E-commerce platform Shopee has partnered with Google to launch Google Ads with Shopee, in a bid to help brands drive sales online.

Through this integration, brands on Shopee, which operates in Southeast Asia and Taiwan, will get access to specialised marketing tools to boost their online presence, create deeper engagements with customers, and flexibly manage and measure their marketing campaigns.

“Brands in our region are expanding their online presence as e-commerce becomes a vital part of the retail ecosystem. Google Ads with Shopee extends our efforts by deepening our integration with Google and making it easier for brand partners to promote their Official Stores and products online,” said Peggy Zhu, head of Brand and Growth Marketing at Shopee.

With e-commerce platforms finding themselves in a new position of centrality thanks to the on-going COVID-19 pandemic, efforts to develop more brand-friendly functions and subsequently unlock new revenue streams has ramped up in recent months.

Samuele Saini, sector lead for Apps, e-Commerce, Entertainment at Google, said the e-commerce industry in Southeast Asia has experienced massive growth in recent years and is forecasted to exceed US$150bn by 2025.

“This has been further accelerated by the pandemic, with more consumers shopping online, as well as both big brands and smaller sellers quickly pivoting to further building their e-commerce presence,” he added.

In March, Alibaba-owned Lazada launched new marketing solutions to ease pain points faced by merchants and brands with branding, marketing and sales on their platform. The platform also formalised cooperation partnerships with 12 companies, including Danone, Estee Lauder, L’Oreal, Nestle, Philips, P&G, Unilever, Huawei and Xiaomi that will boost collaboration and tap into Lazada’s tech and logistics infrastructure, innovation and e-commerce expertise.

In early June, YouTube launched its new shoppable ad format that enables sellers to include browsable products beneath the ad, to drive traffic to the product pages. A month prior Facebook introduced Facebook Shops for small business owners and global brands to create a single online store for customers.

In an interview with Marketing Interactive, Ogilvy's vice president, customer engagement and commerce for Southeast Asia, Jeremy Webb, who said the advertising world is starting to mimic China, where an entire campaign could be based within Alibaba or Tencent's vast set of apps and platforms.

"With Facebook Shops, Instagram Shop-able Ads, advertising within Lazada and Shopee, end-to-end marketing solutions on apps such as Grab, there is less need to break up a customer journey across different ecosystems," he said. Everything from upper-funnel awareness and brand building, right through to purchase and repurchase communication, are all possible within one ecosystem.

Shopee, Marketing Interactive, The Drum APAC, WARC