How to Set Up a Product Feed for Product Listing Ads
What is a Product Feed?
Product feeds are structured files that consist of a list of products and their attributes. These attributes include price, color, image, and description. This data is organized in such a way that a product feed management platform, such as Google Merchant Center or Facebook product catalogs can take in the data to display product listing ads. Across Google, Facebook, Bing, and more, Google’s product data specifications are the universal standards for the creation of a product feed.
There are several ways to create your product feed. The most basic being a Google Sheet or a tab-delimited spreadsheet. However, managing hundreds of products within a spreadsheet can become complicated if your product details such as price and availability change often.
The most common method of creating a product feed is to utilize a plugin or extension on your eCommerce platform. Plugins or extensions allow you to sync your products along with their most up-to-date attributes directly from your website to a product feed management platform such as Google Merchant Center or a Facebook product catalog. Utilizing a plugin cuts down on the need for ongoing feed maintenance and management as the plugin or extension will always ensure sync your most up-to-date product data. The plugins or extensions Bytes.co uses the most to create product feeds include Product Feeds by Sales & Orders for WordPress, Magento, Shopify, and BigCommerce as well as Product Feed for Magento 2 by Amasty.
Why is Managing an Updated Product Feed Important?
Your product feed is a vital tool for advertising your products. More specifically, it can be used to generate product ads via a Google Shopping campaign. Ensuring that your in-stock products are listed as such with a current price, relevant title, and relevant description can be the difference between a sale or a missed impression. A well-structured and up-to-date data feed will allow your product ads to be served via a Google Shopping campaign to a user at the time of a relevant search.
For example, if you type “Vermont Maple Syrup” into Google, you will see relevant products appear at the top of the Google Search results such as:
If you haven’t tried running a Google Shopping campaign, now is the time to start. Building out a product feed and creating a shopping campaign now will allow you to collect data that can be leveraged during the holiday season to create the most revenue return possible.
How to Set Up Product Listing Ads With a Product Feed
In order to create a product feed, you’ll first need to set up a Google Ads account. This is where you will manage all your Google campaigns including a shopping campaign.
Next, create a product feed using a Google Sheet or one of the aforementioned plugins or extensions. If you create it within a Google Sheet, ensure you are following Google’s guide for product data specifications. If you are creating a feed using one of the aforementioned plugins or extensions, these plugins or extensions should do much of the work to ensure your feed is aligned with Google’s product data specifications.
Once you’ve done that, submit your product feed to Google Merchant Center, link Google Merchant Center to Google Ads, and create a shopping campaign in Google Ads. If done correctly, Google Merchant Center will send your product data through Google Ads to your Google Shopping campaign.
Feeling overwhelmed? Don’t worry. Our digital marketing Team has managed dozens of Google Shopping campaigns and helped generate exceptional results for our clients.
