Google Ads has released an update to help local businesses trying to move inventory during COVID-19: a curbside pickup indicator.
What the Curbside Pickup Indicator Looks Like
The feature is available for sellers who use local inventory ads on Google Shopping, and it appears in black letters above the product photo.
Eligibility to Run
The feature is currently in beta, and only available to advertisers who have completed onboarding for store pickup and are running local inventory ads. This includes merchants who run on a Google Hosted Local Storefront, or Merchant Hosted Local Storefront.
The description of these features and experiences are explained further here.
Curbside Pickup Alerts Without Local Inventory Ads
If a business isn’t running local inventory ads, they can use their Google Business Profile to call out their pickup and delivery options.
Editing the attributes that appear on Search and Maps can make the options available to your customers clear:
What Are Local Inventory Ads?
Local Inventory Ads are a feature for brick and mortar retailers on Google Shopping. They allow retailers to specifically note if the item in the ad is available at the store.
Businesses can enable the Local Inventory Ad option by reviewing the qualifications for the program in their Merchant Center account, and enabling the feature.
Then, they create a supplemental product feed, much as they would for a “regular” Google Shopping feed. There are some differences in the feed specifications for local inventory, including items like the store code and the quantity in stock for each item.
Once the feeds are uploaded, merchants can designate a contact for Google to work with that will coordinate the inventory verification. This process allows Google to verify you have the in-store inventory you’re claiming in your submitted feeds.
Ads are then eligible to run once inventory verification is complete.
Advertisers can then enable the “local products” feature in their campaign settings for each Shopping campaign that will use the local feature.
