Shopzilla has already gone back to standard rates, so this should be a prime location for pushing budget to. On the other side of the coin, some engines are not rolling back rates until January 15th, so throttles should be available if needed.

End of Holiday CPC Rate Card

• Shopzilla December 25
• Gifts.com December 31
• NexTag December 31
• Shopping.com December 31
• PriceGrabber January 15
• Pronto.com January 15

Shopping.com

Shopping continues to be the most innovative in billing, by supporting a value based rate card which fluctuates on the measured value of the traffic source that Shopping is using to drive traffic to the merchant site. The formula is defined by Shopping as the following:

 [Rate Card CPC]    x   [Publisher Quality Score]    =    [Billed CPC]

This formula paired with changing rate card CPCs by category and price level, gives Shopping a continuously variable CPC rate which is both innovative and difficult to pin down sometimes. The rate changes went into effect on May 16th, so it’s already out in the wild. The full rates can be seen at: Shopping Rate Card

Shopzilla

Shopzilla aka Bizrate, was the next domino to fall, announcing rate card changes effective June 1. Shopzilla has been good enough to provide a break down of current and effective CPC rates in June. As with many of the rate card changes on the engines, there is a mix of higher and lower CPC rates being put into place. You can find the complete review here: Shopzilla Rate Card Effective June 1

NexTag

Now the ball really gets rolling. A few days later this month, NexTag announced their rate card changes for June 1. NexTag’s changes are pretty heavy toward increases, but there are some decreases as well. Included in this change is the creation of many new categories, so merchants should be aware of the updates since this likely means a change to the product feed to include the new mappings. The NexTag taxonomy can be found here: NexTag Categories. In the update, NexTag did not including a rate card link, so merchants who are looking for new rates should check in their NexTag administrative tools.

Amazon Product Ads

Amazon followed up a few days later by announcing their rate card changes. The rate card changes have been nicely summed up by Amazon in their announcement. There are 36 categories effected, with 117 other categories left untouched. Of the 36 categories, 32 categories are seeing increases and 4 categories seeing decreases. As with NexTag, the CPC rates are located in the merchant’s admin panel, so there is no public link to provide. Amazon is also consistent on the date for the changes, which is June 1.

Become

Only a day behind Amazon, Become announced their rate card changes only a few days ago. There is no summary, so merchants should review to see what categories have been changed and how this effects overall expenses. The good news is that Become is giving more time than the others, making the changes effective June 15. The rates can be found here: Become Rate Card

Overall, any merchant who has tight controls on ROI, should keep June 1 circled on the calendar. More than likely, things will fluctuate on that day and adjustments may need to be made later on the month once the changes have a chance to yield a new pattern. Fortunately, there is no rate change on Google Product Search.

I won’t spend time echoing the study when instead I suggest reviewing SEOClarity’s .PDF yourself:

SEOClarity: Clarity Insights Google Algorithm Change 2/24/2011

Nearly all major comparison engines push their merchants to install tracking code. On the engine side, its a valuable resource to know what is happening with traffic. For shopping engines, they work to send high quality traffic that is converting, however they don’t really know what is happening with that referral traffic unless their tracking code is present on the merchant side to show a sale. Seen from the channel perspective, this is an essential ingredient to know what their merchants partners are seeing and how to ensure the traffic service makes sense from a business perspective. This ensures the comparison engine can and does deliver a valuable add financially.

The key is pairing this interest with the more tightly centered interest of the merchant.From the merchant perspective, they are looking for immediate results. From recent experience, then PriceGrabber’s code should be considered.

First, PriceGrabber has managed to greatly extend their reach this year by adding Yahoo Shopping’s network of traffic to their family. While working with other major sites like CNet, PriceGrabber has an impressive network of partners sending traffic. The key is differentiating how this traffic performs. The PriceGrabber code helps report on this network, but then PriceGrabber’s account managers proactively work with the data coming their way. While some companies have greatly scaled back customer service in cost-cutting maneuvers, PriceGrabber has made their staff much more aggressive in 2010, by seeking opportunities and ways to grow client business. By adding the PriceGrabber tracking code, a merchant should expect to see increases in ROI as the data is gathered.

To be fair, there are other important items from other comparison engines. For example, NexTag also does a good job in working with their ROI tracker to improve results, and Shopzilla’s customer survey code can create a huge amount of benefit by aggregating costumer reviews on both the Shopzilla network but also on Google Product Search. However, for this write-up, PriceGrabber’s ROI code deserves a second look if it has not been tried already.

