A new mobile feature that has been rumored to be coming to Google has finally launched for a limited ‘experimental’ trial. The feature is being called “Purchases on Google” and will allow there to be a button within search ads that let people make a purchase through the Google platform. Ads featuring this feature will have a ‘Buy on Google’ message on the product listing for both Android and iOS devices.
The idea is that this feature will make it easier for users to make purchases from their mobile devices. It will also make it easier for marketers to make sales since users won’t have to go through the often lengthy process of visiting a site, checking out, entering all the information in and so forth.
Of course, if this feature catches on, it will also give Google an attractive new revenue stream and help them to compete for income from marketplaces such as Amazon.
The ads that have this new feature enabled will still show up in the same locations as before, and they will still go through the same ‘auction’ process to see if and when the ads are displayed. They will be competing with other ads, including those which are not using the new feature. There is no additional fee from Google to use this new feature, at least at this point. If this feature is launched on a larger scale, which seems likely, these things may end up changing at some point.
The testing phase that is currently taking place only has a very small number of pilot partners. Google says the partners are in a variety of different retail sectors and are going to be high volume companies. Additional companies will be chosen for a second wave of testing in the near future, assuming everything goes as planned. The testing phase will extend through the holiday season this year, at which point it will likely launch for all advertisers sometime in 2016.
