Channel Intelligence Blog

New Metrics for Measuring the Effectiveness of Display Advertising

Do you currently use online display advertising? Are you interested in learning how performance of this media can be measured more accurately? 

Join us for a webinar Thursday, November 19, at 2 PM EDT. 

Traditionally, online display advertising (banner ads, anyone?) were measured only in terms of clicks or impressions. With clicks on the decline and budgets tightening, it’s important to measure accurately the true effectiveness of display advertising campaigns so marketers like you can make informed decisions to maximize your ad spend.

Now, it’s possible to measure a display ad’s effect beyond immediate clicks. In fact, it’s proven that buying behavior is affected even in consumers who may have seen an ad but didn’t click it. Display ads are also known to produce an effect on other seemingly unrelated marketing campaigns. Now, an ad’s effects can be quantified in concrete terms. 

This improved measurement lets marketers better target future ads to continually improve performance, as well as determine more effective allocation of marketing budgets.

Steven Roth, VP, Performance Marketing at CI, presents this new webinar, promising to help advertisers learn more about the best ways to measure and improve the effectiveness of display ads. 

Register for the webinar here!

Tips for Accelerating Product Sales with Google – Recorded Webinar Now Available

Our latest webinar, Accelerating Product Sales from Google, is now available online.

In this webinar, representatives from CI and Google provide tips, such as which changes to a merchant's data feed can make the biggest impact, and discuss upcoming Google enhancements that will be available for the 2009 holiday season. Access the recorded webinar here.

Some of the points addressed include:

• How to take advantage of Google's new Gallery View feature, which will soon be widely available.
• How a merchant's data feed is used to power other Google properties, including AdWords, OneBox and the Google Affiliate Network.
• What changed with the switch from Google Base to the new Google Merchant Center.
• What to do when a merchant has issues submitting a data feed to Google.
• How reviews can be used to differentiate a merchant's listing.
• Tips for promoting local stores on Google via the product data feed.

You're sure to take away about a dozen points that you can put into practice right away. Enjoy!

New Webinar: Accelerating Product Performance and Sales from Google Starts with Your Data Feed

Have some time available this afternoon? Why not stop by for our latest webinar, scheduled for today, Wednesday, October 14, 2009, from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM EDT. 

The webinar will feature how to boost product sales through enriched product data feeds and other retailer-tested tips, as well as introduce several new innovations merchants can draw on. Guest speakers from Google, Inc. will join CI to present upcoming Google enhancements that retailers can leverage for the 2009 holiday season.

Guest speakers Vivek Tata, Associate Product Marketing Manager, and Sarah Beritzhoff, Strategic Partner Manager, of Google, Inc., will join CI’s Larry Weeks, Senior Manager of Strategic Marketing Consulting, and Rob Streeter, Sr. Manager Partner Development, to discuss ways merchants can better leverage Google for a more profitable 2009 holiday shopping season.

A foundational element often overlooked when advertising on Google is the provision of content rich, high-quality data feeds, since Google's powerful database leverages data feeds to render the merchants' products to the right consumer at the right time. Expect to learn more about this essential element and its role in successful campaigns, as well as a host of other ways to improve sales performance. 

Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/954874201

Channel Intelligence Acquires Storefront, Order Management and Fulfillment Assets from Vcommerce

CI just announced it has acquired certain key assets of Vcommerce, a  provider of ecommerce software solutions located in Scottsdale, AZ. Through a new, wholly owned subsidiary, CI will provide storefront, order management and fulfillment services to retailers, manufacturers and publishers across several industry verticals.

The combination of the Vcommerce storefront and fulfillment services with Channel Intelligence’s industry leading performance based marketing solutions means CI will now offer the industry’s most complete set of services for manufacturers, publishers and retailers.

With its new capabilities, CI will be a leading provider of Commerce Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions, with over $2B annually in referred sales to leading manufacturers and retailers such as Best Buy, HP Home and Home Office, Kimberly-Clark, Neiman Marcus, Philips, Target, Garmin, OfficeMax,  Samsung, Charming Shoppes, Black & Decker and hundreds more. The acquisition will expand CI’s e-commerce platform services, increasing its overall customer base to 235, with more than 25% represented in the Internet Retailer Top 250.

CI will also maintain a west coast office in Phoenix, AZ, in addition to its headquarters located in Orlando, FL and its European offices.

Read more in the official press release here.

Find us at the Shop.org Annual Summit

Drop by Booth No. 731 at the Shop.org Annual Summit in Las Vegas this year (Sept. 21-23) to say hello and see what’s new with CI.

Our booth this year is going to be all abuzz as we unveil several new services. With our recent acquisition of Vcommerce assets, we’re excited about introducing our new eCommerce Storefront, Order Management and Fulfillment & Integration Solutions.

We’ve also been cooking up a few new offerings on the home front, specifically a new enterprise-level Paid Search Solution and a Display Advertising Solution. These new products leverage proprietary CI technology to help manufacturers and retailers get more from their online advertising channels.

Look us up to get all the details firsthand or check our site for more information next week!

How do the best manufacturer web sites drive sales? Hint: through other stores

We've been collaborating with Forrester to produce research in the eCommerce space for several years, and now the latest report is out: “How the Best Manufacturer Web Sites Drive Sales (Hint: Through Other Stores)”.

