Been a while.  Yes, I’m alive.  I really appreciate the emails and support.

When I first started ComparisonEngines, I was just doing a little consulting on the side to pay the bills.  Now I’m running SingleFeed, a venture backed start up which is taking off.  Over the last 6 months, I’ve had to concentrate on strengthening the foundation of SingleFeed.  That left little time for blogging.

While I make no promises on the frequency of posts going forward, there are too many things happening in the shopping search industry not to step back into a role as Analyst.

I’ll probably play around with the style a bit.  Not sure exactly what that means.  I like Rafat’s comprehensive coverage.  I like Om’s incredible insight.  I like Arrington’s bite sized morsels.  All I know for sure is that my interest has never been in regurgitating press releases and that won’t change.

Welcome to ComparisonEngines 2.0!

-b

Excuse the image sizing issue. I’m trying out a new system and it’s not pretty. For now, you can just click on the image to see the screenshot in all its glory.

As opposed to the majority of shopping engines which place filters on the left hand side of search results, Shopzilla is now allowing for filtering from the top of the search results page.

Google Product Search/Google Base/Google Shopping is the only other shopping engine which displays filters in this way.

While this might seem like a small change, I’ve been told for years by the shopping engines that people really don’t use the filters. As Shopzilla (and others) have smart filtering capabilities that can drive consumers to make more informed buying decisions, I like that Shopzilla is being a little different. Not sure if this is a test or not.

Some other shopping engines do things differently:
Google Base displays filters on the bottom of the search results page.
Become displays filters on the right of the search results (which I always find a little jarring)

Since everyone else has already laughed at Microsoft’s attempt to buy search market share, I was going to try to play devil’s advocate. Can’t do it. Sorry.

-Cashback sites like David Lewis’ Cashbaq make money and therefore Microsoft will make money. Unfortunately, I don’t think the point of Live Search cashback is just to make a couple bucks off of running a cashback site. If Microsoft thinks it can buy off consumers with cashback deals and get those consumers to come back to search for everything else they are using Google to search for, I think they are mistaken.

-As I discussed with Om this afternoon, the whole idea sounds more like a gimmick than anything else. People don’t want a gimmick, they want an incredible search engine which returns answers to their questions.

-The Live Search cashback announcement was a great PR stunt. Consumers are hurting and no one had ever heard of Jellyfish, so re-branding it Live Search cashback and telling everyone that big retailers are on board with great cashback offers is really cute. I’m sure traffic will spike temporarily and shoppers will buy and Microsoft will run a profitable shopping engine. The leading shopping engines generate revenue in the low hundreds of millions. That’s chump change for Microsoft.

-But what about it’s strategy to do this in many verticals? Farecast integration was the other big announcement today. We’ll hear other ones soon. Ok, now I kinda buy that one. Isn’t that kinda what Google is doing with the navigation links that were added when Universal Search was announced? But as opposed to Google using technology to bring together a better search experience, Microsoft is buying disparate vertical search engines. Has Microsoft just given up and outsourced search?

-If Live Search cashback was more than a gimmick, wouldn’t they have rolled it out for all their shopping sites? Sure, they eventually could, but according to PriceGrabber, their syndication relationship with MSN Shopping and Live Product Search remains intact. I’m sure the PPC model associated with the PriceGrabber partnership is too lucrative to give up anytime soon.

-So the saving grace for this gimmick could be getting retailers to engage with Microsoft’s other advertising opportunities. I’m sure Microsoft will get a thousand additional merchants using Jellyfish - I mean Live Search cashback - because of the buzz.

