Table of Contents
- What Are Ecommerce Ads?
- How Ecommerce Ads Work
- Popular Ecommerce Ad Platforms
- Related Reading
- How To Build Effective Ecommerce Ads for Your Store
- Adapting Your E-commerce Strategy for the Evolving Digital Landscape
- Optimizing Your Multi-Channel Strategy and Leveraging Data for Seamless Customer Journeys
- Using Data-Driven Insights to Optimize Ad Spend and Channel Strategies for Better Conversions
- Choose Your Core Ecommerce Ads Marketing Channels
- Google Ads
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Best Type of Products for This Platform
- Google Shopping
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Best Type of Products for This Platform
- Bing Ads
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Facebook Ads
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Best Type of Products for Facebook Ads
- Instagram Ads
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Best Type of Products for Instagram Ads
- YouTube Ads
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Best Type of Products for YouTube Ads
- Twitter Ads
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Best Type of Products for Twitter Ads
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Best Type of Products for This Ad Platform
- TikTok
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Best type of products to use this ad platform for
- Snapchat
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Best Type of Products for Snapchat Advertising
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Best Type of Products for LinkedIn Ads
- Amazon Ads
- Advantages
- Disadvantages
- Best Type of Products for Amazon Ads
- Select the Right Ecommerce Ad for Key Shopping Journey Touchpoints
- eCommerce Ads KPIs
- Crafting a Full-Funnel eCommerce Ad Strategy: From Awareness to Repurchase
- Use Management and Optimization Real-Time Automation to Drive Conversions
- Go All-In on Personalization
- Enhancing eCommerce Ad Performance with Personalization and Dynamic Targeting
- Related Reading
- Best Techniques & Strategies for Ecommerce Ads
- Full-Funnel Targeting: Hitting Your Audience At Every Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey
- Omnichannel Advertising. Meeting Your Audience Where They’re At
- Content Personalization: Creating Targeted Ads That Speak to Your Audience
- Influencer and Affiliate Marketing: Leverage Third-Party Voices to Build Trust
- Landing Page Optimization on How to Improve Your First Impression
- Conversion Rate Optimization: Focus on the Big Picture
- Post-Click Optimization - Don’t Forget What Happens After the Click
- Post-Click User Experience in E-commerce Advertising
- Continually Measure Advertising Performance
- Sign Up for a Free Trial (no credit card required) to Our Shopify Sales Tracker to Find Your Next eCom Opportunity Today!
- Related Reading
What Are Ecommerce Ads?
- Social media
- Search engines
- Other websites
- Product listings
- Search ads
- Social media ads
- Display ads
How Ecommerce Ads Work
- Location
- Age
- Gender
- Interests
Popular Ecommerce Ad Platforms
Related Reading
How To Build Effective Ecommerce Ads for Your Store
Adapting Your E-commerce Strategy for the Evolving Digital Landscape
- According to UC Today, nine out of every 10 consumers want omnichannel service, where they can move between various online channels seamlessly.
- 44% of all companies have adopted a ‘digital-first approach’ when it comes to customer experience.
- According to Google, up to 85% of consumers start their purchasing journey on one device but finish the final transaction on another.
Optimizing Your Multi-Channel Strategy and Leveraging Data for Seamless Customer Journeys
- Which channels are bringing in the most traffic, and what percentage of that traffic converts?
- How many steps do my shoppers take before they complete a sale?
- Which channels bring the most inquiries and requests (customer service)?
- Are the devices potential shoppers use to find your store the same as those they use to purchase?
- Which social media platforms do my shoppers engage with most?
Using Data-Driven Insights to Optimize Ad Spend and Channel Strategies for Better Conversions
- To spot gaps in my eCommerce ads for those channels like Dynamic product ads or Google Shopping remarketing, which you can fill with touchpoint-specific campaigns and improved personalization and targeting.
- I plan to move ad spending from Twitter to other more lucrative channels, such as Google Shopping, and move Twitter out of marketing and into my customer support management systems.
Choose Your Core Ecommerce Ads Marketing Channels
Google Ads
Advantages
- Vast Reach: Google is the biggest search engine, processing over 100 billion monthly searches. You can harness the search engine's immense reach to drive results for your eCommerce business.
