Google just made YouTube ads shoppable

Google is introducing a new feature to its YouTube video ad offering that allows users to buy showcased products.

The new feature, called TrueView for shopping, will allow users to shop an ad by clicking on a banner in the video ad. It will also serve up a list of individual product cards beneath the video ad, which will direct viewers to a place where they can buy the item. The new feature integrates with existing ad products, according to a blog post from Google:

TrueView for shopping enables advertisers to scale the manual process of connecting individual products with individual videos. Thanks to the first-ever integration of the Google Merchant Center into video ads, advertisers need only connect their campaign with a Merchant Center feed to dynamically add products to their in-stream videos, customized for each user through contextual and audience signals like geography and demographic info.

Google senior vice president of ads and commerce, Sridhar Ramaswamy announced the feature at the Ad-Tech San Francisco conference, today.

Google first released its cards platform in April. The company originally launched the platform as a way for advertisers to include more information about a product or company outside of the actual advertisement using interactive cards. The idea was that users would be able to discover more content around a given advertisement. At the time Google had promised that the cards would be even more functional later this year.

Ad revenue has been slowing for the search giant in recent quarters, which means the company will need to build more value into its ad products going forward in order to keep its ad business growing.