At its Google Marketing Live event, the tech giant announced the launch of Product Studio, an innovative tool powered by generative AI that enables merchants to easily create product imagery. Integrated within Merchant Center Next, Google’s platform for managing product visibility on the search engine, brands can now generate new imagery and extract more value from their existing images.
Product Studio empowers merchants by providing the ability to create product imagery at no cost, eliminating the need for expensive photoshoots. For instance, a skincare company could showcase a seasonal variant of a product by requesting an image featuring the product surrounded by peaches against a backdrop of tropical plants.
Additionally, the tool offers features like background removal, allowing merchants to replace distracting backgrounds with a plain white one. It can also enhance the quality of small or low-resolution images without the necessity of reshooting the product.
Starting in the next few months, merchants in the United States will gain access to Product Studio. These capabilities will also be available to merchants utilizing the Google and YouTube app on Shopify.
During a briefing with reporters, Matt Madrigal, Google’s Vice President and General Manager of Merchant Shopping, emphasized the long-standing role of advanced technologies like AI in Google Shopping products. He highlighted that Product Studio brings these technology advancements directly to small and medium-sized businesses, enabling them to leverage the benefits.
Google further announced improvements to streamline the process of listing products on Merchant Center Next. Setting up a product feed has been simplified, as the platform now automatically populates a merchant’s feed with information detected from their website. Merchants have the flexibility to edit the content or disable the feature as needed.
To enhance performance analysis, Google has consolidated all insights reports into the Performance tab. Merchants can now review their best-selling products, view competitors appearing alongside their listings, and gain insights into shopper engagement with their local businesses on Search and Maps.
Merchant Center Next also offers a comprehensive view of all products for merchants with both online and brick-and-mortar stores, simplifying inventory management across channels. Additionally, the platform provides new insights on the potential benefits of rectifying errors in product data, enabling merchants to prioritize updates more effectively.
Merchant Center Next has commenced rollout for new users, and Google plans to gradually upgrade smaller businesses over the next few months, with the global rollout scheduled for completion by 2024. Merchants will be promptly notified when the new experience becomes available to them.
By Impact Lab
