Webinars

We have two complimentary webinars planned, anyone is invited:

1. Assessing the Impact of the Recent Google Product Search Changes - This webinar is Friday, June 1 at 1pm ET.  You can register here.  Google will not be on this webinar.  Click here to register.
2. Introducing Google Shopping - co-presented by Google - This webinar will be Monday, June 4 at 4pm ET.  Google will be co-present and be available for Q+A - this webinar will focus mostly on Q+A with Google. Click here to register.

Blog

Going forwad, we will be posting all information related to Google Product Search and Google Shopping at our comparison shopping engine blog - CSEStrategies.com

IRCE

As usual, ChannelAdvisor will have a large presence at the annual Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) in Chicago next week June 5-7.  Our booth is 1401.

As you come in the exhibit hall through the right entrance, it's a ginormous booth right there.  Here's a handy map in case you can't find us.

Our booth will be staffed with experts that are able to talk to you in detail about these changes and any of your other burning e-commerce questions/needs.

Finally, I will be speaking at IRCE about Pinterest and it's impact on e-commerce.  The session is Thursday at 4:15-5pm in the social commerce track.

If you have any questions you want answered, feel free to post in comments as well.

Scot Wingo

CEO and Co-founder

ChannelAdvisor

• Part I - Details on the death of Google Product Search. (you are here)
• Part II - What does this mean for Google and the industry?
• Part III - What should retailers do? Mitigation strategies

RIP Google Product Search / Froogle - What it means for Google and the E-commerce ecosystem

Part I - Details on the death of Google Product Search.

Today,  Google has made an announcement that will have the biggest impact on retailers since they launched Google Adwords - the end of life of the Google Product Search (Also known as Google Shopping or Froogle - for this series of blogs we will call it GPS for brevity).

The details are available in this blog post on the Google Commerce blog, but here's our quick summary: Everything you need to know about the death of GPS:

• The new name will be Google Shopping
• Free goes away
• Free is replaced with Product Listing Ads - aka PLA - PLA is a program that has been around for a while that puts the image and price on the right gutter of normal search results.
• There will be an incentive for retailers that sign up for PLA early and move everything early.

Here's what the new UI will look like->

Timing

This is still a bit fuzzy, but what we are hearing:

• Today - announced (May 31, 2012)
• June - Testing of new UI commences
• July 1 - Shifting traffic to PLA at scale
• Oct 1 - All results will be PLA (I bet this happens faster and this is a worst case - I'd plan on Aug 1 - more on this in the retailer mitigation post)
• This is the US schedule, the other countries will follow through 2013.

What does this mean for Google, E-commerce and online retailers?

We've put together a detailed analysis using our proprietary data on both the GPS and PLA programs.

The headlines are:

• Google Product Search drives ~$650m in annual sales (or Gross Merchandise Value) in the US. 
• Google Product Search drives > $1.3B in global sales
• If you replaced that lost GMV with PLA spend, you would have to spend $130m in the US/yr or > $270m/yr globally.   

The analysis

This table shows how we arrive at the $650m / $1.3b in global GMV using ChannelAdvisor's proprietary data and Comscore's data on Google Product Search:

The second table shows how we arrive at the PLA cost to replace that free GMV:

Conclusion:

This change is going to create a substantial shift in the e-commerce ecosystem.  Google is clearly the winner, generating possibly > $250m in new revenue into the PLA system and dramatically increasing the monetization of every e-commerce query.

That's the surface impact, in the next post, we will explore the secondary and tertiary impact on the industry.  In the third post, we will discuss mediation strategies for retailers.

(Note to ChannelAdvisor customers: we are hosting a series of Webinars and strategy calls to help everyone with remediation strategies around this very impactful Google change).

SeekingAlpha disclosure - I am long Google and Amazon, eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor where I am CEO.

Maximum online visibility. That’s our mantra.

Here at ChannelAdvisor, our goal is to make sure your products can be seen on all channels. Selling on one or two marketplaces just doesn’t cut it anymore. Selling on multiple marketplaces is just as important as selling on multiple channels.

That’s exactly why we’ve beefed up our Sears Marketplace integration, now offering a complete self-service offering to help you access millions of loyal Sears.com shoppers and increase your marketplace visibility.