- High ROAS: The average return on ad spend (ROAS) for Google Ads is estimated to be 2:1, and for the Google Search Network, it's 800%—enormous potential for your online store.
- Affordable for SMBs: Online advertising is more affordable for small and medium publishers with limited resources and lower budgets.
- Easy integration: Combine this tactic with other digital marketing software to create multichannel campaigns.
Disadvantages
- Can get costly: Pricing scales up quickly, meaning larger enterprises can pay up to $150,000 annually. You need to be sure you're getting a worthwhile return on ad spend.
- Low customer service: Customer service is limited, so it's important to know what you're doing (or hire an agency that does)
- Takes time and effort to learn: The many nuances of Google advertising can be confusing, meaning you need to work with experts to take advantage of the many tools.
- More competition: While Google may open you to the most extensive networks, you’ll compete with many more advertisers, leading to higher campaign costs.
- Strict standards: Compared to other search advertising platforms, Google tends to be much more stringent about the content of your PPC ads
Best Type of Products for This Platform
Google Shopping
- Product
- Title
- Price
- Store name
- Reviews
Advantages
- High conversion potential: Google Shopping ads are great for driving traffic that converts, as many people still start their product search on Google.
- Easy to run: Google’s algorithms automatically:
- Pull product data from your store
- Create ads for your products
- Match them with relevant search queries
- Strong visual appeal: Shopping ads get a prime position in SERPs with a visual format to attract clicks.
Disadvantages
- Takes time to set up: Google Shopping campaigns require more time to get started but less effort after everything is set up in Google Merchant Center.
Best Type of Products for This Platform
Bing Ads
Advantages
- Less competition: Fewer advertisers on Bing means you’ll get more bang from your digital marketing campaign. Reports by Search Engine People have shown that the average CPC (cost-per-click) for a Bing Ad is 70% less compared to Google Ads.
- Reach different audiences: You will find users you’d be missing if you only run Google Ad campaigns. Advertising on Bing means you will also be advertising on:
- Yahoo
- AOL
- Other partnering sites
Disadvantages
- Reduced reach: You can’t ignore the fact that Bing has a lower audience reach and search volume than Google Ads.
- Less advanced features: Bing Ads are usually one step behind Google, which means new features roll out after Google, and reporting needs to be more comprehensive.
Facebook Ads
Advantages
- Reach billions: Facebook boasts the most social media platform users, with billions of active accounts. Advertising on Facebook gives you an almost unlimited potential audience.
- Find your audience: Facebook is popular among various demographics across genders and ages, so there’s a great chance of reaching your niche audience.
- Exceptional targeting: The possibilities of Facebook ad targeting are almost endless—you can target by:
- Location
- Occupation
- Interests
- Past activity
- Other data points
- Easy to control spending: Facebook ads are easy to budget for, and you can track your spending easily, cutting it off when you've reached your maximum budget.
Disadvantages
- Becoming more expensive: Due to heightened competition, advertising on Facebook is becoming increasingly expensive. That said, it is still relatively cheap compared to other advertising platforms.
- Takes time to master: Marketing effectively on Facebook is a skill that takes a long time to master—many small eCommerce companies don't have the time or resources to manage it effectively.
Best Type of Products for Facebook Ads
- Food
- Tech
- Fashion
- DIY
- Engaging copy
- Images
- Videos
Instagram Ads
Advantages
- Highly engaged users: Over half of Instagram users access the social media network daily, meaning Instagram is the ultimate platform to reach your audience and influence them to consider your brand.
- High-intent users: 75% of Instagram users take action on ads they see on their feed, and over one-third purchase products. Create effective paid ads as part of a targeted Instagram advertising strategy, and you can drive sales.
- Comprehensive targeting: Because the platform is owned by social media giant Facebook, Instagram advertising gives you access to in-depth targeting.
- Lots of ad formats: Test the various ad formats to find the type that gets the most ad clicks and conversions, such as:
- Stories
- IGTV
- Videos, shopping ads
- Increase sales on the platform: Customers can buy without leaving Instagram—such as with Collection ads (on the mobile ad platform only).
Disadvantages
- Takes time to master: As with Facebook, marketing effectively takes a long time and may require a specialist to help.
- Requires high-quality visual assets: Instagram is a highly visual platform, meaning you must invest in high-quality content to stand out.
