Google Shopping (or Google PLA – Product Listing Ads) offers excellent visibility for your products. But rather than going direct to Google for your presence, there are a few advantages to using CSS (Comparison Shopping Services). For an overview of CSS strategy, see our guide to CSS and affiliation.
1 – You’ll pay less
If you have strong profitability and ROI objectives, then PLA via CSS is a good opportunity to seize. In fact, Google takes a commission on each of your clicks, which has an immediate impact on your ranking. This is not the case if you use comparators. Let’s say you decide to place a product with a bid of €1 via Google Shopping. In reality, your bid will be €0.83, since Google takes a 20% commission per click. If you use a CSS other than Google, your bid will be exactly the same as the one you decided on beforehand.
2 – Increase your visibility… and therefore your sales volume!
Whether you complement your presence on Google Shopping with CSS, or whether you only use CSS for distribution, you’ll increase your presence in the search results, your visibility, and therefore your sales. To achieve this, we recommend diversifying your strategies.
The most important element in the success of your campaign is the implementation of a dedicated strategy per CSS. For example, work on one CSS focusing on acquiring new customers, another on maximizing ROI, or yet another on sales volume. Another approach is to assign a different product category to each CSS.
The possibilities are numerous, and above all, it will create a stable and solid synergy to take full advantage of Google Shopping’s potential.
3 – You won’t be competing
Google Shopping does not recognize CSS as such, which prevents any competition for the same advertiser: either between the advertiser and CSS, or between CSS. Google uses the domain name to identify the advertiser. The CSS that wins the auction is determined by two factors:
- The bid amount (which is logically different for each CSS, since the strategies are not the same),
- The quality of the ad, and therefore of the feed, in relation to the user’s request.
At equivalent levels of quality and relevance, the product will be displayed by the CSS with the highest bid. You’ll pay 1 cent more than the nearest competitor’s bid. The example below illustrates how this works: merchant 1 will pay €0.21 for this click.
4 – You’ll benefit from an extra dedicated space: the CLA
CLA (Comparaison Listing Ads) is an alternative source of traffic offered to price comparison sites on Google Shopping. You’ll now see two tabs in the shopping section of Google results pages: Products and Comparison Sites. Merchants working with CSS can benefit from this new location, giving users access to a new catalog.
To find out more, read the testimonial from Shopforward, Effinity’s partner for CSS leverage.