But CPA based advertising isn’t good enough and Microsoft knows this. Instead of allowing merchants to sign up with an online form and start advertising immediately, as Jellyfish allowed, Microsoft is making merchants fill out an ‘interest inquiry’ form which asks if merchants are using other online advertising methods such as Search, Contextual, Content, and Display. I’d expect Microsoft to use this data and push merchants to sign up with AdCenter just as much as they push merchants to sign up for Live Search cashback. While this synergy of advertising offerings reminds me of In Good Company when Teddy K is talking about the Dalai Llama eating his Krispity Krunch while uploading prayers onto the Net, Microsoft is bringing together a lot of great technologies as it highlighted in a terribly formatted email this morning to advertisers about the new Microsoft Advertising, “our new business-to-business brand unites the power of MSN and Live Search with advanced platform technologies such as adCenter, Atlas, and DrivePM.”

To sum it up, I don’t think the launch of Live Search cashback will change things that much for Microsoft. I like Microsoft’s focus on ecommerce - there’s a lot of money to be made there - but putting Jellyfish front and center isn’t going to solve its search woes.

Microsoft’s main press release of the day, outlining the new search business model says “Microsoft aims to make Live Search the premier search engine for the growing category of search queries that help consumers conduct research and purchase goods or services, and which are critical to merchants aiming to drive online sales of their products.”

Too bad Google is already hard at work on the premier ecommerce search strategy, combining Google Product Search, Google, Google Analytics, Google Checkout, and Google AdWords. Oh, and there’s no reason Google Product Search can’t be run on a CPA based model.

Yesterday I sent an email to Brian Weigand of Jellyfish asking him about potential Jellyfish integration into Microsoft Search. This seemed like a logical thing to ask considering that Jellyfish recently completed integration with Windows Live and Arrington mentioned on Monday MSFT’s announcement “On Wednesday, we will be announcing a major new initiative that our search teams have been driving. We are getting better and better with our core algorithmic search, and at the same time, we are investing to differentiate in vertical experiences and to disrupt the current model. You’ll hear more about our plans Wednesday.”

So Arrington now has the complete story of Microsoft offering Cashback to search engine users. Live Search Cashback is live and seems to be purely based on Jellyfish’s system - same advertisers, same UI, same cash back model. At the same time, Jellyfish’s own Cashback shopping site has been down for a while (at least a week, I think). Not sure if Jellyfish will just transition to a Smack Shopping only site while powering the back end of Live Search Cashback.

Right now if you try to sign up to advertise, you’re brought to a Microsoft Advertising page with the following notice:

Arrington is framing this as a way for Microsoft to attract advertisers:

Microsoft’s hope is to lure advertisers with a promise to pay only if a purchase is made, unlike Google’s pay-per-click model that carries more risk because a searcher may not complete a transaction. And by offering a percentage of the fee collected from advertisers, Microsoft hopes to convince searchers to take the last mile to a transaction through the Live.com search engine, generating more advertising revenue for Microsoft and simultaneously hurting arch-rival Google.

I’ll comment on this after I listen to the official announcement today.

I’m speaking in a bit. I don’t read off my powerpoints when giving a presentation, so you’re probably missing 50% of my presentation by reading the below doc., but maybe you’ll still find it useful.

I’m speaking in a couple hours. I don’t read off my powerpoints when giving a presentation, so you’re probably missing 50% of my presentation by reading the below doc., but maybe you’ll still find it useful.

@ Ad:tech. Will be taking notes from various sessions. These are just ‘live blogging’ notes, not direct quotes…

10:31am
PM - RFID will be important - mini-cooper/crispin campaign.
J - I belive people with affinity cards - they are talking about putting rfid chips in there.
PJ - a little scary for some people. you know where i am and i drove 80mph to get to the next toll

question: cost model with selling adverting. by cpm? different pricepoints for elevator vs. taxi
PJ - we do get sold by CPM. often times we get compared to traditional out of home. i could pay $2 for traditional vs. i’m giving you targeted. it becomes more valuable. we don’t have problems getting the cpms. we’ve seen that the cpm model is generally acceptable.
PM - Avenue A razorfish will buy CPM all day long
-PJ - out of home video advertising bureau has good metrics. OVAB.org - good studies.

question: you say you know your audience. are you finding that the guys who want to advertise are local businesses? who is advertisng in those elevators?
-PJ - 90-95% of our ads are from national advertisiers. they see our audience of being very valuable. the economics of local doesn’t work right now.

question: what value numerically can you place on ‘captivity’
M - each digital playspace network carries a different value. in the back of a taxi cab, you’re wathcing tv. it’s as captive as u can get. some of the other networks - take arenas (screens adjacent to concession stands) - not as captive, but you have 50 people deep. 2 feet away in elevator.
PJ - 6 inches away. more captive helps you improve the perceived value.

