The media has been flooded with reports of late on the new Google scheme for Google Comparison Shopping. With the introduction of this new scheme, Onefeed want to inform and educate anyone that has queries around the new benefits that are available.
Google Shopping has now been made a separate legal entity and this means that they must compete directly with third party comparison shopping services. From now on, any comparison shopping site can advertise products in Google Shopping and enter the auction for visibility. The same Merchant Centre and AdWords interface will remain and will be used as they have been previously.
To be profitable, Google Shopping takes 30% of the CPC cost. So, for example on a bid of £1 for clicks, the actual bid is 70p and Google takes 30p as their costs.
With the introduction of the new scheme, it means by advertising through a CSS Partner in Google Shopping, Google Inc. will offer a rebate on the ad spend and this will go directly into the Google Ad words account. The rebates will be issued on a sliding scale from anywhere between 20 and 30% and will effectively refund the fee that Google would have previously taken.
This is hugely significant for Google Shopping customers. Current spend levels will of course go down and this will result in larger profits. The current scheme is available in the entirety of the EU and EU comparison sites – unfortunately anyone advertising in the US will not be eligible for the rebates being offered.
So how do Google Shopping customers qualify for this? There are a few options out there, however they all rely on using a Comparison Shopping Site of CSE Site. You need to be working with a comparison shopping partner and in turn you must be advertising on the comparison shopping site. It is obviously essential that you have the same products listed on shopping site as in your merchant centre.
Can you get around these rules? It’s a question we are asked! However, this will mean you will need to white label with someone or work with an agency that in turn uses the white labelling site. Of course, with the above you will have several vendors to satisfy financially as well as it being a rather complicated process. This will no doubt eat into your bottom line and it makes for a messy process on a day to day basis.
What are the next steps? Onefeed are pleased to be part of this new scheme and have developed our own comparison site to assist our customers. We have our own brand-new MCA account for the Merchant Centre – this is a master agency account for aggregating all your clients through 1 client centre account. (This is similar to the MMC for AdWords.) It is a requirement of the scheme to have the above and it means we must now link your Merchant Centre account to our new MCA account.
Advertisers need to create a brand new AdWords account to qualify for the rebates and all shopping campaigns need to run through this. The Merchant Centre account will be linked to the new AdWords account and this will complete the process.
There are some considerations to this however. Creating a new AdWords account will mean that your historical data, along with your rankings, will be lost. Some historical click data for shopping is held in the Merchant Centre account and because this isn’t changing you won’t lose as much as you would when you move search ad accounts for example. The shopping account will have to be separate from search campaigns and in a different account. You can link these through an MCC Account and Onefeed are more than happy to help with this.
New schemes will always see people jumping on the band wagon in any sector and this opens the door to affiliates and several other 3rd parties advertising your products in Google Shopping. All parties will be competing for the same traffic which could potentially lead to us competing with others advertising your products. This can be stopped and 3rd parties removed in Merchant Centre, but this does take policing. It is also key to note, if you engage an agency that has no idea what they are doing, this could seriously damage your business in Shopping, disrupt the service and nullify any rebate you get. Unfortunately, it is likely there will be also issues with the agency ownership of the account with Google and in effect this could cause a lot of disruption to support Google offers.
Rebates are here to stay and as a business we have had no indication of when or indeed if they will end, however Google is sure to find a way around these moving forward! Now is the time to take advantage of this and we are here to help you every step of the way.
Need more information or advice? Get in touch!
