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.

Shopzilla Q3 2010 Earnings – Revenue Increased 7%

Only caught a piece of the conference call as I was preparing for a couple meetings (busy morning!), but revenue was up 7.2% to $41.8M while segment profit was up 11% to $7.1M.

Highlights include strong European results, Beso reaching 2M uniques, and TaDa launching.

Read the press release.

Tada Launches – Shopzilla’s New Deal of The Day Site

Tada is Shopzilla’s new Deal of the Day site. Yes, deal of the day sites are all the rage, and there are a million of them out there, but this is where a shopping engine could shine. Shopzilla has the connections to get the deals, the industry knowledge and data to know what to sell at what price, and the traffic to build a community (I first noticed TaDa through ads all over Shopzilla). And they need to do something to stem the loss in traffic and counteract higher traffic acquisition costs (TACs).

The inaugural TaDa deal is the Invicta Auto Pro Diver Watch for $59.99 (52% off retail price) from WorldofWatches.com. There have been 167 watches purchased thus far, racking up $10,018.33 in sales. The traditional Groupon model would suggest that Tada takes in half of that and the other half goes to the merchant. Not sure if TaDa is able to collect 50% of the deal price, though, and might be fine getting much less for the moment in order to get some buzz. But @ 50%, that would be a $5000 take in one day (with 2hrs left on the deal). [Total sales ended up at 184 watches or $11,038.16.] Shopzilla would have had to do 12,500 in clicks (@ an average of $0.40/click) to generate that revenue.

Interestingly, WorldofWatches.com doesn’t seem to be advertising on Shopzilla, although the site does participate in BizRate’s Store Ratings Program.

You can track TaDa’s Deals of the Day by signing up for email alters, on Facebook or directly at TaDa.com.

Farhad Mohit’s Latest Venture

Farhad Mohit’s latest venture is called Gripe. It launched this past week at Techcrunch Disrupt. Everyone has had a gripe about a business and complained in some way. Gripe lets a user complain in real time and possibly get an immediate resolution. As explained on the site:

Gripe is a free location-aware mobile app that helps you use your word-of-mouth power to get complaints about any of the 100 million+ local businesses or service providers worldwide (restaurants, hotels, bars, plumbers, attorneys, etc.), heard and resolved, maybe even on the spot!

Farhad started another company, dotspot, after leaving Shopzilla/Bizrate in 2007. Looks like he’s been working on Gripe since this April. Farhad was one of the nicest guys I met while building this blog. His door was always open to me and there was never any bs in our conversations. I always admired his passion.

Congrats on the new venture!

Shopzilla Q2 2010 Revenue down 8.6% Y/Y

Shopzilla, which is the Interactive Services division of Scripps Network Interactive, saw revenue decline 8.6% compared to last year. Here are the details from the press release:

Interactive Services revenue was $37.3 million compared with $40.8 million in the year-ago quarter.

Segment expenses decreased 6.3 percent to $31.3 million.

Segment profit was $6.0 million compared with $7.3 million.

Direct leads to Shopzilla merchant partners increased 20 percent year-over-year during the quarter. The lead volume metric measures the value Shopzilla delivers to its merchant partners, as well as the level of engagement consumers have with its branded comparison shopping Web sites, BizRate.com, Beso and Shopzilla.com.

Yes, the bad economy has battered the shopping engines, but Google has also put tremendous pressure on Shopzilla, Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, etc. Back in the boom days, Shopzilla delivered revenue of $50M+ in in the second quarter:
-Q2 2006: $65M Revenue, $16.5M Earnings*
-Q2 2007: $59M Revenue, $6.8M Earnings*
-Q2 2008: $57.2M Revenue, $12.9M Earnings*

Shopzilla should be applauded for maintaining revenue of aprx. $37M in such a tough environment, but it’s obviously coming at a higher and higher cost. If leads to Shopzilla merchants increased 20% Y/Y but revenue decreased 8.6%, that means that Shopzilla is not able to monetize leads to merchants as well as before, most likely because the company has to pay a hefty revenue share to its publisher partners. I talked about this last quarter as well. The introduction of a site like Beso, which according to Compete has reached nearly 1M unique users (very cool to see), is a necessary step for Shopzilla, but it’s not enough.

And I’m not sure what is enough at this point.

*I’m 97% sure I’m accurate with these numbers. I can show multiple examples where Shopzilla revenue was reported differently at different times. And I’m not talking about adjustments due to uSwitch. A press release would say revenue = $x and then the next year it would say revenue grew y% to $z, but those numbers didn’t always add up.

BizRate Insights

The BizRate Insights blog has the potential to be an extremely valuable voice for anyone participating in ecommerce. BizRate Insights reports on findings from BizRate’s Feedback and Ratings service, which powers feedback on 1000s of merchant sites. Now, the blog is just another way to sell merchants on Shopzilla’s service, but could also share insights into what consumers are thinking and what merchants are doing. Hope it heads in this direction.