10:21am
question: does nike have a roi model?
PH - just looking if we are doing the right thing. asking peeps as they come out of the store, did you notice the network. well, duh, of course nike is going to do this is the reaction. we’re not selling ads, so roi isn’t as important. we take content that already exists and repurpose it. it’s about gut. we will promote some products, but we don’t measure lift. we try to do what we think is right.

question: one of the big headlines that’s brought attention is nbc/abc with outernet. does nbc have intent to get more skin in the game from acquisition or from the financial risk pov?
M - we do own a lot of digital out of home assets. the newborn channel. we’re building screens for new trains that will be installed in ny. strategically evaluate the right places to invest. constantly evaluating new acquisition channels. when appropriate we’d take ownership in these platforms. to date there are a handful that are doing well in digital out of home and there are plenty who don’t. i work closely with the peakock equity fund.

question: have any of you seen minority report type of stuff?
PM - gesture to power interface. a company called ‘i gotcha’. microsoft surface - most sophisticated multi touch screen. we’ve announced in the last couple weeks to deploy surface touch screens in att stores to do comparison shopping. we’ll be able to play with this in 3 mnths.

10:12am
PM - true media (eye tracking)/video mining - gender, height, weight, et.c do we run into a privacy issue?
-J - no.
-M - military was looking at eye gazing technology to detect suicide bombers. then retailers started to use it to figure out what shelf people were looking at.
-J - we’re going after suicide shoppers now vs. suicide bombers (lol). there are so many diff data points emerging here. the reality is that no one thing is going to work here. it’ll be modeled out. data repository - get lots of stuff in different ways and something will come out. and it will get better and better. it’ll put a lot of pressure back on tv. if we start elevate the standard, what happens. we’re taking clicks, pageviews to another level
-PM - digital at home is opt in, but if i have to ride the elevator, so it’s not really opt in. and if you are applying thought reading technology (ha ha), isn’t that invasive?
-PJ - elevator dynamics is a little awkward. how people engage in an elevator. people appreciate having something to do.

10:06am
-PM - how do you measure?
-PJ - ROI is key. if you’re going to put dell.com/elevator, it’s not going to work. i have some lcients that have complex models. they know where thyey are running and where the lift is. they have a stringet process they are putting us through.
-PM - what was their process to develop/come to these insights (time of day, lift, etc.)
-PJ - they are taking more of a global view, we ran these spots in chicago with some type of promo - they will run us in markets with nothing but captivate. we do recall studies extensively. miller brown. it’s amazing the results you can get vs. other media/tv. 50% of the time, peeps are on the way to their offices. we kknow peeps use internet at their offices.
PM - how are you structuring your investment in this that it will pay off one day
-M - one of the first stops of a digital singage network is funding. and they need contnet. our contnet has to bring value to the user. that we’re not the annoying news. do advertisers see value. can we measure it?
-PM - my advertiser is the cleint. i need to understand the value to the audience for my brand and i want to measure it. they are connected, right?
-M - ad recall studies are really the holy grail today. if you can show brand lift, that’s great. also tech enhancements. at gas pump, we know how many peeps pick up the handle to pump gas and how long they pump for. correlate the length of the visit to the income

