Broadplace has been confirmed as a Google Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) Partner with a shiny new badge. But what does that mean for you?
A Bit of Background
You’ll be aware of the power of Google Shopping, and you might know about some EU regulations that have deemed that Google has to change the way it serves ads on its Shopping platform. It is now required to open up ad servings from other comparison shopping suppliers (or CSS, for short). So the results you will see in the Google Shopping results will now include results from other CSS’s and not just from Google.
So What Happens Now, What Do I Get Out Of This?
Rather than having to use Google Shopping by default, now you can save money by getting potentially huge discounts on your media cost! In order to encourage more Comparison Shopping Suppliers, Google Shopping Europe is offering large discounts to companies that advertise through these new CSS’s. The discounts available through other CSS’s such as Broadplace can range anywhere between 20% to 44% on your Shopping Ads cost!
How Does The Discount Work?
There are two elements to the savings that can be made:
- The simpler aspect is that as a CSS we can get a direct rebate from your media spend and can pass that back to you and save from 20% up to 30%! So, if you spend £1,000 through Shopping Ads, then £200-300 will be credited back to your account.
- Further bid savings. The way your bids currently work directly with Google is that if you set up your CPC at say £1, Google actually keeps 20% of that bid aside as margin, so 20p from your £1 bid is kept aside. Your bid then actually enters the auction at 80p and not £1. You can look at this in two ways – firstly, your £1 bid through Broadplace as a CSS means your bid in the auction is actually £1 and not 80p, so your bid will be much more competitive than your rivals using Google. Alternatively, it could mean that there will be room to reduce your CPC by up to 20% to enter the auction at parity with other bids. This means others could be bidding £1, but your bid could be up to 20% cheaper.
- Note: The two aspects above work together, so the combination can mean huge overall savings!
What You’ll Now See
The results in the Google Shopping bar at the top of search results will now look a little something like this:
You will notice a very subtle change in the ads whereby the last line at the bottom of the ad that always used to say “Google” now says “By …” namely another CSS such as ‘By Pricegetter’. The rest of the ad format stays exactly the same and product details still pull from your feed. Our experience tells us that only a very small percentage of people ever click on the last line, if at all, so you should not see any noticeable difference in ad performance. That said, we will obviously monitor metrics closely.
What’s The Catch and Are There Any Risks?
We have looked into this in detail and we appreciate that often when things seem too good to be true, they often are. However, in this instance the introduction of competition in Shopping is something that Google must introduce, and there is a cost in doing so, and that cost is essentially part of what you could save!
The great thing with the introduction of other comparison shopping suppliers is that all customers have the option of using more than one supplier, so essentially you can start by keeping your current Shopping set up as it is and then also have your products listed with another CSS. We can then split test campaigns, test different bids to ascertain the best value and you will still benefit from the overall huge discounts!
So, What Can Broadplace Do For Me?
Well, we’re glad you asked! We have our own price comparison site called PriceGetter, already an established site in the price comparison market.
Better still, as an approved CSS we can now extend the potentially massive cost savings to our clients.
To take advantage of these savings, the minimum Shopping spend is only €500 per month.
But we want to make clear, these discounts are not available to customers directly from Google and only through an approved CSS like Broadplace.
These discounts may not be around forever and are in pace to encourage competition, so you need to move quickly to take advantage of them now as they may not be around forever.
Get in touch with us today to find out how much you could be saving!
