Summary
Product Studio is designed to offer merchants a free-of-charge, value-adding opportunity to design product visuals. The tool eliminates the necessity for additional, potentially costly, photoshoots.
During yesterday’s Google Marketing Live event, Google announced the launch of its innovative tool, Product Studio. This new addition empowers retailers to craft product images effortlessly with the help of generative AI. The tool will be housed within Merchant Center Next, Google’s dedicated platform for businesses to control their product visibility on Google.
Product Studio is designed to offer merchants a free-of-charge, value-adding opportunity to design product visuals. The tool eliminates the necessity for additional, potentially costly, photoshoots. As an illustration, a beauty brand could now fashion a summery image for a product, with a command as simple as “create image of product surrounded by peaches and tropical plants.”
Besides image creation, Product Studio is also capable of background alterations. For instance, the tool enables the user to replace an overly busy backdrop with a clean, white one. Additionally, Product Studio can enhance the quality of subpar images without the need for new photos.
Starting from the upcoming months, US-based merchants will be able to avail the features of Product Studio. Also, the tool will be accessible to merchants utilizing the Google and YouTube app on Shopify.
In a media session, Matt Madrigal, Vice President and General Manager of Merchant Shopping at Google, emphasized the pivotal role of cutting-edge tech like AI in Google’s shopping products. He further mentioned that Product Studio would extend such tech benefits to small and medium-sized enterprises.
Google has also decided to streamline the process of business listings on Merchant Center Next. The tech behemoth is aiming to simplify the product feed set up. Previously, merchants needed to manually input their product details, such as product name, price, image, and description, when registering on Google. With the new update, Google will now auto-fill a merchant’s product feed by extracting available information from the merchant’s website. The feature can be adjusted or deactivated based on merchant preference.
To aid merchant understanding of their performance, Google is consolidating all insights reports under the Performance tab. As a result, merchants can access all performance-related information, like best-selling products, competitors, and customer engagement with their local business on Search and Maps, from a single location.
For businesses operating both online and local physical stores, Merchant Center Next will now offer a comprehensive view of all products. This holistic view aims to facilitate simultaneous online and in-store inventory management. Google also plans to provide insights about the potential benefits of rectifying product data errors, making it easier for merchants to prioritize updates.
The rollout of Merchant Center Next has already begun for new users. Google anticipates upgrading smaller businesses in the upcoming months and aims to complete the worldwide launch by 2024. Merchants will be informed when they can start utilizing the new features.
