Comparison Shopping Holiday Olympics
Each year the CSE’s announce rate increases and promotions tools during the Holiday season, and now the games are over.
Only three winners (three for paid CSE’s, three for free CSE’s) have been selected by the Comparison Shopping Olympic Committee at CPC Strategy. CSE’s were rated on the overall weight of their holiday CPC rate decisions combined with the impact of cool new features that the CSE’s released for merchants to take advantage of this Holiday season.
The winners of the 2010 paid CSE Holiday Olympics are (drum roll please)…
Gold: 
Amazon Product Ads chose not to increase their Holiday CPC rate on the heels of their recent update to the Product Ads bidding tool (new CPC rates can be found in the pricing tab here).
They also recently extended their traffic validation rules to invalidate traffic from non-U.S. and non-Canadian customers who are not logged on to Amazon.com.
Amazon Product Ads was the highest revenue-driving engine in our Q3 2010 CSE Rankings. It’s a highly mobile and adaptive CSE to new market trends and features. Connected to the Amazon Marketplace it’s no wonder their conversion rates are some of the highest we see from any CSE. Merchants that sign up for Amazon Product Ads by January 1st receive $75 in free clicks.
5 Ways for Product Ads Sellers to Prepare for the Holidays
Silver: 
Become.com chose not to increase its Holiday CPC rate for the second year in a row. The engine is the smallest that kept its current rate card, testament to their commitment to merchant satisfaction.
Become is also rolling out two new platforms, a DealCenter and a Black Friday Seasonal Page, for merchants to advertise their products this Holiday season. This is followed by Become’s release of a Halloween micro-site where costume and Halloween accessory merchants were able to promote their products. More information on the two programs are below.
Holiday 2010 Become Opportunities
Become DealCenter Implementation Guide
Bronze: 
Shopzilla is raising its rates this Holiday season but chose to target individual categories based on % sales increase data. It’s nice to see that Shopzilla acknowledges sales do not increase for all categories during the Holidays.
In addition, Shopzilla recently enhanced their merchant dashboard with upgrades to their reporting and bidding tools. Reports can be generated at a much faster rate, making it easier for merchants to analyze sales data and suppress poor converting products and increase exposure for high converting products.
The winners of the 2010 free CSE Holiday Olympics are (drum roll please)…
Gold: 
Google Product Search, 1st in our Top 10 Rankings for the umpteenth time, also takes the top spot in our holiday Olympics rankings as they continue to set the grade as a top tier shopping engine. Recent developments include the announcement of Google’s new Instant search, and the implementation of Product Listings Ads into the Google Merchant Center.
Silver: 
TheFind takes 2nd place in this year’s free CSE Holiday Olympics because of its rapid growth over the last year in terms of reach and traffic. The shopping engine debuted in our Top 10 CSE Rankings for the first time last quarter coming in at 8th place, increasing competition among both paid and free shopping engines for placement in the Top 10.
The Find also recently added a social recommendation tool that integrates Facebook’s like feature into product listings. The shopping social connection continues to buzz in the comparison shopping market. For more info on TheFind’s recommendation tool click here.
Bronze: 
Shopping
Bing Shopping takes 3rd place for holiday rate adjustments and promotions after coming in at 1st in conversions on our Q3 Top 10 Rankings, though it should be noted that half of the data compiled for their 1st place conversion numbers were from Bing Cashback, the now deprecated program that gave consumers cash back depending on a refund percentage set by participating merchants.
The new bing shopping program is now completely free, and is still rolling out new features and working through system bugs. One notable new feature is the inclusion of Bing Shopping’s own social recommendation tool, much like that of TheFind, that integrates Facebook’s like feature into product listings.
Bing Shopping Merchant Best Practices – Part II
Closing Ceremony
The Comparison Shopping Olympic Committee at CPC Strategy would like to thank all participants for their commitment to improving the comparison shopping landscape for consumers, merchants, and specialists.
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