic than organic. Within the online retailing world, product listing ads (PLAs) are gaining much more traction since their introduction, with clickthrough rates growing nearly 20 percent year-over-year.

For the uninitiated, PLAs are search ads that include concise product information such as product image, price and merchant name without relying solely on text ads to entice online shoppers. PLAs are proving that a picture is truly worth a thousand (key) words, as they're consistently driving increased clickthrough rates and conversions.

Given that the holiday season is quickly approaching, it's now more important than ever for merchants to understand how to maximize PLAs. Here are some tips on how to most effectively use PLAs this holiday season. Check them once or check them twice to make sure your return on ad spend is perfect at any price.

1. Ensure you have a robust and comprehensive merchant feed. Only products included in your merchant feed have the chance to appear as a PLA. As such, this step is of utmost importance. First, make sure every product in your catalog is included in your merchant feed. You should also populate as many fields as possible in the merchant feed, as more populated fields create more matching opportunities and improve the quality of the matching between query and product.

2. Optimize your merchant feed. Once your merchant feed includes your entire catalog, it's time to optimize and enrich it. To do this, you can't assume that the data generated from your inventory or merchandising system is sufficient to make your PLA campaign successful. Rather, you need to think like a consumer. What search terms would you enter into search engines? Which item titles would you be more likely to click on when multiple PLAs appear?

Seek to align the item title, item description and promotional text to your customers’ most common queries. This will improve matching and clickthrough rates. Also, remember that more often than not, consumers only see the first 25 characters of your item titles, so you need to make the most of those 25 characters.

3. Optimize your PLA campaign. Once your merchant feed is optimized, it's time to refine the PLA campaign. Pay particular attention to the structure of your product targets and ad groups. Putting too many SKUs/products within a product target can reduce the quality of the match between the consumer query and product. Minimizing the number of SKUs/products within product targets enables better control over your bids, more targeted promotional text and higher operational flexibility.

4. Use clear images. This next piece of advice might seem obvious, but it's amazing how some retailers ignore it. Use clear images! Because consumers’ decision making is influenced by strong visuals, it's important to make sure that images paired with products are both relevant and clearly presented. Make sure the image is clear (150x150.jpg). The product should also be visible — i.e., not concealed in packaging. Once you have these basics covered, test different images and angles. For example, see how apparel looks depicted on a mannequin vs. on live models or with different backgrounds.

5. Price the item appropriately. Finally, make sure that the product shown for a given query is priced appropriately. For instance, if you display a top-of-the-line, $5,000 Sub-Zero refrigerator for the query "cheap fridge," you'll receive very poor clickthrough on a PLA that's going head-to-head with a competitor's $500 refrigerator. Negative keywords are a critical tool that can be used in cases like this. Route specific queries only to those products that have the best shot of competing for clicks and converting those clicks into revenue.

Retailers have had a full year since the introduction of PLAs to learn about them and prepare for the holiday push. The clock is ticking; the earlier you implement these tips, the more likely you'll have a jolly holiday season.

Greg de Haaff is senior director, product management, at Adchemy, a software provider that helps marketers scale the performance and relevance of their paid search campaigns.