And is it a coincidence that Mark Zukerberg just announced that Facebook's ad revenue has gone up ?

And we believe being able to do product listing ads gets us closer to intent because if somebody types a Nikon D800 then we know they are looking to buy or looking to get more information about a specific product and the fact that we can show them reviews pictures and pricing information gets us closer to action. And we believe in the medium term that’s going to create more monetization and a better monetization for us as opposed to having just 10 blue links of ads we’d send them to other websites.

This is a very important quote and I could see Google getting ready for product listings on a massive scale in all niches, as they believe that could earn them better than Adwords (10 blue links of ads). How will this work out? Are they trying to be a mega affiliate for products in all niches? Will that be a threat to the likes of Amazon? Will they be partnering the popular sellers in each niche and get a better share for every sale? and then probably buy them out in the long run...or may be they would buy a significant no. of shares of most sellers with whom they decide to partner?

@indyank
There are already quite a few large product comparison sites!
And quite a few auction sites

There are already quite a few large product comparison sites!
And quite a few auction sites

Yeah but their days are probably numbered...This one quote summarizes all the recent steps of Google. Carousel of images (scraped), knowledge graph with information (scraped) and they probably would go on to add reviews as well, which might either be scraped or come from one of Google's own aggregator/crowd sourcing platform. All they need to do is add product listings from their partners with a Buy button.

All these aren't done for users as users never complained of going to third party sites for getting the good content.But google has scraped and introduced all these on their own SERPS to ensure their product listings are close to action.

Some might justify this as natural progression of search engines!

PLAs currently do well as they immediately attract the user because they are in a sea of text links.

Now, roll on to a time not far off, and the whole google page is a sea of PLAs. A slow loading yahoo type of search portal anyone? Exactly what google wasn't when it first aired, and one of the major reasons why it did so well.

Funny how they are opening the gap, to a fast loading, clean user interface, deep mining but remaining accurate search engine.

What goes round, comes round.

On a different point, and picking up on what I said previously, the PLAs are now requesting huge bid amounts.

OK, perhaps, if you're selling an expensive product, i.e. Nikon D800 at £2000, where you can afford to spend £50-£100 per conversion. But when you're selling items at £30 then it just doesn't work.

Their current projections are totally unrealistic, I will not - I can not - pay £2 for a click (not conversion mind) to get someone to my website to buy a product costing £30.

I estimate that conversion rates would have to be 30% just to break even. That ain't going to happen, is it?

If anyone with any sense has looked into figures like these then perhaps they will come to the conclusion that google's projections in low-priced retail markets are simply unrealistic.

If anyone with any sense has looked into figures like these then perhaps they will come to the conclusion that google's projections in low-priced retail markets are simply unrealistic.

I don't think they really care. I remember when we first started out Yellow Pages was THE thing to be in. Never mind the fact that it never performed well for us! Then Google took over.....

My point is, some businesses WILL do well out of Google's new model, most will not though. There will be an interim period when people will pay through the nose just to feature though, as soon as they realise the RIO is poor they will stop. I've noticed many of our competitors have pulled the plug on Adwords, for low value items it just doesn't stack up......

If anyone with any sense has looked into figures like these then perhaps they will come to the conclusion that google's projections in low-priced retail markets are simply unrealistic.

I've noticed many of our competitors have pulled the plug on Adwords, for low value items it just doesn't stack up......

It could perhaps be the reason why they consider Prod listings to create more and better monetization (for low-priced products). So give them everything they want like info.,images videos and reviews right on the SERPS (making sure they don't unnecessarily click on any organic results) and listing products close to the action.

This definition from Google shopping would make it very clear.

Product Listing Ads are eligible to appear on both Google Search and Google Shopping, across computers, tablets and smartphones. Whenever a user enters a search query relevant to an item you sell, Google will automatically show the most relevant Product Listing Ads, which include the associated image, price, product name and more.

More stands for carousel, videos, KG, reviews etc.

and I didn't know before that they are experimenting cost-per-acquisition (CPA model) percentage basis with select participants in the US.