9:59am
PM - we have a digital signage campaign in play right now for hotels.com in cleveland. it’s a game. if you can figure out the word scramble, you can text the message and see the result up there. if it’s idle, it’ll run static hotels.com ads. our htoughts at avenue a, this was the coolest thing we had ever seen. we couldn’t believe it when we put it out there and only saw 2 interactions per day with 2 interactions per user. are we making assumptions about users?
PJ - the things that rate highest are word of the day and trivia. they want to be entertained with something a little different. as opposed to just giving them the stuff that they had heard in their commute or read in the wsj. 62% of the people who ride the elevators look to captivate as their news of the day.
-J - I think it’s generational. It’s by age bracket. we found that the older you were, the less likely you’d be to do anything. 4,5, or 6 to one. in retial outfits for teen girls, they interact well. we’re trainign a group of younger peopple to do this, but we’re not going to see the shifts for a while.
-M - the value prop is always important
-PH - 6yrs ago 14 peeps in the audience. now we’re here at ad:tech. none of us have the magic formula. w’ere learning everyday. this medium has to be a focus if you wnat to do it well. it can’t be an afterthought. it is a specific delivery mechanism.

9:54am
PM - so many discrete venues have so many discrete audiences. how do you do it?
M - take lessons from the internet. in the early days we started doubleclick and tested. we’d change background color of a banner and get 337% more clicks. it’s a relatively cluttered environment, it’s not very static.
PM - but it doesn’t sound like a shout loudest environment
M - but there’s a process. how to get someone engaged to beging with? it can be something catchy. the color. then the contnet. then make it catchy. how do you attract, keep and engage the audience. nobody up here will claim to have the answer right now.
PH - we haven’t done much surveys or studies. our gut tells us it’s enhancing the in-store experiences. very much design/merchandising. we don’t do ads.
PJ - but you know your audience really well.
M - where nbc & captivate - to build the credibility - to get someone to look at it for the first time, you need someone credible up there. ocntent plays a critical role. the lieklyhood of ad recall will be high.

PM - nbc is building a network of out of home screens. what do they want?
M - let the audience dictate it. it depends where you are. in a cab, you want to see cnbc. if you’re in a maternity ward, it’s parenting info. consistent theme is customized content. we’ve been launcing lots of campaigns iwth sms engagement. we’re changing our programming to meet the needs.
PH - speaking as a retailer. in the retialer space. you’ve got the consumer in your house…you have an opportunity to talk more about your brand messaging. to help them find their ways around their stores. hd and lowes are considering adding digital signage. you can help your shoppers beocme more efficent, build your brand, cut preceived wait times. terrific opportunity to promote marketing campaings.
PJ - if i choose to engage with it, i expect it to entertian me. P&G: make your life a little easier. what we try to do is make the 2-3mins we have with you in an elevetor a little more informative.
-M - we have 5000 taxis in nyc with nbc content. the fact that there’s an off button - 93% of consumers that did shut it off (and only 10% did shut it off) turned it back on after 30 seconds.

9:44am
-J - this is place based media and the character of every place is diff. in the dr. room, i have peeps who come in and wait for 30mins 1-2x per yr. vs. someone who is in transit who does it 300 days a yr and had 30 secs.
-PM - how do you get consistency across the network?
-J - the question is what works in all areas? video doesn’t work everywhere. the most common denomitor - text, no sound. that’s the type of creative that works across everywhere. that’s where you start and then you add diff things along the way.
-PJ - we used to get pushback - we want sound. we want 30 secs, not 15. now the advertisers have adapted. SeeSaw has done a great job of standardizing. advertisers are getting better at creating their contet in different forms.

9:40am
-what does the best type of content for the fourth screen look like?
-PH - we’re now in 300 locations. didn’t know what we were doing when we started. we promote the brand at the point of purchase and we enhance the brand. there is no advertising.
-M - i couldn’t agree more. it’s tough to determine the right content. easy to understand what’s wrong. if it’s not customized, it’s not going to be the best fit. if we just took leno and put it ad gas pumps, it’s not going to work for the user or the advertiser. must know the audience at each of these locations. what is it that will bring a smile to someone’s face and get them to recall.
-PJ - from the content perspective how to you balance info vs. advertising vs. content? the audience drives the content. we feel we build a relationship over time with the peeps who ride the elevator. the audience exists for people who view the 4th screen. we know where they are. unless you’re going to take the steps up 15 flights, you’re going to see us. not just demo, but psychographics. at captivate we have over 50 diff contnet proviers. team of editors who cull through the contnet. we balance ads w/ contnet in that they share the screen at the same time. example: orbits - ties into travel related conent.

