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Tech giant unveils "Purchases on Google", mobile ads buy button

Reports say Google today announced a new feature called Purchases on Google, which will make it easier for consumers to buy products directly from mobile search ads.

Google executives making the announcements at a Google Retail event in New York

According to The Wall Street Journal, back in May, this was already in the works, with Google confirming the broad strokes of the news later that month.

What this will mean for the consumer is that you’ll see be a “buy” button in some promoted mobile search results, taking you to a page where you can buy the advertised product.

To put this in proper perspective, the merchants will still handle the actual product fulfillment, although the pages will be hosted by Google. The company emphasized that it’s trying to reduce the friction in mobile purchases without interfering in the relationship between merchants and consumers. That’s why the purchase page will carry the merchant’s branding, and if the product isn’t exactly what the shopper is looking for, they’ll even be able to search for other products.

According to sources, Google said at a press event in New York City this morning that it’s testing this feature with “a dozen or so” retail partners over the next few weeks, with plans to then make this more broadly available to advertisers in the United States, and “much more scale” throughout the United States by late 2015 or early 2016.

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