Best Type of Products for Instagram Ads
- Cosmetics
- Fashion
- Homewares
- Food
- Health products
YouTube Ads
Advantages
- YouTube is part of Google’s Ad system and offers excellent support, vital data, and targeting capabilities, including remarketing ads.
- Wide and diverse audience: Over 1 billion hours of video on wide-ranging topics are uploaded daily to YouTube.
- Built-in engaged audience: Users aren’t just idly browsing through a feed—they go to YouTube for education and entertainment—making it a powerful place to reach them with your video ads.
Disadvantages
- Cost to create videos: YouTube videos need high quality to grab viewers—this can be cost-prohibitive for smaller publishers.
- Video ads can be interruptive: Depending on the ad format, viewers can exit anytime and may be annoyed by video ads.
Best Type of Products for YouTube Ads
- Products that require an element of educational or informational content help new customers make a purchase decision. They use:
- Product demonstrations
- Product reviews
- Explainer videos
Twitter Ads
Advantages
- High engagement: Engagement rates for Twitter ads can be as high as 1-3%, according to a study by TBG Digital. This was much higher than Facebook’s average CTR of 0.90%. (What is CTR?)
- Limited competition: While other social media platforms are home to millions of advertisers, Twitter only has around 130,000 business advertisers.
Disadvantages
- More expensive: Twitter advertising is typically more expensive than Facebook (but the engagement rates mean it could be worth it).
- Limited analytics: Twitter analytics needs to have the breadth and precision of Facebook or Google Analytics.
- Lower audience reach: Twitter has 187 million daily users, less than Facebook and YouTube. However, they are a highly engaged audience for your digital ads.
Best Type of Products for Twitter Ads
Advantages
- High conversion potential: 85% of weekly Pinners have purchased based on Pins they see from brands on the platform, meaning there's high potential for customer acquisition.
- Pinterest ads blend in: Promoted pins blend into Pinterest boards, which means advertising is less likely to interrupt or annoy users than on some social media platforms.
- Multiple ad options: Pinterest offers various advertising options for brands to reach consumers based on goals according to the sales funnel stage:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Conversions
Disadvantages
- Less diverse audience: Pinners skew heavily towards 20-40-year-old women, though the audience is gradually becoming more diverse.
- Less user-friendly platform layout: The platform is more complicated to navigate than Amazon Ads and Google.
Best Type of Products for This Ad Platform
- Craft
- DIY
- Home and garden
- Foodie focus
TikTok
Advantages
- Highly engaged audience: The beauty of TikTok is the engagement publishers can have with their specific audience.
- Get creative: You can really get creative with your advertising and connect with users for maximum engagement. Some of the best advertising on TikTok uses a Hashtag challenge as part of its campaign. When a user taps on a hashtag, it takes them to the brand’s landing page and shows more curated videos with the same hashtag. According to TikTok, these challenges have an average engagement rate of 8.5%.
- Integrate with eCommerce platforms: Add TikTok’s app to your Shopify store to implement the pixel and create new posts without leaving your Shopify dashboard.
- Access to new markets: TikTok’s rapidly growing global reach means new marketing opportunities for international publishers.
Disadvantages
- High cost to advertise: TikTok ads pricing is less competitive than the other platforms and begins at $10 per CPM (cost per 1,000 views).
- Lack of ad placements: There are fewer options for ad placements, with most brands limited to in-feed ads. This means viewers see interrupting ads as they swipe through their For You page.
- Must be native content: You can't use ad creatives from other platforms—it must be a native TikTok approach if you want to ensure audiences don't swipe away.
- Videos are essential: You cannot post ads solely in static graphics—you will always have to produce videos, which can strain the budget.
Best type of products to use this ad platform for
Snapchat
Advantages
- Proven success: Snapchat users are 60% more likely to make impulse purchases and hold a global spending power of $4.4 trillion, according to Snapchat.
- Reach mobile audience: According to Snapchat, Snapchatters are 20% more likely to use their phone when shopping in 2021 than in 2020, so you can put your brand at their fingertips anywhere.
- Make an instant impact: Snapchat ad formats let you show off your products using immersive, full-screen mobile ads to make a real impact.
- Low entry cost: You can launch ads for as low as $5 daily.
