Forum Moderators: buckworks
eBay plans to acquire Shopping.com in a $620 million cash transaction aimed at resuscitating the auction giant's slowing growth rate.
[news.com.com...]
[reuters.com...]
They want to make more money so they raise their minimum bids. This causes them to loose advertisers. So now they aren't making enough money so they have to raise the minimum bids again... They have done this to me twice already this year. They should have open bidding like Y!SM and G do. Let the market decide what your clicks are worth.
Hopefully ebay will better manage this great marketing tool.
Bad business advice I mean someone told me a name could be harmless as a ebay affiliate program so I did then like google just did " Stabbed me in the back " I tell ya the little guy gets it from all sides when your doing the big boyz a favor :(
From Reuters:
The purchase also gives Ebay's sellers a new sales channel and access to a new set of buyers. Shopping.com also has more than 400,000 so-called Epinion reviewers that Ebay said would complement its own community-feedback-based marketplace.
This will open up many new opportunities to encourage new shoppers to use eBay's platforms. Brilliant move. SHOP has also had some strong growth, which is what eBay needs to start showing.
EBay-Shopping.com Deal Made Out Of Necessity"EBay's acquisition of Shopping.com is an acknowledgment of the fact that increasingly eBay buyers and sellers are looking beyond the eBay platform for online purchases, including the search for bargains and trusted merchants--two attributes that traditionally have been eBay's main offerings," said Piper.
Rest of this short article here [forbes.com]
ie. boor.
This pc space is very competitive. SHOP realizes this and puts a contextual advertising feed as the first 'pseudo-results' that you see.
Check out any product page and the first thing you see is ads. Secondly you'll see price comparison. I think SHOP found out that doing PPC arbitrage brings in more money then price comparison. Is this really what ebay needs? Sounds like more of a speculation on increasing CPC arbitrage...in the end, google + OV win.
just saw a change after writing the above...looks like SHOP just changed their site to have the price comparison at the top and the ads are now at the bottom as 'additional resources'. Must have done a quick switch-a-roo just before the ebay anouncement.
Give it a month...the ads will be back at the top.
I think SHOP found out that doing PPC arbitrage brings in more money then price comparison.
I don't think SHOP agrees with you. This is from their March 2005 SEC filing. Please make note of the last sentence.:
Revenues. Our revenues consist primarily of revenues from lead referrals; they also include banner and sponsorship advertising revenues and a small amount of other revenues. Our revenues were $21.0 million for the three months ended March 31, 2004 and $28.9 million for the three months ended March 31, 2005, including revenues from lead referrals of $19.3 million and $27.3 million for the three months ended March 31, 2004 and 2005, respectively.
The increases in our revenues reflect growth in the volume of lead referrals to merchants and other listings providers, which rose from 67.7 million in the three months ended March 31, 2004 to 82.3 million in the three months ended March 31, 2005, and average revenues per lead referral of $0.286 and $0.332 for the three months ended March 31, 2004 and 2005, respectively. The increase in lead referral revenues was caused by a higher volume of lead referrals as a result of greater consumer usage. Revenues per lead referral principally increased as a result of the Company increasing the minimum price per lead referral in April 2004 and February 2005. We anticipate seasonal fluctuations in our minimum price per lead referral, including a planned summer decrease and a planned increase in the fourth quarter 2005.
Banner and sponsorship advertising revenues remained relatively flat at about $1.6 million, for the three months ended March 31, 2004 and 2005. We believe that banner and sponsorship advertising revenues will continue to comprise less than 10% of our total revenues in the future.
The New York Times will quote from its results to give prices on electronic gear they review.
The site makes money and dovetails well enough (albeit, not perfectly) with eBay.
This is a win-win-win-win for shopping.com, ebay, consumers and savvy marketers who know how to use a good network.
But, as anyone hanging out on this web site for more than five minutes, web marketing is not for the kids any more.
Back on topic though Shopping.com is a great site I use it all the time to get competitive quotes for products I list.
sean, their attribute search is better then most but I hate it when a website lies to me. They'll put the phrase 'full description' as if the page contains that, as a non href; to have folks think they have more information on the product...when they really dont. Obviously it's just the 'desc' database field = null, but why seo on that when you know you dont have it in the db.
The increases in our revenues reflect growth in the volume of lead referrals to merchants and other listings providers, which rose from 67.7 million in the three months ended March 31, 2004 to 82.3 million in the three months ended March 31, 2005, and average revenues per lead referral of $0.286 and $0.332 for the three months ended March 31, 2004 and 2005, respectively
According to MarketWatch [marketwatch.com] (which is by no means always accurate)
.......At the same time, 45% of the comparison-shopping engines' revenue comes from Google.
AdSense may very well be classified as "lead referrals" cause it's not banners and Shopping.com has some of its own sponsorships. If there isn't content in Shopping.com to match a search, AdWords always shows something.
so, with ebay's PR and backlinks, ebay.com/shopping will essentially drawn everyone else.