Most engines require some type of assistance or set format. However both Shopping.com and NexTag.com offer the ability in their administrative panels to remap the data which is coming though. This can be a great benefit if data available changes, or if you just want to make sure that data is coming in properly.

Below, you can see Compete’s evaluation of what has been going on. The graph reflects a dramatic increase in traffic flowing to NexTag, which blends nicely with what I have seen.

It’s unclear what is happening behind the scenes at NexTag. This could indicate a change in the way affiliate traffic is being used or a simple push to further increase traffic flowing through the site. If I hear anything, I will definitely post here.

As an interesting side note, the graph differs from the Alexa graph used as a small widget in the Channel Dollars template. Compete and Alexa do use different methods to gather their data which in this case is making quite an impact in the way the numbers are shown. In this case, based on my own experience, I would put more stock into the way Compete is reporting the numbers instead of Alexa’s version.

…Not so fast!

Before assuming some companies are pushing less traffic and less profit to merchants there are some considerations which need to be made.

First the obvious information that can be taken from the graph is that some engines do appear to be seeing a decline in traffic to their main domain. This could be a result of decreased exposure and a declining costumer base. However, there are other points to consider before assuming that is the case.

Quality Traffic

Companies are focusing increasingly on the quality of traffic brought by each click. Online marketing is reaching a point of maturity where even the industry leader, Google, has seen a decline in ad generating clicks. One issue could be seen as a slow down in the market as many companies are seeing a slow down in sales from the economy’s condition and also a maturing marketplace where online purchasing is becoming more commonplace. Put simply, many people are buying online now, bought online before, and we don’t see as many new costumers.

Another point is the increasingly emphasis on the quality of traffic. Ad vendors are looking to focus on quality more than in the past. So networks like Google have recently decreased the available click space in text advertisements to avoid accidental clicks. Similarly, many CSE’s are focusing on weeding out poor quality clicks to merchants. This focus could mean not only decreased clicks being sent to the engines by their own internal marketing staff, but also more highly focused clicks sent to merchants.

Affiliate Networks

Another consideration is the use of affiliate networks by the CSE. As the CSE affiliate network expands, more traffic being sent to the merchant’s product will not be originating at the engine itself. Instead, the CSE will send the product to their affiliates, the affiliates will in turn push clicks to the merchant, and the CSE will still bill for the clicks but the traffic will not show on a graph like this to the CSE’s domain.

Analyzing demographics should be thought of in a similar way. There are many different ways you can slice up an audience depending on how detailed you are trying to be and what you are cooking. Typically, marketers are looking for basic information like gender, age, education, income status, and household population (have any kids?). This type of recognition of an audience lets a merchant or marketing professional know what marketplace to use. Comparison engines are the same, except I haven’t seen much information out there, about who goes where.

Male vs. Female Demographic

Besides being sharply divided about presidential candidates, male and female shoppers also shop differently. Companies are taking notice and some are actively responding.

SHOP.COM is an interesting case study here. SHOP.COM primarily reached a female audience, and after studies showed over 70% of shoppers were women, SHOP.COM began to adjust their strategy to suit their audience. Looking to sell some dresses or make up? Perhaps SHOP.COM is the place for you because they are building around female shoppers.

Become also sees a majority of female shoppers, but perhaps not as strongly as SHOP. Other comparison engines like Pronto see a pretty even split, with an audience that is 49% male and 51% female.

Looking for a male demographic? I would be willing to bet CNet sees a primarily male audience, and based on design, I would guess PriceGrabber sees the same (but don’t quote me on that).

Reaching Out to a Minority Audience

Speaking of PriceGrabber, if you are looking for a minority or Hispanic based audience, then PriceGrabber’s PrecioMania.com site may be a good fit. Increasingly companies are reaching out to minorities because, well, there are more minorities now than before. The wonderful thing about the American audience is, they keep changing.

Many of the comparison engines reach out in their own way to different groups, so it’s safe to say that using most large 1st generation comparison engines probably touches on this audience as well.

Gay Comparison Shopping Engine?

Now here is a demographic that is tough to pin down, and quite honestly, I have never seen this in a comparison engine’s media guide. However, I noticed something interesting with a client a few days ago.

One particular item was selling very well at one channel. So much so, that it was beating many other top performing products. I asked my client why this one item, a sailor hat, was selling so well. The client explained its an odd story, but after a few months of selling this item, they realized in working with costumers that this item was primarily purchased by a gay audience.

So where was the sailor hat selling like hotcakes? – NexTag

So, does one product give a case for rock solid proof of a particular demographic? No, but it is worth noticing. As a wise man once told me, think like your costumer and try to understand who they are. Who would buy this item? And for marketers more importantly, where would they go to buy it?