9:34am
PM -as late as last yr, the majority of conversation resolved aroudn the 3 screen environment - pc, tv, mobile. summer of 07 attended conference - digital signage, digital out of home, so new we’re all struggling to define it. gas pump screens, taxi cab tops, screens in conventions, fast food. these all qualify. the screens can now behave interactively thought phone & touch. from an advertising perspective, it allows us to do new interesting things. these are now becoming real world banner ads. they can change by dayparting. really on the cutting edge.

9:30am
Moderator:
(PM) Patrick Moorhead - National Manager, R&D Advanced Marketing Solutions, Director of Emerging Media Avenue A Razorfish ($750m in annual billing)

Panelists:
(M) Mark French - General Manager, Senior VP, NBC Everywhere, NBC Universal
(J) Jeff Dickey - Founder, Business Development, SeeSaw Networks (called himsleft doubleclick for digital signage - exchange type model for people to buy and sell)
(PH) Pat Hellberg - Director, Nike Brand Content Studio, Nike, Inc.
(PJ) Paul Jankauskas - Senior VP, Advertising Sales, Captive Network (screens in high rise office towers. owned by gannet)

Quick note to say that the mood here is exceptionally upbeat.

As most of you know, I’m part cynic, so I’ll say upfront that I think part of the upbeat nature comes from the fact that the people in the booths are sales people and need to sell sell sell, so things will look artificially rosy.

However, there’s just a good vibe - not just in the over-sized exhibit hall, but throughout the Moscone Center.

@ Ad:tech. Will be taking notes from various sessions. These are just notes, not direct quotes…

11:54am
-fourth theme: me, only better
-not just an app, an app or content/tech that will make their lives better
-when you think about your experiences, what is your most important component of your online id. what part of your social network profile is most important. how would you enhance it? on facebook, just being able to find people. enhancement: take away all the silly, useless apps. that’s what happened to myspace. facebook kept it simple. photos r one of the most important things. be able to tag them. photos tell people who i am. one thing that i’d change on facebook (invite so and so - the apps that send out too many invites). too many peeps add lots of causes just to make them seem cool. as a branding, not so interesting, but if they did something, that’s fine.
-i don’t like it when advertisers try to be hip and cool b/c usually you’re not. when advertisers use: kewl…come on, i’m not 5yrs old. don’t do that.

11:48am
-politics of virality
-when you think about something you might choose to pass along, what makes you do or not do it? must be legitimate, for a cause that i support or if it’s funny. if it’s really funny. i check if it’s going to be ok (a site like youtube is ok). must be authentic. it’s not just about humor, it has to also be original. humor. sometimes i pass along deals. socially responsible things.

11:42am
-as opposed to do this game and get a free t-shirt (with a logo for a product i don’t care for), i’d rather play a game that gives to a good cause.
-how do you determine if a co. is socially responsible? i look around at the site. have i heard of it? are there too many ads on it? if it has a valid name behind it or if it’s large. names that you believe that are socially responsible: chevron (word of mouth), energy star, lots of health/beauty: sorry, didn’t catch the names, starbucks (cuts down on trash, composting - but she admits that she works for them), warren buffet & bill gates.

11:36am
-theme 2: click to save the world. kids today are appreciative of companies that are doing good.
-freerice.com (spread completely virally - learn and help people)
-what does the idea of social responsibility mean to you? all about freerice.com, sent it to 20 friends. if we’re going to be saturated with advertising, it should be for a good cause. wants to see a direct difference. freerice for me i really like it. some friends say that they are getting smarter for their sats. i do it b/c it’s interesting and because i’m helping (that’s what i’m about). freerice appeals to a broad range of peeps - fun, but getting something done at the same time.

