This past weekend we released several enhancements to our ChannelAdvisor Complete platform to give our customers new + improved functionality for selling products across online channels such as eBay, Amazon, Google,  Shopping.com or Shopzilla (and we’ve added even more sites!).

Highlights include:

• New Marketplaces - ChannelAdvisor is proud to be the first multi-channel solution to support the new Pixmania (www.pixmania.com) and Trading Post (www.tradingpost.com.au) marketplaces. Pixmania is a fast-growing, pan-European shopping site owned by DSG International, one of Europe’s largest consumer electronics retailers, and offers online shoppers consumer electronics, home & garden, toys, jewelry and many other products. Trading Post is the leading classifieds site in Australia and now offers online retailers the opportunity to post auction-style listings on its site.

• eBay Fixed Price Relisting - We extended our relisting functionality to support the new eBay Multi-Quantity Fixed-Price listing format so that users in the US and UK can not only post with the new 30-Day Fixed-Price duration from MarketplaceAdvisor Premium but automatically relist to maximize sales history and Best Match ranking (if certain conditions are met).

• Search Account Synchronizer - We added options so that users have more control over how frequently we synchronize their SearchAdvisor account with Google, Yahoo, or MSN. We have also reduced the scheduled frequency of this synchronization and give you options to configure based on your needs.

• Search Bid Manager – We made some adjustments to our Bid Manager algorithm to account for some recent Google changes including last week’s rollout of its latest Quality Score improvement.  The result is that we will continue to focus on making bid changes that are designed to achieve profitability goals.

• PriceGrabber Marketing Cost - ShoppingAdvisor users now have the option to receive and integrate marketing cost data into performance reports for the comparison shopping site PriceGrabber in the UK and US.

• StoreAdvisor Premium - We continue to enhance our new, full featured online storefront integrated into MarketplaceAdvisor Premium and added functionality to expand inventory management and synchronization. StoreAdvisor Premium users also now have the option to use the Webloyalty affiliate program in their checkout.

Click here to view the full release notes and let us know what you think on our Strategy & Support Center forum.

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Fraudulent clicks can kill a search engine marketing program. Costs can skyrocket, and for the on-line retailer, revenue goes nowhere. Most of my clients worry about it, and it’s tough to impossible to get a complete understanding of the size or scope of the actual problem. In part to protect their ability to stop click fraud, the search providers release few details on the extent of the problem and specifically how they combat it. The search engines say the problem is minimal, and that they have sophisticated tools for detecting and eliminating click fraud. But along comes Click Forensics, a company that provides click fraud detection tools and services, and they claim the problem is getting worse.

Now, before I go any further, let’s get all our cards on the table and make sure we understand everyone’s motivations. Click Forensics provides click fraud tools and services, so they obviously believe click fraud is a big problem, and have an interest in proving it. On the other side of the coin are the search engines, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Ask, who make money from the clicks, but risk losing advertisers if the problem is perceived to be large. It can also be a big headache for them to manually review click fraud claims and issue refunds, and they also put a lot of resources into algorithmically eliminating click fraud as well. My motivations are somewhere in the middle: I manage paid search campaigns for ChannelAdvisor clients so if click fraud hurts their businesses, it hurts me too. If click fraud is not a problem, I’ll focus my search marketing energies elsewhere.

For our purposes here, let’s define a fraudulent click as a click on a company’s paid search ad with the sole purpose of either driving up their cost or somehow getting paid for the click. For searches done on the actual search engines, the “search network”, the incentives to cheat aren’t that high. There is no way for the person clicking to get paid; the main thing is just to run up a competitor’s bill. Google and others are good at detecting these clicks and generally eliminate them from the search marketer’s bill. Most legitimate companies aren’t going to spend much time creating bots, or outsourcing just to hurt their competition a little bit. It could quickly escalate to the point where no one benefits.

