Google advertisers will have an option to buy Product Shopping ads and Showcase Shopping ads for Gmail campaigns beginning the week of March 4, 2020.

Reporting information for Google Ads API and AdWords API will include Gmail, YouTube, and the Google Discover feed that appears on the home page of the Google app for iOS and Android. This appears when the campaigns are opted in the Google Display Network.

Jonathan Kagan, VP of search at Cogniscient Media, a MARC USA brand, “intrigued” to learn of the news, said “Gmail is a decent performer and we’ve always looked for another way to kick it up a notch. This could be it.”

Marketers will see Shopping ads for Gmail reported under the Google Display Network. Standard Shopping campaigns will automatically run on Gmail, when marketers opt-in to Gmail, Discover, and YouTube campaigns.

Allowing advertisers to opt-in or opt-out of Gmail, YouTube and Google Discover ads for standard Shopping campaigns means enabling or disabling certain settings, wrote Google Ads API Team Ian Ballantyne.

Google had made available Showcase Shopping Ads to Discover and YouTube campaigns last year. Smart Shopping campaigns were only available on Gmail.

Anecdotally, marketers talk about shifting more of their search budgets to Shopping ads, despite slower growth during the fourth quarter of 2019.

Search agency Merkle noted in its latest Digital Marketing Report that growth on spending slowed for Google Shopping ads from 24% year-over-year in the third quarter of 2019 to 16% YoY in the fourth quarter after a spike in late 2018.

Text ad spending declined in late 2018 and has now rebounded to 15% growth.

Merkle notes that text ads may be benefiting from Google’s continued expansion of its close variants program, while advertisers have also worked to improve text click-through rates.