11:29am
-if i could do everything on one device (phone, programming, email), would you? yes - pda, watch movies anytime. even when
-social networks? facebook facebook facebook. myspace less. youthnoise. can’t get rid of it b/c i have a responsibility to my friends.
-games online? xbox and playstation are now live on the internet, so that’s bigger. tetris obsessed (but heard that it’s good for your brain).
-virtual world? back in middle school was big on it b/c i didn’t go out much. high school got a lot more social, hung out with friends, so not as much virtual. WOW is $30/mo, so i can’t afford it. -how about ads within social networking? reason i stopped doing myspace was that it became over-saturated. facebook it seems less in your face. subtlety is important. advertising is ok as long as it’s helping. sometimes it gets annoying, but they make it not sooo bad. i don’t ever really click on it b/c i’m scared it will be a virus.

11:22am
-convergent media is first topic.
-not just that you can do 2 things with one device, but that you can do two completely diff things.
-likely to watch tv online? theme: yes. fits into schedule much better online. hardly ever watch tv. if there’s a ff button, i’ll avoid the ads.
-what do you think about the ads? theme: it’s completely reasonable. if they show the same commercial 5x throughout the show, it’s annoying, and i don’t remember what car the commercial was for. but sympathetic that they have to pay for it somehow

11:19am
-who is on the panel? high schooler in sf - if he only had 1 media device, he would keep: cell phone to keep in touch with his friends. his friends make him who he is. josie - sophomore in hs - cell phone for emailing and txting. stephen - uc berkeley. could not live without computer. another hs student: computer: gateway to the rest of the world.

11:17am
-this is in contrast to gen x
-i have a stack of too many new yorker’s to get through, too many emails
-i’m not in control
-’earned media’ - user is in control. can do so much more about creating own message.
-broken this into 4 main thematics (the digital core - cool to be good, convergence of screens, politics of virality, young peeps expect all of us to make things easier for them)

11:13am
-used to having pc in the household
-used to customization
-mobility is an expectation
-connectivity is an expectation
-ability to profile self, pics, vids, social networking, ability to produce one’s identity on a daily basis

11:10am
-millenials are 12-24
-53.9m (10.5m are college students)
-1 in 5 are non-white
-9 out of 10 say they are close with their family

Panel moderated by Samantha Skey EVP Alloy

Sphere has been purchased by AOL. Congrats to Tony and his team!

Great to be part of the True family!

One of the sessions I’m participating in next week at the Spring ECMTA Summit is on ‘new media’. Jonathan Garriss is giving me some room to play with this one, so I’ve set up a Facebook group. Please join here (or login to Facebook and search for eCommerce Merchants Trade Association).

I have a feeling that some of the blank faces I was seeing in my audience at Shop.org last September when I mentioned the unthinkable ‘R’ word have finally seen the light. If $100/barrel oil translating to $4/gallon gasoline hasn’t provided the wake up call, then I have a feeling the changing face of offline retailing has. Truth is that gas and food (prices also rising) come first, which means that clothing and furniture merchants are not having the best days.

As the NYTimes points out, “Retailing Chains Caught in a Wave of Bankruptcies.”

The article lists the following retailers in financial distress, closing stores, or scaling back operations:
Levitz (filed for bankruptcy protection)
The Sharper Image (filed for bankruptcy protection)
Linens ‘n Things (possibly filing for bankruptcy protection soon)
Foot Locker (closing 140 stores)
Ann Taylor (closing 117 stores)
Zales (closing 100 stores)
Domain (filed for bankruptcy protection)
Wickes (filed for bankruptcy protection)
Fortunoff (filed for bankruptcy protection)
Harvey Electronics (filed for bankruptcy protection)
Lillian Vernon (filed for bankruptcy protection)
Bombay (filed for bankruptcy protection)
J.C. Penney (scaling back or delaying expansion)
Lowe’s (scaling back or delaying expansion)
Office Depot (scaling back or delaying expansion)
Lane Bryant/Fashion Bug (closing 150 stores)
Wilsons the Leather Experts (closing 158 stores)
Pacific Sunwear (shutting down Demo - 153 stores)