This latest report outlines the importance of manufacturer web sites in eCommerce transactions and how manufacturers can capitalize on that role. It's the result of Forrester’s independent analysis of a survey conducted by Channel Intelligence, which queried more than 13,000 consumers on 20 manufacturer sites in consumer electronics, computer hardware and software, personal care, and home improvement industries. 

Some interesting facts: 43% of manufacturer web site visitors intended to buy immediately or within 48 hours. They are more brand loyal than the average online shopper, and nearly half of the survey respondents who converted reported spending an average of $200 on secondary items along with their main purchases. 

It's no secret that most manufacturer web sites are struggling with how best to capitalize on this valuable traffic. Get your own copy of the report or ask us about the best practices and recommendations that have proven to  maximize a manufacturer's contribution to the sales process!

Read the press release on channelintelligence.com.

Retailers, experiencing a drop in your Google Product Search results? Not with CI!

Recent talk within the retail community would have you think that changes to Google Product Search had almost brought to a standstill the search engine’s contribution to online sales for many retailers last month. Some retailers have reported declines of up to 60% and more. 

Why is it then that our retailers are seeing sales and traffic increases? 

In fact, comparing the first half of this year to that of 2008, Google Product Search sales are up 57% for retailers working with CI. In June 2009 alone, CI clients saw a 10% increase in traffic over May and a 27% increase in sales from Google Product Search.

Understandably, as Google tests new ways to improve its natural and paid search programs, the traffic and sales from Google Product Search are often affected. This can make it tough for any advertiser that doesn’t have the resources to continuously test and evaluate techniques for optimizing product content. CI helps its retailer clients actually take advantage of these changes,however,, with marketing experts that are constantly monitoring and analyzing results for individual clients and across the entire industry using CI’s advanced analytics.

Take Instawares, for example. With CI’s help, Google Product Search has been responsible for 9.4% of Instawares’ site traffic over the past year. In yesterday’s press release, Bruce Brown, CEO of Instawares noted that “with CI’s help Google has been a high performing sales channel” for them. Comparing the first half of this year to the first half of last year, traffic from Google Product Search was up 42% and sales up 21% for instawares.com.

Channel Intelligence is an official Google Product Search partner.

Shopping Engine Self Management Portal Gives Diapers.com a Much-Needed “Change”

We’d like to welcome Diapers.com on board with our SellCast® Solutions. Here’s their story…

Diapers.com had been advertising on shopping engines since 2007 but was outgrowing its initial service provider. The marketing team at Diapers.com still wanted to manage all the major aspects of their shopping engine program, but they needed better optimization of data feeds, better reporting--and most importantly, better management tools that would let them easily manipulate data feeds on-the-fly.

After evaluating offerings from several providers, they choose CI. 

Now after using our BETA Self Management Portal (due for September release) for over a month, they’re seeing an average conversion rate of about 4% and a return of over $6 for every dollar spent. 

See what Diapers.com had to say in the press release...

Optimized Product Listings on Shopping Engines Bring the “Cha-ching” for Retailers

Who says consumers aren’t buying? If you’re a retailer, it’s where they’re buying that matters right now.

Take jewelry. Not an item you’d expect to see a lot of growth during hard economic times. But CI clients in the jewelry category saw the number of orders from Q1 to Q2 this year increase by 20 percent on average as consumers make jewelry purchases via optimized product listings on shopping engines such as Google Product Search, Shopzilla, Shopping.com, Nextag and others. That increase in orders brought a 28 percent increase in sales. The average return on ad spend (ROAS) for CI’s jewelry retailers advertising in this space increased 78 percent. Not too shabby.

Likewise, apparel and sporting goods retailers using CI’s SellCast® Solutions are faring exceptionally well in these channels. Apparel retailers received 31 percent more orders and sold 33 percent more items, giving way to a 32 percent average increase in sales in Q2. Sporting goods clients saw lower clicks costs but growth of 48 percent in the number of clicks. The number of orders jumped 29 percent on average from Q1 to Q2 and sales went up 18 percent.

Retailers are increasing their ad spends to take advantage of these trends on shopping engines, by as much as 39 percent in the apparel category. When you’ve got a good thing going, why not milk it for all it’s worth? Here’s one of the key components powering this group of retailers’ stellar performance in online sales.

View the press release for more details.

Sales on the Rise for Retailers on the CI Ad Network

Looking back over the first few months of this year, the retail industry showed no signs of growth, according to ComScore's State of the U.S. Online Retail Economy in Q1 2009. Zero growth is quite a drop considering that online sales grew over 20% every year since 2003 before dipping to 8% in 2008.

While many retailers are having a tough time, we thought we'd look at how the CI Ad Network, our proprietary advertising network, is faring. If you're not familiar with the Ad Network, it's a where-to-buy solution that appears primarily on manufacturer web sites, linking product pages to retailers that have those products available.

Examining data from January through May this year, the following categories averaged positive month-over-month gains on the CI Ad Network:

• Appliances saw an 11% increase in traffic and a 25% increase in sales
• Health Aids and Medicine achieved a 23% increase in traffic and 34% increase in sales
• Baby and Safety Products increased traffic slightly by 1% and garnered 14% more in sales
• Lawn and Garden's seasonal traffic spike of 81% sustained a 92% increase in sales

For some time now we've been seeing that a large segment of customers prefer to buy via trusted channels like a manufacturer's web site. This preference explains why the CI Ad Network is seeing rising sales even while online sales as a whole remain flat. In a down economy, consumers are very selective in their product purchases, which benefits brand conscious manufacturers with a loyal customer base.