NexTag Rebranding, PriceGrabber Redesign

NexTag completely re-brands (click to enlarge). It’s a much friendlier external face, similar to the changes the company has made internally:

Pricegrabber re-design (click to enlarge):

Big changes. Nice to see these guys try something different after all these years. These changes follow the Smarter.com redesign from a couple months back. Interesting to see these changes so far into the holiday shopping season.

Shopzilla Now Retargeting

For years, NexTag has made display advertising work. But while they’ve spent millions on impressions, no other shopping engines seemed to seriously follow suit. There have been on again off again tests, but for the first time in a while, I’m now seeing a lot of display ads from Shopzilla. Coming off of a turnaround quarter, Shopzilla might now be willing to spend to drive traffic to its properties.

Here’s the ad I saw on YouTube:

And here’s the associated Criteo page which explains the re-targeted ad:

I’ve always wondered why NexTag was able to make display work while the other shopping engines barely ran tests. These guys are all arbitrage and monetization experts. Nice to see Shopzilla stepping up its game with some re-targeting.

CPC Rate Changes – Thank you Amazon & Become

Tis the season for shopping engine CPC rate increases. Five years ago, it was common to see all the shopping engines implement a 25% CPC rate increase across the board…because, well…fork lifts also see a lift in conversion during the holiday shopping season. Yeah, I didn’t buy it either.

The original party line was that conversion rate goes up 3x during the holidays and the shopping engines were adjusting CPC rates to get their fair share for driving qualified leads. If you pressed a little bit, the shopping engines would talk about CPC rates on Google AdWords going up; and if the CSEs’ traffic acquisition costs (TACs) were rising, then they’d have to pass that additional cost onto the merchants. OK, that made sense, but that also pointed out how dependent the shopping engines are on Google AdWords.

Fast forward a couple years (to 2007), and Shopping.com did something different. They didn’t do an across the board increase in CPC rates, but rather implemented a variable rate increase. At the time, Alisa Weiner and Tomer Shoval explained:

We’ve done some analysis looking at previous years, looking at deltas in different categories in rate cards from our search partners. As opposed to one size fits all, we’ve done the analysis to figure out what’s needed to cover our costs. And we’ve moved the [rate increase] from November 1 to November 15 to better reflect when that increase kicks in. What we’re trying to do this year is be more sensitive to reflect what we’ve seen in the past. In some categories the keywords [cpc rates] increase more, in some categories the keywords [cpc rates] increase less.

So you’d expect the other shopping engines to follow suit. Well, that didn’t exactly happen the last couple years. Of the big, tier 1 shopping engines, NexTag and PriceGrabber have stuck with their across the board CPC rate increases. Bad!

Shopping.com stuck with its guns and maintains its variable rate increase. And they got Shopzilla and Pronto to copy that model.

However, for the first time in the last 5 years, two major shopping engines have no CPC rate increases. Amazon Product Ads and Become are my PPC shopping engine heroes of this holiday shopping season with no CPC rate increases in any categories.

So if you’re not up and running with Become or Amazon Product Ads, what are you waiting for?

Morning Roundup – ShopSavvy, PE firms Move in on Retailers, NexTag Facebook Advertising

-In preparation for Tough Mudder (I survived!), on Friday night, I headed to REI to grab some packs of GU, a hat, gloves, and other odds ‘n ends. While in the store, I decided to test a couple shopping apps and websites on my cell phone as I’ve been following what’s happening with Google Local Shopping and Milo. I’ve also been catching up with others like Krillion and GPShopper/Slifter. With all the hoopla about all these services, the one that scored for me was ShopSavvy (run by Biggu.com), which has options for local retailers just like the more well known services out there. ShopSavvy’s barcode scanner seemed to work better than the others I tried, and I was able to provide local inventory. While I’m not sure if ShopSavvy is getting up to the minute product data from REI, the products that I scanned that ShopSavvy said were in stock at price X, were in fact in stock at price X. Still pondering how all these services will pan out…

-Private Equity firms move in on retailers. Pershing Square Capital Management has acquired 16.5% of JCP while Bain Capital pays $1.8B for Gymboree.

-NexTag has always been at the forefront of online advertising. While all shopping engines run PPC campaigns, NexTag has also been one of the largest buyers of display advertising throughout the years. Now it’s trying to figure out Facebook Ads. Here’s an example of a Facebook ad for Tommy Bahama that NexTag is running:

I wonder if brands are going to have the same issues with shopping engines bidding on their brand names on Facebook as they have on Google AdWords.

