Commission Junction product search doesn't work?

commission junction

[rustyzipper]

I'm hoping I'm missing something, but it seems like the most basic, prominent feature of commission junction just flat out doesn't work - SEARCH.

In my case, I am a new advertiser and am trying to encourage blogs and industry related sites to highlight items from our product catalog, but whether logged in as an advertiser or publisher, the product search just flat out doesn't work. It doesn't return results from my catalog by SKU, keyword, item name, description, etc. I've found this to be the case in general when searching other advertisers product catalogs as well.

The only answer I've gotten back from CJ is that most publishers don't use search they just publish text or banner ads or download a whole product feed - not something I wanted to hear after plunking down $6k.

I am interested in targeting smaller niche sites that are not going to have the expertise to deal with a product feed, yet will want to feature my products.

Am I missing something basic or does the product search really just not work?

Thanks!

[LifeinAsia]

It doesn't work very well. If over 1000 results are found, you just get a message saying to narrow the search. But no indication about HOW to narrow it further.

[rustyzipper]

In my case I do have more than 1,000 products, but any search I do within my product catalog comes up empty. I've found this to be the case with other advertisers when doing a search for a general term that should match their inventory.

Any other CJ advertisers out there with product search experience?

Thanks

[adamxcl]

CJ is not very helpful in this area. I too have searches that come up with too many results. I remember one advertiser that dumper their whole catalog in there, which is fine, but you couldn't get to any of it because it was all so similar and I couldn't find a way to filter it.

[rustyzipper]

CJ resolved the search problem with our product catalog. Apparently it was just a delay in getting our product catalog indexed after becoming a new advertiser. My general impression of CJ so far is that they're really geared towards larger publishers who have the expertise to integrate product feeds or smaller sites that just want to run banner ads.

We went ahead and developed a way for our affiliates to retrieve code for individual products from our website. I was hoping they would have better functionality to allow small advertisers to easily add products to their site. They do have the GET HTML once you do find a product, but the product search is very very basic & there are not very many formats when you do retrieve the HTML.

Is Google's Affiliate program much better in these areas?

Thanks!