Dive Brief:

• Sidecar’s The 2017 Google Shopping Benchmarks Report found that Shopping ads spending passed text ads for the first time in 2016 accounting for 53% of retailers’ AdWords budgets per a press release.
• "Google Shopping has earned its place in retail," said Andre Golsorkhi, founder and CEO of Sidecar, in the press release. "That's because the channel bridges the mega trends that define e-commerce today — visual content, mobile optimization, relevancy."
• The report was based on analyzing 19.1 billion user sessions on retail e-commerce sites.

Dive Insight:

The findings underscore how the once mighty text ad, once a staple of digital marketing strategies, is seeing its role diminish as digital advertising moves toward more specialized ad formats. Google Shopping is a natural fit for retail marketers because the format has a strong visual component. Other options like location-based ads are also gaining a wider appeal. The common element is the consistently increasing importance of mobile in any marketing program. Sidecar found that Google Shopping ads converted mobile consumers as 29% of total revenue for the format in 2016, up from 17% in 2015.

Another result from the research found that Shopping ads accounted for 16.1% of e-commerce sales in 2016, a dramatic 78% year-over-year leap from 2015’s 9% figure. The findings point to the growing importance of e-commerce for retailers at a time when record numbers of brick-and-mortar store locations are closing.