-Only 46 more days until Black Friday!

Loving NexTag’s New Look

Well, ‘new look’ might be going a little too far. NexTag still looks like it was designed by an engineer in 1998, but they have rolled out small but possibly significant changes recently:
1. BIG search box. NexTag has now joined the rest of the major shopping engines with a focus on Search. There’s now a big, prominent search box across the entire page as opposed to the former, much smaller version.

2. Deals. There’s a ‘Featured Deals’ box in the middle of the page which drives consumers into a revamped NexTag Deals section which highlights coupons, rebates, and price drops. The economy stinks…all shopping sites should revamp their deals section! Or they can just let Google Product Search eat their lunch again with the eventual launch of Google Deals.

3. Social. NexTag is displaying recent Facebook sharing activity right on the homepage. While not the vision of social shopping that are dancing in people’s heads, it’s a start.

None of these changes are revolutionary, but it’s good to see NexTag testing a slightly different look. All of the shopping engines are going to have to get a lot more aggressive in building a better user experience (Shopzilla has Beso, for example) so consumers actually remember they were on the shopping engine and think about returning.

NexTag Advertising

In the old days (you know, 2yrs ago before the complete economic meltdown), you’d see NexTag advertising everywhere.  And it was always about their lending lead gen business.  Obviously lending lead gen is a much tougher business to be in right now, but NexTag is still one of the top 10 US display advertisers.  I get the feeling that NexTag has probably pulled back some of its mortgage ads and pushed ahead with display advertising for comparison shopping.  I have no explicit data to back this up except I’m seeing display ads everywhere on Yahoo!

Here’s an example that I saw on Yahoo! News

Not sure if the ads are behavioral (I had been looking at laptops on a couple site).

Also, @ SingleFeed, we saw NexTag jump in market share this past month in terms of revenue and traffic. NOTE: data is preliminary. That said, it’s at least a data point that could point to NexTag’s advertising paying off.

And since you never see the shopping engines buying ads beyond PPC marketing, it’s something to pay attention to. If it’s working for NexTag, it could work for Shopzilla, Shopping.com, Become, Smarter, etc. There’s a lot of cheap ROS/remnant inventory out there.

NexTag Adds Product Data – Search Volume, # of Sellers

As a marketer who started using Goto.com back in 1998 and religiously used the search query volume data at inventory.yahoo.com back in the day, the lack of transparency on the shopping engines has never sat well with me.

While I think we’re still a couple years off before the shopping engines release truly actionable Google Adwords-esque data (search volume, traffic estimator, referring keyword info, etc.) it’s nice to see NexTag taking a very small step in this direction.

While NexTag has long published historical pricing information, the company is now sharing data on Number of Sellers for a particular product and Number of Leads per Month. Just click on the Price History tab or Price History chart to access this information.

Here’s information for the Microsoft Zune 30GB Digital Media Player:

Hopefully this is just the start. The more data the shopping engines share with merchants, the smarter the merchants will become and the more money they will spend…unless, of course, the whole industry is built on a deck of cards.

The shopping engines have a treasure trove of information that they could share. And this data will not only help merchants, but sellers consumers as well. John Middleton pointed out months ago that NexTag displayed a ‘purchase rate’ level. Here’s the screenshot. NexTag has since removed this feature, but it’s an interesting data point that could help drive sales to high quality merchants.

I believe that part of the success of Google Adwords has to do with the openness of the system. It’s hard to comprehend that the shopping engines don’t have even rudimentary APIs. If they want to get started, they should just take a look at Google’s documentation.

I’ve said it many times – this is what sophisticated merchants are used to, so they’ll expect this of the shopping engines as well. If merchants don’t get it, they will always think of the shopping engines as a marketing afterthought.

NexTag Considering a Facelift

NexTag is testing out a new homepage…

Obvious differences are as follows:
-Emphasis on the ability to save products (shopping list, wish list)
-Tag cloud of popular searches
-Product spotlight section featuring top products in 10 categories including Luggage, MP3 & Media Players, Notebook Computers, and Watches. These spotlights include links to Top Brands and Rebates.
-Compare Hotel Rates is now ‘Travel Rates’ and gets featured placement, now above Mortgage Loans (hmmm…do you think the market has shifted a bit?)
-’Home Prices’ section gets a little love

New look:

Old look:

Seasonal Price Increases Part Two

A lot of people missed the emails sent by the shopping engines about seasonal rate increases, so here’s a quick summary:

Become.com – no rate increase
Yahoo! Shopping – no rate increase
Google Product Search – free
TheFind – free
Pronto – not holiday related, but there will be some adjustments, both up and down (Nov. 15)
Smarter.com – 20% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 – Dec. 31)
Shopzilla – 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 12 – Dec. 31)
PriceGrabber – 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 – Jan. 15)
NexTag – 25% rate increase for all categories (Nov. 1 – Jan. 2)
Shopping.com – 10-25% rate increase depending on category (Nov. 15 – Dec. 31)

Seasonal PPC Increases on the Shopping Engines

It’s that time of year again. Many of the shopping engines have raised their cost per click (CPC) rates for the holidays. The shopping engines do this to counter increased rates on Google Adwords and Yahoo! Search Marketing and justify the move by saying that conversion rates increase during the holidays. In effect, the shopping engines are saying that merchants still made out like bandits and they have to cover their collective asses.

Shopzilla will increase its CPC rates by 25%. The change takes effect on November 12 and goes through December 31, 2007. Ok, at least Shopzilla moved the increase out to the 12th as opposed to starting November 1.

PriceGrabber increased its CPC rates by 25%. The change took effect on November 1 and goes through January 15, 2008. Ahhh…January 15? Excuse me?

NexTag increased its CPC rates by 25%. The change took effect on November 1 and goes through January 2, 2008. A 25% increase never feels good, but this is the one increase I don’t think merchants are worried about. NexTag continues to drive incredibly qualified traffic.

And then there’s Shopping.com. Not only did they they move the rate increase out to November 15 (as opposed to November 1), but they aren’t doing a blanket increase of 25% across all categories. Incredible. Someone listened!

In some random course in college, I had a professor give a class about generalizations…how dangerous and wrong they often were.

NexTag, Shopzilla, and PriceGrabber are saying that conversion rates increase during the holiday shopping season. But I’m not so sure that this Forklift seller is going to see a huge spike in conversion. Or that people will be adding projection mounts to their holiday wish lists.

NexTag, Shopzilla, and PriceGrabber are saying that CPC rates increase for them during the holiday shopping season. Again, I don’t think that argument holds for across all product categories. Do bids for textbooks on Adwords or YSM really increase 25%?

In other words, while Shopping.com didn’t get it perfect this time around, they get an A for effort, moving forward with a variable rate increase of 10-25% as opposed to a flat increase of 25%. Office equipment rates will only increase 10%. Media (books, movies, videos) rates will only increase 10%. Here’s the complete rundown:

Categories % Increase
Cars 10%
Clothing and Accessories 10%
Computers 10%
Electronics 20%
Event Tickets 10%
Flowers and Gifts 25%
Health and Beauty 15%
Home and Garden 20%
Jewelry and Watches 20%
Kids and Family 25%
Magazine and Subscriptions 10%
Media 10%
Miscellaneous 10%
Musical Instruments & Accessories 25%
Office 10%
Sports and Outdoors 25%
Video Games 25%

As for how SDC decided on the % increases, Alisa and Tomer explained to me: “We’ve done some analysis looking at previous years, looking at deltas in different categories in rate cards from our search partners. As opposed to one size fits all, we’ve done the analysis to figure out what’s needed to cover our costs. And we’ve moved the [rate increase] from November 1 to November 15 to better reflect when that increase kicks in. What we’re trying to do this year is be more sensitive to reflect what we’ve seen in the past. In some categories the keywords [cpc rates] increase more, in some categories the keywords [cpc rates] increase less.”

Sounds so simple. Makes perfect sense. Shopping.com is saying that the rates from their search partners (Google Adwords, YSM, etc.) don’t increase for all categories at a flat rate and therefore they aren’t going to pass along a flat rate increase to their merchants. Because…well…that would be wrong.

Shopping.com is good at buying keywords. The other shopping engines are also good at buying keywords. Some, like NexTag, might even be more efficient. Well, if that’s the case, why are we seeing a flat rate increase on NexTag, PriceGrabber, and Shopzilla?

Shopping.com has admitted that costs don’t increase 25% across the board (based on past data). If that’s true, then the other shopping engines are basically saying ’screw you’ to the merchants.

Ok, there might be a little more to it. Shopping.com in general seems to have a lower conversion rates then the other shopping engines because of poor partner traffic, so maybe they’re making up for that with lower CPC rate increases.

But that still doesn’t excuse the other shopping engines’ actions. They should immediately reconsider their increases for a number of categories. It’s the right thing to do.