Don’t put all your eggs in the Google Shopping Basket

If you’re submitting an optimized data feed to Google Shopping, you can get an amazing amount of traffic and sales.  But just as organic placement can fluctuate because of algorithmic changes, your product listings on Google Shopping might fluctuate because of similar algorithmic changes or placement tests.  The old standard of Onebox results showing up below the sponsored ads and above the organic listings is not a guarantee anymore. You might find the Onebox listings in a different form, halfway down the page, or even in the AdWords listings [Any product results showing up in AdWords listings are called Product Ads. These are not related to Onebox listings in any way.] (will share screenshots of these variations soon).

With all these tests that Google is running, your traffic will most likely go up and down and up and down and up and down.  Frustrating when you’re a marketer trying to meet your numbers.  That’s why you can’t put all your eggs in one basket – be it Google Shopping, NexTag, Shopzilla, Amazon Product Ads, or PriceGrabber.

Brian Mark of Toolbarn had a great slide in a SES presentation years ago that showed how he used the shopping engines to make up for a decline in traffic/sales after a site change knocked all his listings out of Google’s organic results.  If he didn’t have the shopping engine listings, he would have been in serious trouble.  In the same vein, as Google Shopping will continue to play around with its listings, merchants should think about listing on other top shopping engines.  Yes, Google Shopping might be at the top of the list in terms of traffic and revenue (and of course, ROI), but NexTag, PriceGrabber, Shopzilla, and Shopping.com can provide a steady stream of traffic and revenue in the face of uncertainty from Google Shopping.

I’ll release some recent SingleFeed numbers discussing aggregate  traffic/revenue #s for the shopping engines soon, but let’s just say that listing on additional top engines can significantly boost results.  Yes, you’ll have to think about PPC costs and not all products will work on all shopping engines, but if you’re smart about your data feed marketing efforts (reporting/analytics!, you can succeed

Shopzilla Promotes Filtering From Top Down

Excuse the image sizing issue. I’m trying out a new system and it’s not pretty. For now, you can just click on the image to see the screenshot in all its glory.

As opposed to the majority of shopping engines which place filters on the left hand side of search results, Shopzilla is now allowing for filtering from the top of the search results page.

Google Product Search/Google Base/Google Shopping is the only other shopping engine which displays filters in this way.

While this might seem like a small change, I’ve been told for years by the shopping engines that people really don’t use the filters. As Shopzilla (and others) have smart filtering capabilities that can drive consumers to make more informed buying decisions, I like that Shopzilla is being a little different. Not sure if this is a test or not.

Some other shopping engines do things differently:
Google Base displays filters on the bottom of the search results page.
Become displays filters on the right of the search results (which I always find a little jarring)

Scripps Reports Q1 2008 Financial Results – Growth at Shopzilla

As I’m at the ECMTA conference in New Orleans and SingleFeed is in the midst of an awesome release, I don’t have time to dig into the numbers, and I won’t be able to listen to the conference call live.

Here’s the press release.

As for Scripps Interactive:

At the company’s Interactive Media division, which includes online comparison shopping services Shopzilla and uSwitch, first-quarter revenue grew 23 percent to $77.5 million. Segment profit for the Interactive Media division was $21.0 million compared with a slight loss during the same period a year earlier.

The Interactive Media division’s first-quarter growth is attributable to improvements at Shopzilla that have resulted in the business being able to cost effectively increase and monetize user traffic and increasing energy switching activity and significantly lower expenses at uSwitch in the United Kingdom.

During the prior-year period, Interactive Media segment profit was reduced by about $15 million due to a combination of factors including leadership transition costs at Shopzilla and increased marketing expenses at uSwitch.

It’s nice to see Shopzilla in a positive light again:

“We also saw strong growth at our Interactive Media segment, thanks primarily to Shopzilla’s improving ability to efficiently monetize its growing levels of user traffic.”

Segment Summary:

Interactive Media revenue was $77.5 million for the first quarter compared with $62.9 million in the first quarter 2007.

Segment profit was $21.0 million compared with a segment loss of $381,000 in the first quarter of 2007. During the prior-year period Interactive Media segment profit was reduced by about $15 million due to a combination of factors including leadership transition costs at Shopzilla and increased marketing expenses at uSwitch.

Shopzilla Update from Scripps Earnings Call

CEO Ken Lowe said on the earnings call:

The story at Shopzilla is one of improvement. Shopzilla finished strongly in the 4th quarter, with both the top and bottom lines ahead of last year during the same period. Even better, we’ve been experiencing very solid revenue growth in the early going so far this year thanks to increased traffic acquisition efficiencies. Things are definitely looking up at Shopzilla both here in the US and in Europe.

From the Q&A session:

As far as Shopzilla, we are obviously very encouraged by the recent news there and the change of fortunes that began in the fall. We are optimistic now that we are cycling over some weak quarters from last year but the 4th quarter was a very strong quarter for us and for the first time in several quarters we were experiencing double digit growth in net revenue there. I think we’re safe to say mid-teens level on revenue growth there. As we entered the year, ’08, we continued to see that strength and we’re doing a lot of things to ensure that is sustainable for us. So we’re all very optimistic about how things are going at Shopzilla. The team out there is an outstanding job of righting the ship and getting us on the right track going forward.

And the final question: Are you looking to sell Shopzilla or uSwitch?

No, we’re not.