Join ChannelAdvisor Senior Product Manager Marc Sebes and Sears Marketplace Development Manager Lauren Marchese for a webinar to learn how retailers can drive revenue selling on Sears.com and how ChannelAdvisor’s Marketplaces solution eliminates the time and effort needed to build a custom integration.

Thursday, May 24, 2012
2:00 p.m. EDT

Register here: www.channeladvisor.com/upcoming-webinars.

Ready to diversify your online marketplace strategy?

We’re ready to help you!

ChannelAdvisor's new integration to the Newegg Marketplace makes it easier than ever to connect to new buyers-18 million loyal Newegg customers to be exact!

Join ChannelAdvisor Senior Product Manager Marc Sebes and Newegg Marketplace Marketing Manager Correy Bravo for a webinar on the multiple benefits of partnering with the Newegg Marketplace and how to successfully integrate via ChannelAdvisor's Marketplaces solution.  

Thursday, May 10, 2012
2:00 pm EDT

Register now: www.channeladvisor.com/upcoming-webinars

We’re helping retailers just like you gain access to new sources of demand and increase online sales, without making a huge time or monetary investment. No one has a better handle on this stuff than we do!

If you have any questions about the webinar, please contact marketing@channeladvisor.com.

Today we are releasing April 2012 data for Marketplaces (eBay/Amazon), Search and Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE) along with supplemental data.

eBay Details

eBay's April y/y SSS % growth is a new record growth rate for the eBay marketplace and is sure to generate some questions as to what's going on inside of eBay.  To help understand what's driving the growth, here are three additional 'interior' data points for eBay's SSS data->

• eBay auctions - down 10% y/y
• eBay fixed-price - up 29.7% y/y
• eBay Motors  (parts and accessories) - Up 32.6% y/y

This is a another record growth-rate for the fixed-price format and suggests that eBay's continued focus on trust, large merchants, daily deals, duplicate removal, and merchant quality continue to deliver results.  The eBay Motors category continued its out performance growing at 32.6%.

Of course, standard disclaimers apply that we have a unique mix (different than overall eBay) of categories and price formats and we skew towards larger merchants, etc.

The eBay results put a great start to the second strong quarter and show that eBay continues to build on a strong first quarter.

Supplemental data for Search

The supplemental paid-search details are available in this table:

This month CPC was down again  5% y/y and clicks are up 16% with AOV and CR holding steady vs. last year.  Orders were up materially growing 25% y/y.  The Product Listing Ads (PLA) program continues to gain adoption which is the root cause of many of these metric changes. 

Conclusions

Based on the April data, we are off to a strong Q2, setting us up for continued growth going into the Summer.  

SeekingAlpha disclosure - I am long Amazon and Google. eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor where I am CEO.

A company in Germany called chartixx, is out with a report that details the size and scale of the program in a 2011 year-end-review.  You can read the complete report here.

Here's a summary of the program we compiled from their data that has been USA-ified:

A couple of highlights:

• The total program is $168m which makes it in many ways very substantial, but also very small as an overall % of eBay's $60b/yr GMV business
• The US leads with a $89m/yr pace
• The ASP is higher than I would have thought at $73 - must be all those TVs!
• The average deal in the US sells 367 items/dal, UK is less and DE is much deeper going to 688

The last datapoint is significant.  We've been helping large retailers at ChannelAdvisor sell on eBay for over 11 years now and eBay has always had a 'depth' problem.  Retailers to have these spot opportunities frequently where they are deep on something and want to move a lot of quantity.  Back in those days we could do a couple a hundred a day, but now with eBay's DoD program, we can hit the thousands.

So I'd say the program is largely a success when you think of it as giving eBay one more arrow in the quiver to help large merchants scale and has definitely gotten them over the hump of the "mile wide, inch deep" challenge.

While we're in deal-of-the-day mode, I thought it would be a good time for a groupon goods update.

Groupon Goods Update...

Longtime readers will recall that I have been keenly interested in Groupons move into the physical goods (vs. local services) space because of their massive audience PLUS it's always interesting when a new marketplace is born with a totally different focus than what we are used to.