- AR drives conversions: Interacting with products through AR experiences delivers a 94% higher purchase conversion rate, as individuals feel connected to brands.
Disadvantages
Best Type of Products for Snapchat Advertising
Advantages
- B2B centric: LinkedIn offers B2B advertisers the possibility to generate high-quality leads by reaching the right decision-makers.
- Less competition: It’s easier for B2C brands that want to reach a niche audience to stand out.
Disadvantages
- Less effective for eCommerce: Traditionally best suited to B2B over B2C products, it is generally less popular for eCommerce advertising.
- Basic reporting tools: Reporting is essential, and you cannot access the array of metrics or customize reporting views as you can on Google, Facebook, or other platforms.
- Inferior usability: It's harder for marketers to quickly and easily duplicate ads, campaigns, or campaign groups. There is no bulk editor or duplication tool, so testing is cumbersome, too.
Best Type of Products for LinkedIn Ads
- Tech products
- Work-from-home products
- Business attire
Amazon Ads
Advantages
- Shoppers are ready to buy: Amazon is a top destination for ready-to-buy shoppers, and it has built trust amongst shoppers, which brands can leverage.
- Low barrier to entry: Publishers don't even need a website to advertise on Amazon, making the barrier to entry extremely low.
- Takes minutes: The simple ad setup and interface means publishers can quickly choose products to advertise and start showing products to customers in minutes.
- Multiple campaign types: Choose the type that suits your goal, including:
- Sponsored Products
- Automatic Targeting Campaigns
- Manual Targeting Campaigns
Disadvantages
- Higher fees: Amazon is not a free tool. It charges an additional referral fee on top of advertising fees as a percentage of the sale (up to 15%), which varies by product category. This can be prohibitive to some sellers.
- Strict standards: Amazon requires sellers to adhere to strict standards, including:
- Shipping times
- Confirmation emails
- Order cancellation rates
Best Type of Products for Amazon Ads
- Specific market
- Brands
- Shoppers
- Unique customer journey
Select the Right Ecommerce Ad for Key Shopping Journey Touchpoints
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Purchase
- Repurchase
- Use the best channels
- eCommerce ad types
- Targeting
- Messaging to achieve these goals
eCommerce Ads KPIs
- Budget attainment
- CPCs
- Quality Score
- Impression share
- CTRs
- LTVs
- Keyword performance
Crafting a Full-Funnel eCommerce Ad Strategy: From Awareness to Repurchase
- Awareness: Facebook video ad with Lookalike Audiences
- Consideration: Google Search, with RSLs and brand name as a keyword
- Repurchase: Smart Google Shopping and Facebook Dynamic Product ads with retargeting/remarketing audiences
Use Management and Optimization Real-Time Automation to Drive Conversions
Go All-In on Personalization
- Brand
- Products
- Marketing
- Over 40% of consumers get annoyed with impersonal or generic content
- 71% of consumers experience frustration with impersonal shopping experiences
- According to Statista, 90% of U.S. consumers find personalized marketing very or somewhat appealing
- 91% of shoppers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide product recommendations or promotions that are relevant specifically to them
Enhancing eCommerce Ad Performance with Personalization and Dynamic Targeting
- Personalized eCommerce Ads
- Smart Shopping ads
- Dynamic remarketing ads
- Search & Dynamic Search Ads
- Smart display campaign ads
- Dynamic retargeting ads
Related Reading
Best Techniques & Strategies for Ecommerce Ads
Full-Funnel Targeting: Hitting Your Audience At Every Stage Of The Buyer’s Journey
Omnichannel Advertising. Meeting Your Audience Where They’re At
- Social media
- Mobile apps
- Offline methods
Content Personalization: Creating Targeted Ads That Speak to Your Audience
Influencer and Affiliate Marketing: Leverage Third-Party Voices to Build Trust
Landing Page Optimization on How to Improve Your First Impression
Conversion Rate Optimization: Focus on the Big Picture
Post-Click Optimization - Don’t Forget What Happens After the Click
Post-Click User Experience in E-commerce Advertising
Continually Measure Advertising Performance
Sign Up for a Free Trial (no credit card required) to Our Shopify Sales Tracker to Find Your Next eCom Opportunity Today!
- Dropshipper
- Shopify store owner
- Someone looking to enter the e-commerce space
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- Best TikTok Ads
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