The last few weeks have been very rough on the Search market in Europe. Following a major move by Google regarding the integration of Comparison Shopping Services (CSS), new opportunities have emerged for advertisers, enabling them to achieve significant savings. Analysis and opportunities…
Context
In June 2017, the European Commission ordered Google to pay a fine of €2.4 billion for preferentially referencing its own Google Shopping service in its search engine – which was considered to be unfair competition.
Following this decision, Google was forced to open up the space allotted to Google Shopping in the search results pages of its search engine to competition.
This has been effective since the beginning of the year 2018: additionally to merchant offers proposed by Google Shopping, Google search engine now also displays offers proposed by other CSSs:
In order to make the competition fair in this new configuration,
- Google Shopping has become a stand alone legal entity, with the obligation to be profitable. Therefore, on a €1 click purchased via Google Ads (ex-Adwords), €0.20 are held back by the Google Shopping company, and €0.80 are passed along to the Google Ads bid itself.
- Other CSSs, may continue to decide on the margin they take. On a €1 click purchase, the Advertiser doesn’t know which amount has actually been spent on the Google Ads bid.
To boost the market, Google has also proposed the CSSs to benefit from a « free advertising credit » of up to 30% of their investments (capped at €32k per month and for each website).
However, in March 2018, following up on their initial decision, the European Commission has considered that Google’s efforts were insufficient, and charged it to quickly increase the share of voice of the CSSs.
Since this summer, Google has been opening up its CSS integration program to new entrants, encouraging the emergence of innovative purchasing channels for your Shopping campaigns.
Implementation
July 2018: Feed Manager (Labelium Group) launches its own comparison shopping service, and receives the Google CSS Partner Premium certification.
Challenging other existing models, Feed Manager is committed to hand over 100% of CSS advantages to its Clients:
- Shopping click purchase with a 20% discount (as compared to any purchase via Google Ads),
- Collection of the Google « advertising credit », directly paid on your Google Ads account (up to 30% of the invested amount, capped at 32 keuros / month for each website).
The Client only pays reduced technical fees, for access to the Feed Price platform, allowing him to funnel his Google Shopping campaigns through the CSS purchasing channel.
Once the configuration is complete, the Client or its Agency transparently takes over the management of their Shopping campaigns in Google Ads, just as before… while paying less for the same result !
How to launch my campaigns ?
We have already integrated more than 100 merchants and more than 25 million offers in our CSS throughout Europe and we would be very pleased to further discuss your integration.
To launch your campaigns via our CSS Feed Price, please fill this form or you may also contact us at +33 5 32 09 06 13.