If you want a refresher on Groupon Goods (GG for short):

• Here's the post where we introduced GG
• Here's where we tracked the first week's success
• Here's a Q1 2012 update.

So what's new with GG? Well, a ton.   Here's an updated screen shot and you can check out your personalized results here (http://www.groupon.com/goods).

The program is still running and scaling up:

• There are 1t least 15 deals every Wed.
• Deals that don't sell out now linger extra weeks till sold out
• There is still male/female versions and there seems to be even more personalization going on.
• They were sending GG to ~10% of their users, that seems to have dramatically broadened

Finally, Groupon recently hired a new leader for the GG group from eBay: Faisal Masud who was in charge of the delivery experience at eBay.

Apples to Apples....

Now that we have a company tracking the eBay deal of the day program and we have been tracking the GG program we can compare the two.  It looks as if eBay's program is tracking ~$100m this year.  Groupon was at a similar run-rate in Q1 ($100m or $2m/wk), but is really ramping up significantly.  If we model out the Q1 results and take the growth rate with a bit of a conservative haircut and also assume a modest bump for holiday, GG has a shot at ~$180m-200m.

With the new leadership at Groupon Goods, it will be interesting to see if they can accelerate any further or if they dramatically change the program all together.

One thing is for sure -both of these and the explosion of other daily deal 'channels' for retailers are win-win for both consumers and merchants and we'll continue to keep an eye on them for you here at eBay Strategies.

SeekingAlpha Disclosure - I am long Amazon and Google.  eBay is an investor in ChannelAdvisor where I am CEO.

Need help managing and distributing your product data feeds?

We know it’s hard to keep up with all the various data feed requirements from affiliate networks, retargeting providers, personalization solutions, product review platforms and all other commerce vendors. That is why we created Flex Feeds.

Join ChannelAdvisor Director of Product Management Link Walls and Product Manager James Dechow for a webinar on Flex Feeds to learn how you can send completely customized product data feeds to satisfy the needs of virtually any commerce partner that requires them.

Thursday, May 3, 2012
11:00 am ET, 4:00 pm GMT

Finally, you’ll have complete flexibility and control over your feeds without having to get in line for internal IT resources. 

Register NOW for the Flex Feeds webinar!

If you have any questions about the webinar, contact marketing@channeladvisor.com.

Your shoppers are on Facebook, are you?

The first step… you need a Facebook page. The next step… you need Facebook Campaigns.

Join ChannelAdvisor Director of Product Management Link Walls and Product Manager Jason James for a webinar on Facebook Campaigns to learn how you can use the social site to successfully promote items to your Facebook fans. 

Tuesday, May 1, 2012
11:00 am ET, 4:00 pm GMT

Calling out new products, seasonal specials and daily deals on your Facebook page can be tremendously valuable—building brand loyalty and driving sales. It’s time for you to be more social!

Register now for Facebook Campaigns!

If you have any questions about the webinar, contact marketing@channeladvisor.com

The weather is heating up—shouldn’t your sales be? 

Join us to find out everything you need to know about how our 2012 Spring Release is connecting online retailers to new sources of demand. 

This webinar series will cover the pillars of this release: Facebook Campaigns, Flex Feeds and Rich Media, along with multiple updates to existing solutions that are sure to enhance any e-commerce strategy.

ChannelAdvisor Director of Product Management Link Walls will host the first webinar in this series—2012 Spring Release Overview—walking through a high-level overview of everything you need to know to capitalize on this release.

Thursday, April 26, 2012
11:00 am ET, 4:00 pm GMT

Additional, 20-minute webinars in this series will offer a more in-depth exploration of the new solutions, covering: 

• Facebook Campaigns – May 1, 2012 at 11:00am EDT; learn how to promote select products to Facebook fans with this new social solution.  
• Flex Feeds – May 3, 2012 at 11:00 am EDT; learn how to quickly send product data to any e-commerce vendor with the advanced feed design system.
• Rich Media  – May 8, 2012 at 11:00am EDT; learn how to enhance website images and increase conversions with new features and tools.

Register now for the 2012 Spring Release Overview along with the rest of the webinars in this series.

If you have any questions about these webinars, contact marketing@channeladvisor.com.

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