The last few weeks have been very turbulent in the European search market. Following a major move by Google to integrate Comparison Shopping Services (CSS), new opportunities have opened up for advertisers to make significant savings. Let's take a look at the opportunities...
Context
In June 2017 the European Commission fined Google to pay a fine of €2.4 billion 2.4 billion for the privileged - and unfair - listing of its Google Shopping product within its search engine.
As a result of this ruling, Google was forced to open up the space granted to Google Shopping on its search engine results pages to competition.
This opening has been effective since the beginning of 2018: in addition to the merchant offers provided by Google Shopping, the Google search engine also displays offers provided by other CSSs:
In order to create a more level playing field in this new configuration,
- Google Shopping has become a legal entity in its own right in Europe, with an obligation to be profitable. So when you buy a click for €1 via Google Ads (formerly Adwords), €0.20 is taken by the Google Shopping company, and €0.80 is spent on the Google Ads auction itself.
- Third-party CSSs are free to charge whatever margin they wish. On a click bought at €1, you don't know how much was actually spent in the Google Ads auction.
To stimulate the market, Google has also offered CSS s to benefit from a "free advertising credit" of up to 30% of their investments (capped at €32k per month per merchant site).
During the last exchanges between the European Commission and Google in March 2018, the Commission nevertheless considered Google's efforts insufficient, and instructed it to rapidly increase the share of voice of CSS.
Since this summer, Google has been opening up its CSS integration programme to new players, encouraging the emergence of innovative purchasing channels for your Shopping campaigns.
In practice
July 2018: Feed Manager (Labelium Group) launches its own price comparator, and obtains Google CSS Partner Premium certification.
In disruption of existing models, Feed Manager chooses to pass on all CSS benefits to its Clients :
- Purchase of Shopping clicks at -20% (compared to a traditional purchase via Google Ads),
- Receive the Google "advertising credit", directly into your Google Ads account (up to 30% of its investments, capped at 32k€ / month per merchant site).
The Customer only pays a small technical fee for access to the Feed Price platform, opening up the purchasing channel reserved by Google for CSS.
Once the configuration is done, the Client or his Agency can seamlessly resume the management of their Shopping campaigns in Google Ads as before... while paying less, for the same thing!
How do I launch my campaigns?
We have already integrated over 100 merchants on our CSS across Europe and would be delighted to discuss your integration with you.
To launch your campaigns via our CSS Feed Price, go to this form or contact us at +33 5 32 09 06 13.
