Archive for October, 2009

Nextag to Increase Rates by 25% Across the Board

Nextag has just announced that they’ll follow in Pricegrabber’s footsteps and increase and raise rates by 25% across all categories:

The holiday season is around the corner and we would like to inform you that NexTag will be increasing your costs per click by 25% for all categories and all bids effective November 4, 2009 through January 6, 2010.

This change will affect all your clicks from NexTag. For example, if you have a bid of $0.60 per click, you will be charged a fee of $0.75 per click during this seasonal period. Your actual costs per click will be accurately reflected on your cost reports, but the bids will be displayed in the bidding tools without the 25% included until January 6, 2010.

This marks the last of the paid top tier shopping engines to announce how they’ll handle CPC rates for Q4, with nothing too surprising being announced.

We don’t anticipate to hear news of any rate increases from Google Product Search.

Pricegrabber, Shopzilla Announce CPC Hikes, Become.com Remains Flat

Not long after Shopping.com’s announcement of new CPC Rates, Pricegrabber and Shopzilla have this week announced their own increases, though both are taking different approaches.

From November 1 until January 15, 2010 Pricegrabber will increase rates across all categories by 25%, which is identical to what they did last year.

Shopzilla on the other hand is taking an approach more similar to that of Shopping.com’s and only increasing rates in certain categories.

The chart below shows how many of their categories are affected:

Just under half of their 443 total subcategories will not be affected at all, while just under a fourth will be subjected to a 25% rate increase.

Click here for a complete list of categories affected.

And finally to jump from one extreme to the last, Become.com has just announced that they are not going to raise rates at all during the holiday season.

Become.com is proud to announce that we are not raising our rates for the 2009 holiday season!

We recognize the need for retailers to make the most of this busy shopping season, and are happy to offer our partners our tools and features in order to help you optimize your holiday campaign

It’s a great move to encourage potential merchants to sign up on their lesser known engine, considering that most of the other big players in the market are going the opposite approach.

Shopping.com Announces Rate Increases for Q4

We officially declared the launch of the Q4 shopping season with Yahoo’s announcement that they’re increasing their CPC Rates for Q4.

Shopping.com has followed suit by announcing their own rates increase–however like last year they’re not doing it across the board like other engines traditionally do.

Instead, rates for 85% of their categories will remain the same, and the only increases will come in categories that they consider maximize sale and qualified leads:

With the holiday season approaching, Shopping.com anticipates a significant increase in traffic and holiday sales. Based on the performance of the last few years, we drove an average increase of 35% in qualified leads during the peak shopping season.

We are pleased to announce this year’s holiday pricing solution continues to challenge the industry standard of ‘across the board rate increases’. Our pricing is only changing in categories where conversion to sale and qualified leads are maximized during the holiday season. In fact, 85% of the Shopping.com categories will remain flat (no CPC rate increase).

The holiday pricing promotion is effective November 15, 2009 through December 31, 2009. During this time Shopping.com will automatically adjust your CPC bids during the pricing promotion period therefore you will not need to make changes to your account.

It’s a bold move that we’re certainly in favor of, but like last year we certainly don’t expect the other engines to make similar moves–instead we expect rates to increase for all the engines across all their categories.

For the complete list of categories that this change will affect click here.

Google Base Search Page Going into Retirement, Few Will Notice

We speculated a few weeks ago that Google launching its new Merchant Center meant a finale to its rarely used Google Base.

Today then Google has issued this statement:

Google Base has its own search page for users to search across everything that’s been uploaded, but it isn’t widely used. Instead, people search on Google Product Search for products, or on Google Maps to find houses for rent or sale. Therefore, we’re planning to retire Google Base’s separate search page in a few weeks.

They go on to state that since very few people used the Base search page to find products that merchants will not notice much of a difference in terms of traffic driven to their site.

In our experiences this is certainly the case–given that Google’s one-box features links to its Product Search page, and the Base link isn’t even listed in their search results page.

Sample Data Feeds and Feed Specifications for Comparison Shopping Engines

Below you’ll find both sample data feeds and links to data feed specifications for the major shopping engines (As of 10/3/2009). It’s highly recommended that you read over the latest specification at the engine resource site before deploying the feeds for your campaigns.
-Nii

Google Base/Google Product Search
- Sample Data Feed for Google Base/Google Product Search
- Google Base/Google Product Search Data Feed Specifications Page

Shopzilla
- Sample Data Feed for Shopzilla
- Shopzilla Data feed Specifications Page

Pricegrabber
- Sample Data Feed for Pricegrabber
- Pricegrabber Data feed Specifications Page

Nextag
- Sample Data Feed for Nextag
- Nextag Data feed Specifications Page

Shopping.com
- Sample Data File for Shopping.com – Varies By Category, see Specification Page
- Shopping.com Data Feed Specifications Page

Bing Cashback
- Sample Data Feed for Bing Cashback
- Bing Cashback Data Feed Spcifications Page

Yahoo Shopping
- Sample Data Feed for Yahoo Shopping
- Yahoo Shopping Data Feed Specification Page (Must be a Yahoo Shopping Merchant to View)

Become
- Sample Data Feed for Become.com
- Become Data feed Specifications Page

Smarter.com
- Sample Data Feed for Smarter
- Smarter Data feed Specifications Page

Pronto
- Sample Data Feed for Pronto
- Pronto Data Feed Specifications Page

Amazon Product Ads
- Sample Data Feed for Amazon Product Ads
- Amazon Product Ads Data Feed Specifications Page (Need to have an Amazon Product Ads account to View)

Our Q3 Comparison Shopping Engine Rankings released

Click here for them.

Enjoy everyone!

Yahoo Launches off the Holiday Season, Announces CPC Rate Increases

Christmas trees, Santa Claus, long lines at the mall, CPC rate hikes–all are great indications that the holiday season is right around the corner. Launching off this campaign is Yahoo, who are announcing that their rates will be increased by 25% in all categories.

Important Notification: Product Submit Seasonal Rate Adjustments

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Dear Product Submit advertiser,

From November 2, 2009, until December 29, 2009, Yahoo! will be making a seasonal rate adjustment by increasing the cost per click (CPC) by 25% in all categories. This means that during this period your actual billed CPC will be 25% higher. This adjustment reflects the increased consumer buying activity during the holiday shopping season, which is typified by increased leads, better conversion to sale, and increased revenue for our merchant partners. The 25% adjustment to your billed CPC will be reflected on your Click Report and in your invoice.

Please Note: You will not need to make changes to your account before or after this period.

Traditionally shopping engines will increase their CPC rates across the board (with Shopping.com being an exception last year) during the Q4 season, generally from November until early January-ish.

While many merchants may see their campaigns skyrocket in spend with the increased number of users in combination with the rate hikes, they generally see a higher rate of return as well-if of course, they are able to keep a close eye on their campaigns, or perhaps hiring a service to keep an eye on it for them

Shopping.com Gives Merchants 80 More Days to Link to Paypal

A few months ago Shopping.com announced that they’ll start charging merchants via Paypal, and said that the switch-over would be made by September 10th.

After the 10th passed they gave a pre-ultimatum ultimatum that all accounts would *need* to be changed by September 30th (yesterday).

And now for merchants who still haven’t gotten the memo, Shopping.com has this notice of a final ultimatum that in 80 days, or December 21, their listings will be removed from Shopping.com altogether.

Good to see that Shopping.com is procrastinator-friendly.