Citigroup’s #1 takaway from ChannelAdvisor’s Catalyst Conference point to continued rosy times for online retailing (read full report):

ChannelAdvisor clients not yet seeing macro-economic slowdown
– Biggest surprise to us was the general consensus among the retailers we spoke with that they were not seeing much impact from macro-economic headwinds (…yet?). Consumer spending remains strong in many categories and sellers were confident that their multi-channel strategies can continue to fuel growth.

But I think Mark Mahaney’s comment that the majority of the sellers at the conference are just now expanding beyond eBay explains a lot of this optimism:

Key item to remember here is that most of the retailers who are clients of ChannelAdvisor are primarily eBay sellers and many of them are only just now expanding beyond eBay into other marketplaces (i.e. AMZN or Overstock), comparison shopping, and in early stages of search engine marketing.

Understand that I’m not predicting all doom and gloom regarding online sales. Growth in online sales will still handily beat growth in offline sales. I’m just not expecting the rosy predictions of 17% growth (Forrester) to come in anywhere near on target. There will be plenty of merchants that buck the trend, particularly the savviest online marketers using analytics and expanding to new online marketing channels.

More on our fragile economy soon…

Google started testing it’s search within a search feature more than a month ago. As I said in my initial post, the important things to note about the new functionality were 1) the Google Shopping link and 2) the ever-present Google Adwords listings.

In Bob Tedeschi’s NYTimes article on March 24, he went with the shocker of a headline: A New Tool From Google Alarms Sites. In the article, industry pundits like Alan Rimm-Kaufmann expressed concern over the feature. Ice.com’s ever-present VP of Marketing, Pinny Gniwisch said “Google’s new feature did not appear when users searched for Ice.com, but he said he would object if it did.” And the article pretty much stated that Amazon had requested that Google remove the Amazon search within a search feature.

When the feature first launched, Borders, BestBuy, and OfficeMax were the other large retailers discovered to have the feature active. BestBuy is the only retailer that still seems to have the functionality live.

The main point I picked up from Bob Tedeschi’s article was that the basic problem publishers/retailers had with the new functionality was that Google is selling Adwords ads against brand names. A big no no in the eyes of so many.

But the most important line in the article is Alan Rimm-Kaufmann’s quotation: “Some of our retail clients have pretty horrible site search,” he said. “So for them, this will be a benefit.”

Well, I’ll go a step further and say that this will be an extremely popular and well accepted program for 1000s of retailers.

Why?

Because it’s not only that some retailers have horrible site search, it’s that 10s of 1000s of retailers have a long way to go to providing a smart shopping experience. When sites don’t have proper site search, proper categorization, and don’t provide a logical UI, consumers can’t find anything or at least give up fairly quickly.

There are a lot of factors which contribute to a low conversion rate for retailers, but with Google search within a search, 10s of 1000s of poorly thought out sites can benefit because Google will bring consumers directly to product pages.

And while I agree that the creme de la creme of the brand name retailers will not put up with Google Adwords ads featuring competitors next to their precious content, the creme de la creme might represent less than 1% of all internet retailers (there are only 400 IR top 400 retailers out of about 300,000 online merchants).

Some portion of the other 299,600 merchants on the web are going to be fine seeing competitor product listings right next to their own. In fact, 1000s are already are used to it. Amazon might not want Google to display competitor listings in Adwords ads next to Amazon search within a search content, but Amazon enables a similar ability on Amazon.com through its Marketplace and Product Ads programs.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll be speaking at the 2008 Spring eCommerce Summit hosted by PESA, Infopia, and ECMTA.

