There’s a couple of good things coming out of the Northwestern retailer.

With grim news all around for retailers, the expectations on Wall Street were an earnings decline for Amazon during the past quarter, but they were able to buck the trend and report highly favorable numbers, not long after reporting their best numbers ever.

As a result Amazon closed up 17.6% on Friday, proving that online retail, at least in this case, is still going strong as people hunt for as many bargains as they can.

In other news, a long awaited feature from Amazon has finally arrived, dealing with their Amazon Product Ads line.

While known primarily for a one stop retail shop, as well as being a marketplace in which users buy from 3rd party merchants directly on Amazon’s site, their Product Ads line is the lesser known, PPC/CPC program, in which the process is more similar to the way comparison shopping works.

More information can be found on Amazon’s site, but essentially the ads are displayed on the side, and once a user clicks through, they are taken to the merchant’s site (as they would on a shopping engine) and in turn the merchant pays Amazon a fee for it.

Up until now then the only way a merchant can submit a feed is through their own browser, which was much less practical for any merchant with a sizable amount of products that required constant updating–but now Amazon has released an FTP feature which practically all major CSE’s currently have, and do.

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Support for Product Ads uploads, our most-requested feature, is now live! You may now use FTP to send us your Product Ads data files. With FTP, you can schedule uploads so that your ads are always up to date.

Currently Product Ads is lesser known in the markets, and can probably be described as a combination of  PPC advertising, such as Google Adwords, since they’re contextual based–as well as comparison shopping, since people searching on Amazon are looking to purchase items anyway.

This presents a great opportunity for merchants looking to expand their campaigns, if for no other reason than Amazon’s shear traffic numbers.

PPC campaigns such as Google Adwords and Yahoo SM are a great addition to any online advertising campaign, so long as they are managed correctly. However advertisers always have to be a bit wary of the idea of click fraud infiltrating their campaigns, and that a fairly significant percentage of clicks to their sites are done with mal-intent.

As we’ve discussed previously, click fraud in comparison shopping is nearly non-existent. This may primarily be due to the fact that in PPC, the ones perpetrating the click fraud is also a beneficiary since they receive a portion of the advertisers spending–whereas in comparison shopping the only one monetizing on extra clicks are the shopping engines themselves–and you can imagine the PR nightmare that an engine would get if they were on the wrong side of click fraud.

A recent report by Click Forensics shows that click fraud is at an all time high:

The level of clickfraud is the highest the company has seen since it started monitoring for it in 2006, dashing our hopes that it might hold steady in 2008. The company recorded a rate of 16.3% in Q1 2008. Also alarming is the fact that over 30% of click fraud is now coming from automated bots – a 14% increase from last quarter and the highest rate Click Forensics has seen since it started collecting data.

Take it for what it’s worth, as the source of the study is a company that tries to minimize click-fraud for advertisers, but it’s worth noting that Google has had settlements of $90 million with advertisers because of click fraud in the past, indicating that is indeed a serious issue.

With the economy as it is and companies trying to cut costs as much as they can, click fraud provides yet another reason for online advertisers to worry.

2008 was an historic year for many, many reasons–none of which we’re about to get into at the moment–except for one monumental occassion, the launch of the CPC Strategy Blog!

Launched in May of the previous year, the blog has gained a great deal of traction from merchants looking to improve their campaigns, from those within the comparison shopping industry themselves, and those with just a general interest in comparison shopping; you know which group you belong in, and we’d like to thank everyone for making this blog a success and in motivating us to write.

Here’s a look back then at the 10 most popular posts from the past year:

1. Why The Fall In Paid Search Advertising Affects The Cses Minimally
2. Pricegrabber Is No Rebel Announces Cpc Rates Raises
3. Google Base Introduces Tax Shipping Columns
4. Shopping.com Setting A New Trend Lowering Cpcs For Q4
5. Google Product Search Ties Up Gloves Adds New Features
6. Amazons 2008 Holiday Season Best Ever
7. Categorization Tips For Your Products
8. Online Retail Slows To Near Halt Still Up From One Year Ago
9. Survey Suggests Over 30 Of Online Shoppers Plan On Spending More
10. Traffic For Top Retail Sites Soar Over Last Years

Again, thank you for your support on the blog and for our company as well–neither would obviously exist without it–though we may be just be tempted to write on here without any readership for the love of the game.

Here’s to a terrific 2009, and while we’re at it, 2010, 2011, etc.

Well it’s a happy holiday for at least one online retailer out there, as Amazon is reporting that it’s 2008 shopping season is it’s greatest ever, in spite (or perhaps because) of the state of the economy.

With the wallets of consumers being a bit tighter this year, and with the tech saviness of the average shopper increasing, more and more are going online to find bargains that they would otherwise not find in retail stores.

It will be interesting to see how other channels of retail, both online and off have fared during this season. We’ve already seen a major spike in traffic for the top retail sites–and if all goes as expected, this may be the definitive point where we truly see online shopping become a true alternative to brick and mortar shopping.

Even if the economy booms again, people may just rather enjoy shopping with their mice and having all the inventory of the world at their hands, rather than heading out to crowded malls, dealing with hectic traffic, only to see items on their shopping list be out of stock.

The next few years will certainly be some to keep your eye on.