Google Teams Up with Major Retailers to Boost Their Exposure - for a Price

Google is reportedly teaming up with major retailers for a program called Shopping Actions as the tech giant attempts to take on Amazon while also boosting their revenue.

Reuters reports that tech giant Google is attempting to add another revenue stream to their company in the form of partnerships with major retailers such as  Target, Walmart, Home Depot, Costco, and Ulta Beauty. The new program, called Shopping Actions, would see these retailers products appear on Google Search as well as the Google Express shopping service and Google Assistant, in return for this added exposure, Google would receive a percentage of purchases. This would mean that some retailers would be paying the tech company for two forms of exposure, through advertising and this new retailer loyalty program.

Google hopes that this would lead to increased purchases across a wider range of devices including smart home devices with voice search, which are not currently one of the key devices being used to purchase products online. This new program would also help the search king contend with the likes of Amazon in the world of e-commerce. Daniel Alegre, Google’s president for retail and shopping, told Reuters that the new program came from the company receiving a number of image searches of products with queries such as “Where can I buy this?”

Analysts say that the majority of purchases are made via a Google search which leads to an Amazon link. The new Google program, named Shopping Actions, hopes to change that and will be available in the United States to retailers of all sizes. “We have taken a fundamentally different approach from the likes of Amazon because we see ourselves as an enabler of retail,” Alegre said. “We see ourselves as part of a solution for retailers to be able to drive better transactions … and get closer to the consumer.”

The program will also offer a certain level of interactivity between Google devices, for instance, if a customer searches for a camera on Google and adds it to their Google Express cart, then later notices that they’re running low on paper towels, they can add paper towels to the same Google Express shopping cart using a Google Home device and purchase both items at once. Algere said that early tests of the Shopping Actions program saw the number of items in a customer’s shopping basket increase by 30 percent. Ulta Beauty’s Chief Executive Officer Mary Dillon said that the brand’s average order value has jumped 35 percent since partnering with Google. Target reported that the size of customers Google Express checkout carts increased by nearly 20 percent since partnering.