Looks like a solid agenda (even with me speaking).

This link will give a $100 discount for non-members.

Thanks to Jonathan Garriss (Executive Director of PESA, CEO of Gotham City Online) for inviting me.

Become scored a big Series C. The profitable (since Oct/Nov of 2007) shopping engine raised $17.5MM from TPG Growth, an investment arm of Texas Pacific Group (TPG) with about $2.5BB under management. Taek Kwon, Operating Partner @ TPG Growth will join the Board. Taek was one of the founders of Hotwire and then worked at InterActive Corp (Citysearch) for 6 years before briefly becoming the CEO of Friendster. Here’s the press release.

Become previously raised $7.2MM in its Series B from TransCosmos and $4.5MM in its Series A from its founders plus a couple Angels (Ron Conway). That puts the total funding raised at just over $29MM. TransCosmos did not participate in this round of financing.

So what does Become do with the fresh infusion of cash? Well the obvious answer is grow the business and take on the big boys - NexTag, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, PriceGrabber, Google Product Search, and Yahoo! Shopping.

I spoke with Michael Yang, CEO of Become, about the funding. He wasn’t as open as he usually is, so here are just a couple snipets:

Why TPG Growth? I know of them as a PE firm…
“TPG has a lot of expertise in retail and technology. They have invested in Travelocity, Neiman Marcus, and Petco so they understand the opportunities available in online retail. Also, they had the right global footprint.”

What will the money be used for?
“We’re not announcing some of the new business initiatives that we’re looking at. We’re going to strengthen our core comparison shopping business as well as our core search technology to go into new verticals. We have developed powerful capabilities using our search engine. We’re also going to invest in our SEM platform.”

It’s a crowded market. Why did TPG Growth invest?
“TPG saw strong core technology as part of the DNA. Our core search tech allows us to crawl the web – over 5BB pages – we not only offer comparison shopping, but research on the best products to purchase. We’re also leveraging our core search technology in SEM efforts. We have a powerful SEM platform – we have an enormous volume of information about products on the web.” [This can be used for keyword generation, automated bidding, global optimization - we look at our SEM campaign on a portfolio level.]

“Another thing that TPG Growth saw is that comparison shopping is still a huge opportunity. The market is still growing at 30%/yr.”

You sold MySimon to CNET for $700MM. What’s different now?
“There’s a lot more opportunity in the core product - search algorithm opportunities that better match results to search queries, better user experience and better monetization opportunities. There are also a lot more ways to access the traffic, like syndication partnerships. Our partnership with WashingtonPost.com is a good example. Comparison shopping engines today are so much better: the search algorithm, better user generated content, more user generated content, better content from the merchants, social shopping (we introduced shopping lists). Comparison shopping engines have become a lot better than they were 10yrs ago, but it’s still early.”

So what’s the exit? Google, Yahoo! and IAC all own shopping engines…
“Our goal is to build a great business that’s built to last and become one of the top shopping engines. The exit will take care of itself – whether it’s an IPO or a partnership.”

So here’s my read:
-It’s really tough being an under-capitalized business, so it makes sense to raise $17.5MM…especially with the current market condition
-After paring back a bit in terms of headcount, I’d expect Become to bulk up again
-Become will get a lot more aggressive in terms of PPC buying
-Become will get a lot more aggressive in terms of partnerships
-While Michael says Become will move into other verticals, I think its main focus and core money-maker will be comparison shopping for a long time. Become tried being something other than a comparison shopping engine for a while (pushing it’s crawled listings of product reviews and buying guides), but it took a focus on comparison shopping to become profitable.
-With this money, Become can afford to get sidestracked a bit, but not too much. I’d expect Become to go into related verticals that some of the other shopping engines are participating in. Think Lead gen services like local, online education, travel, and lending.
-The exit is going to be tough. Google, Yahoo, and IAC all own shopping engines. That leaves Microsoft, but obviously Microsoft is going to have its hands full for a while.