Ready for Changes to Google Shopping in October?

Internet shopping cart

If you are an Internet retail merchant currently spending a large part of your ad budget on SEM, get ready for some major changes in the cost for your product ads with Google Shopping, the major Comparison Shopping Engines and even text ads this October. If you are a top 10 spender with Google, you already know about the changes.

For everyone else, there may be tough times ahead to get your product ad listed on page 1.

Product Listing Ads that have been free on Google Shopping since 2010 are changing over to paid search. Your Ad will now show up only to the highest bidders on page 1, beside competing merchants. And that’s not all…the landscape and scarce real estate of page 1 is changing also so get ready for strong competitive page 1 bids for product ads and PPC cost increases for text ads of 20% or more.

Before the change, 50% of Google’s search revenue came from page 1 text ads and included free product listings. Beginning in October, fewer merchants will be able to fit on page 1 because paid product ads will dominate and push many text ads off of page 1 entirely. By 2013, the Google Click share will change dramatically with paid product listing ads projected to increase to 60%, and PPC (text ads) projected to shrink to about 25%.

To boost product ad ranking and shopping results this holiday season, smart advertisers will need to use more sophisticated channel management platforms to target their ad placement bids based on detailed merchant data feeds of their SKU’s to Google and other CSE’s. These bids will need to be segmented by CPA allowable based on the individual product’s profit margins.

In addition  to Google Shopping, top paid Comparison Search Engines include Amazon, Shopzilla, NexTag, PriceGrabber, Pronto and Become. Paid search based on product category and theme is completely different than optimization of keywords and websites, so this is another change likely to take some getting used to.

Enjoy and Prosper!

Steve Emory, co-author DM Deja vu

President, Managing Partner Emory Digital

Related articles

• Google Shopping to Switch to Paid Model in October (mashable.com)
• Google Charges Retailers to Appear on Shopping Site (nytimes.com)

Explore posts in the same categories: Comparison Shopping Engines, Digital Strategy, Google, Search Engine Marketing

Tags: CPA, Digital strategy, Google, Google Product Search, Google Shopping, NexTag, Pay per click, Price comparison service, PriceGrabber, Product Listing Ads

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