Private label
Private label is a range of products that a manufacturer makes for a store and the store sells under its own brand.
How it works
A manufacturer makes the goods, and the store sells them under a name it owns: its own name or a brand created for it alone. For Google Ads, this differs from selling other companies’ brands in two ways.
First, as long as only you sell the brand, shoppers can’t find your branded product cheaper in another shop. Second, people search only for brands they already know. Demand starts with generic searches such as “cast iron frying pan”, and searches for your brand name grow as buyers come to know it.
Our guide to private label or reseller compares what growing stores of each type did differently. If you resell other brands and plan a line of your own, see your own product line in a reseller store.
Where you see it
- Merchant Center feed: the
brandattribute holds your own brand, not the factory’s name. If you registered barcodes with GS1, thegtinattribute holds yours: GS1 barcodes identify your company as the brand owner. The Merchant API says to set identifier_exists (identifierExists) to false when an item has no unique product identifiers appropriate to its category. Examples are GTIN, MPN and brand.
Example
Example store, not client data.
The tableware shop launches a cast iron frying pan under its own brand, Stolik. In its first month, the pan gets 160 clicks from searches such as “cast iron frying pan” and 4 from searches for “Stolik pan”. That is 160 of 164 clicks, or 98%, from generic searches.
Not to be confused with
- Reseller — a store that sells other companies’ brands. Other stores offer the same item under the same GTIN, so shoppers compare prices. But the brand often already has searches of its own.
Right and wrong readings
- Wrong: “Our own brand has no competitors in Google Shopping.” Right: only you sell the pan, but on the search “cast iron frying pan” it still competes with other brands’ pans for the same shopper.
Sources
- Store Brand Facts — Private Label Manufacturers Association: store brands carry the retailer’s name or brands created for that retailer, and a private label manufacturer supplies them. Checked 2 October 2026.
- ProductAttributes (Merchant API) — the
brand,gtinsandidentifierExistsfields. Checked 2 October 2026. - Get Your U.P.C. Barcodes from GS1 US — GS1 barcodes identify your company as the brand owner. Checked 2 October 2026.