Comparators are extremely effective levers in digital acquisition. They can be even more formidable when it comes to gaining additional exposure on Google and Bing Shopping, through Product Listing Ads (PLAs), which appear at the top of results pages. But this efficiency has a downside: running a comparison-shopping program requires energy, time and expertise.
In addition to the setup, the list of tasks to be accomplished is long: produce a specific feed per comparator, make regular selections of products to be sent, frequently exchange with publishers on strategy, analyze performance, implement optimizations. That’s all there is to it!
Feed Center: optimized management of your presence on comparison sites
The good news? When you use Effinity, all you have to do is send us a product feed and tell us what you want to achieve. And we’ll do the rest. Thanks to our Feed Center, we’re able to monitor each comparator and implement optimizations in real time. All this, with reporting focused on your objectives, taking into account your attribution data and enabling simplified performance tracking by publisher.
But what would a tool be without expert hands to use it?
Effinity, a search ads agency, has been working with price comparison sites in all markets for over 10 years. This wealth of knowledge enables us to implement optimizations that we know, from experience, will encourage conversion. This experience also facilitates the various trade-offs: product selection, optimizations to be made, budgets to be invested.
Focus on a comparator: Connexity
Among the many comparators we work with, we’d like to introduce you to Connexity, a retail performance marketing company operating in Europe (France, UK, Germany, Italy and soon Spain) and the USA. In particular, Connexity is a CSS Google Premium partner, with strong expertise in managing large-scale Google and Bing Shopping campaigns for retailers.
It’s a comparator we’ve been happy to work with for many years. Jean-Baptiste Saint Cast tells us more…
Jean-Baptiste Saint Cast,
Senior Key Account Manager
“Connexity guarantees an average return equal to or greater than your ROAS or COS targets”.
Can you tell us about Connexity and its benefits for advertisers?
Connexity helps advertisers increase new customers and sales. Our exclusive mix of placements on different traffic sources generates over 5 billion euros in sales per year. In exchange for a CPC budget, Connexity guarantees an average return equal to or greater than your ROAS or COS objectives. In addition to guaranteed ROAS, one of our key features is a fully managed service with no installation or maintenance costs. As account manager for French advertisers, my analysts and I become an extension of your technical and analyst teams. We do everything necessary to achieve your ROAS objectives and increase your opportunities at every stage of your performance campaigns.
Which advertisers is your solution aimed at?
We achieve good results with merchants in the DIY, beauty, fashion, household appliances/electronics and department store sectors. To ensure good performance, advertisers need to invest at least €10,000 per month, and ideally offer a vast product catalog (thousands of SKU references) and those who generally have average baskets of €100 or more.
How would you describe the comparator ecosystem on the French and European markets?
In France, Comparison Shopping Services (CSS) compare the prices and features of products from different online merchants. These services aim to offer users a convenient way to find the best deals and make informed purchasing decisions. Users can search for specific products or browse different categories for inspiration, compare prices, read reviews and access additional information to make their choice.
By partnering with CSS platforms, merchant sites can increase their visibility and reach a greater number of potential customers. It’s a highly dynamic ecosystem, with new platforms emerging and existing ones evolving to meet changing consumer needs.
Have you noticed any changes in web-user behavior with the increase in inflation in this segment?
While households face inflation and cost-of-living pressures, they continue to shop online, driven by a general increase in demand during the pandemic. Shoppers are more selective, so our access to multiple channels can help merchant sites reach them at different stages of their buying process.
Price comparison on Google PLA (Product Listing Ads) is important for advertisers. Can you tell us more about how advertisers can benefit from your collaboration with Google/Bing Shopping?
With Connexity, merchant sites benefit from additional exposure on Google and Bing Shopping. We increase impressions for their product offers in several important ways.
Firstly, Connexity enriches their offer data to improve their eligibility and their better consideration by search engine algorithms.
Secondly, our CSS positions on Google and Bing enable Connexity to run parallel campaigns occupying additional, differentiated locations that complement their direct advertising, increasing their visibility, share of voice and potential sales.
Finally, we get you more competitive prices and better carousel positions by leveraging dynamic bidding algorithms, developed over years of performance experience.
What are the overall advantages for an advertiser of working with Connexity on PLAs and other channels?
At a time when buying paths are becoming increasingly complex and fragmented, Connexity identifies the meeting points between a brand and its potential buyers, multiplying the points of contact from product discovery, through the various stages of buying influence, to the shopping cart.
We’ve built a network of traffic sources across all these different modes of engagement, and we optimize performance to achieve their ROAS and enable e-commerce sites to grow profitably for them.
