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Google Merchant Center: Unlocking the Power of AI-Generated Product Imagery

Douglas KarrLast Updated: Mar 25, 2024

2 minutes read

Google Merchant Center: Generative AI Product Imagery

Google Merchant Center’s newest tool, Product Studio, is set to revolutionize how e-commerce businesses connect with online shoppers. Introduced at Google Marketing Live, this innovative feature harnesses the power of generative AI to help merchants create stunning, unique product images without costly photoshoots or time-consuming post-production edits.

Visually appealing product images capture customers’ attention and drive sales. Google has found that:

Clicks: Product offers with more than one image see a 32% increase in clicks compared to those with just a single image.
Impressions: Merchants can experience a 76% increase in impressions by including multiple images for their product offers.

Despite the clear benefits, creating a diverse range of high-quality images can be expensive and time-consuming for many businesses.

Product Studio: AI-Powered Image Creation

Product Studio, designed with Google’s AI Principles in mind, brings the advantages of generative AI (GenAI) to businesses of all sizes.

Digital marketing, generated by AI | Google Ads

This tool enables merchants to easily create tailored product imagery for free and maximize the value of their existing images. Key features include:

Background Removal: Quickly remove complex backgrounds from product images, leaving a clean, white background that highlights the product.
Enhancement: Improve the quality of small or low-resolution images without the need to reshoot the product.
Custom Product Scenes: Generate new imagery based on specific marketing needs, such as seasonal or campaign-based visuals, without the added cost of new photoshoots.

Credit: Google

Product Studio Prompts

Google also provides some example prompts for generating these images:

Product photography of a bottle of cologne sitting on a marble surface. The bottle is surrounded by white and yellow flower petals. The backdrop is large tropical leaves and foliage. This image represents the result of an example prompt in Product Studio.

A studio product photo of a small tube bottle sitting on a gold trim circular marble platform. The platform is in focus, clear, and sharp. There is a peach colored wall and cherry blossom branches in the background. The image is in focus, has an open aperture, high resolution, and in HD 8K. The image displays professional product photography, studio lighting, soft shadows, insanely sharp image, reflective surface and diffused lighting.

A creative product photograph of a scented candle, in a studio setting with a white background. The scented candle is placed on a decorative wood plank and blurred in the background is a pinecone.

Merchant Center Next

Google has been working to make its Merchant Center platform more user-friendly, particularly for smaller merchants. The new Merchant Center Next offers a simplified platform version, designed to help businesses get started, find customers online, and grow more easily.

Credit: Google

Notable improvements include:

Automatic Product Feed Population: Merchant Center Next will automatically populate a merchant’s product feed with information detected from their website, streamlining the setup process.
Consolidated Performance Insights: All insights reports will be combined under the Performance tab, giving merchants a single location to review best-selling products, compare their business to others, and analyze customer engagement on Search and Maps.
Unified Product Management: Merchants with both online and brick-and-mortar stores will benefit from a comprehensive view of all products, making it easier to manage online and in-store inventory.

Merchant Center Next has already begun rolling out for new users. Plans are to upgrade smaller businesses in the coming months and complete the global rollout this year.

As online shopping grows, businesses that leverage tools like Product Studio and Merchant Center Next will be better equipped to create engaging, eye-catching product imagery and connect with customers more effectively. By harnessing the power of AI and simplifying the product listing process, Google is empowering small businesses to compete in the digital marketplace and unlock new growth opportunities.

Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is a fractional Chief Marketing Officer specializing in SaaS and AI companies, where he helps scale marketing operations, drive demand generation, and implement AI-powered strategies. He is the founder and publisher of Martech Zone, a leading publication in marketing technology, and a trusted advisor to startups and enterprises alike. With a track record spanning more than $5 billion in MarTech acquisitions and investments, Douglas has led go-to-market strategy, brand positioning, and digital transformation initiatives for companies ranging from early-stage startups to global tech leaders like Dell, GoDaddy, Salesforce, Oracle, and Adobe. A published author of Corporate Blogging for Dummies and contributor to The Better Business Book, Douglas is also a recognized speaker, curriculum developer, and Forbes contributor. A U.S. Navy veteran, he combines strategic leadership with hands-on execution to help organizations achieve measurable growth.

It all started as a book club.

Yes, I’m serious. I started my work on the web more than two decades ago. My first site was Helping Hand, which curated the best sites from around the web to help people with their computers and navigate resources on the Internet. Years later, I sold the domain to a company that helped folks quit smoking, one of my first big contracts.

I began blogging on Blogger and waxed poetic about everything from politics to Internet tools. I was all over the place and mostly wrote for myself – without much of an audience. I belonged to a Marketing Book club in Indianapolis that quickly grew out of control. Over time, I discovered that more and more of the group were coming to me for technology advice. The combination of my technology background and my business and marketing acumen was in high demand as the Internet rapidly changed the industry.

After reading Naked Conversations, I was motivated to better brand and control the content on the site. I also wanted more control over the look and feel of my blog, so I moved to my domain in 2006 and built my first WordPress site. Since I was focused on marketing technology, I didn’t want the domain with my name to get in the way, so I moved the site (painfully) to its new domain in 2008 where it’s grown ever since.

The Martech Zone is owned and operated by DK New Media, LLC, a company I started in 2009. After working with virtually every major online marketing department in my tenure at ExactTarget and launching Compendium, I knew there was a great demand for my expertise and guidance within such a complex industry.

DK New Media oversees my consulting, publications, podcasts, workshops, webinars, and speaking opportunities. Highbridge, my agency with two other partners, helps companies maximize their investment in sales, marketing, and related products. We offer integration, migration, training, strategic consulting, and custom development.

Thank you so much for your support over the years!

Douglas Karr
CEO, DK New Media