Merchants Paying PPC on Product Feeds

[Qui Gon Jinn]

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If merchants advertisng on price comparison sites can afford to pay anything from 20p to 75p plus per click for using targeted product searches.

Shouldn't networks be negotiating on behalf of affiliates a similar deal or at least a hybrid deal of CPA & CPC for trusted affiliates using product feeds.

Would the aggregate of a trusted affiliate base, be near comparable with the volume of sales generated by a major price comparison / product search site.

I realise there maybe comments about CPA & performance based marketing (PBM). But isn't the quality of traffic from affiliates at least equal when dealing with product feeds? Then perhaps networks will take the long awaited essential next step we have been asking for and actually develope a price comparison / product search solution that is of significant quality & functionality.

If the quality is there which I am sure there is from the number of first class affiliates who incorporate product feeds, then the correct, maybe fair, deal structure should be on a par.

[D-Mac]

From my experience with major CPC comparison sites, merchants can consider themselves doing well if they break-even. Advertising on these sites is a branding exercise, with the hope of picking up some repeats, nothing more. It is easy to burn through money at an alarming rate and not get a decent return on it, especially at Christmas.

It's a good idea though QGJ. I imagine the branding factor would be less of a draw for merchants, but this could be compensated for with potentially better conversion rates.

[Qui Gon Jinn]

To make it a more attractive solution & competitive, undercut the whole market like the charges being made by CPC comparison / product search sites as well as pay per click search engines, making it more affordable for merchants depending on their sector, anything from 5p to 30p hyperthetically depending on the product being sold....Obviously maintaining quality of traffic in the first place.

[jess1]

I think this has been touched upon in a different thread re merchants not being able to pull adequate information from their data base or not having the know how to do this, in some cases it really is not the merchants fault. For the info that they can take out could take up to three days to sort out so that it is in an acceptable format. Kelkoo just keeps shifting the goal post on how they want theirs formatted. So in terms of human resources which has an impact on the financial side of things, it may just be a simple case for you to work with the merchants that can automate files. For my part, I would want to work out a revshare that you would find acceptable or even a hybrid deal. But that's because I know you The Likes of Kelkoo already have quite a big name out there ( why?) but I would have to agree with D-Mac

. Advertising on these sites is a branding exercise

Yes its a good idea but your sales pitch to merchants re your PPC/CPA would have to be almost as good as mine re setting up an affiliate program

[matbennett]

From my experience with major CPC comparison sites, merchants can consider themselves doing well if they break-even.

I think that this is very dependent on the site that is advertising you. We've tried a lot lately and the range of results is vast. With several we may as well have just being throwing £10 notes out the window with our website address on them - but this isn't the same with them all. The ones we have stuck with are delivering results within budget.

but this could be compensated for with potentially better conversion rates.

Maybe our mix of affiliates is still not right, but our overall conversion through Affiliate Window does not match that of Kelkoo. Our more pro-active affiliates certainly knock Kelkoo into a cocked hat, but certainly not when taken as a whole.