However, on the content network there IS incentive to cheat. The content networks are all the sites that display ads and get paid when those ads are clicked on. Google’s AdSense program is a content network, and my blog has AdSense ads. If someone visits my website (it happened just last month), and clicks on one of the ads, I get paid by Google. That’s where fraud can come into play. Website publishers will click on the ads on their website to increase the amount they get paid. Not surprisingly, the content network is also where Click Forensics sees the highest fraud rate. According to Click Forensics:

The rate of click fraud in on-line pay-per-click advertising hit 16.2% in the third quarter, up 17.4% from 13.8% a year earlier and the highest level this year, according to the quarterly Click Fraud Index. The click fraud rate for affiliate sites was 28.1%, up from 19.4% at year-end 2006, when the index first began tracking affiliate click fraud activity.

The average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks, including Google AdSense and the Yahoo Publisher Network, also has risen steadily in 2007, reaching 21.9% in the first quarter and 25.6% in the second quarter.

Over 60% of traffic from parked domains and made-for-ad sites was click fraud, according to the index. A parked domain is an inactive domain reserved for later use or one that points to another existing domain.

The search providers have been putting a lot of resources into improving the content network both by eliminating aggregation sites and detecting fraudulent clicks. For the search marketer, you can opt out of displaying your ads on specific sites as well.

At the end of the day, the content network is just another outlet for paid search marketing. It needs to prove itself just as the search network does. Some of my clients have had success with the content network, and as the providers improve their detection tools, we will periodically do additional testing. The content network can be useful to grow additional revenue once the search networks are running smoothly or to help build your brand. If you choose to experiment with the content network, create separate campaigns and monitor them separately. Identify the sites that are converting and focus your campaigns on them. Despite the fraud, it is possible to make money on the content networks. But because of the potential of fraud, you need to be careful.

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Well, we’ve just about (but not quite!) recovered from the first ChannelAdvisor Insite event of 2007 which took place yesterday in central London.

Over 30 UK online retailers joined ChannelAdvisor and Google (who were Platinum Sponsors) for an information-packed day of presentations, discussions and workshops about the current opportunities for online retailers in the UK.

The day started with a look at recent UK eCommerce Trends followed by an introduction to the fundamentals drivers of success on marketplaces (such as eBay and Amazon Merchants@), shopping comparison websites and paid search campaigns.

After lunch the group then split into two ’streams’ to dive into some more advanced strategies for optimising each of these channels in preparation for the rapidly-approaching Q4 busy season. Attendees also got the opportunity to hear first-hand from Aidan O’Curry and Richard Keelty from Google Europe about how Google Checkout and Google Product Search can drive more sales and reduce costs for online retailers.

A big thanks to our sponsors: Google (Platinum), PayPal (Gold), Cybersource (Gold) and FOEB (Silver) without whom the Insite series of events wouldn’t be able to happen. We look forward to the next events up in Manchester on the 5th September, and then on to Glasgow, Birmingham and finally Dublin.

If you were at the event yesterday - thanks for coming - we’d love to hear your comments!

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Google posted this afternoon that the announced changes to the Top Ad Placement formula are now in effect. From discussions we have had this change has been difficult for many retailers to understand and has caused some confusion about the impact. In short:

Old method

Top ads (above the natural results) were placed based on a combination of the quality score and the actual CPC paid.

All other ads (right hand rail and beyond page one) were placed based on a combination of the quality score and the amount the advertiser was willing to pay (the max CPC).

New method

All ads are placed based on the combination of quality score and max CPC.

In talking with a couple folks at Google last night at the Google Dance one of the reasons for this change was that good, quality ads that did not have “auction based pressure” were not getting elevated to the top spots. In Google’s view the presence of this is out of the advertiser’s control and as a result the ability to get to the top could be constrained by a factor that was out of your control. This change should allow ads to get to the top even if they are the only advertiser bidding on that keyword. Google is encouraging advertisers to watch their results closely which is always a good idea.

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Several of us from ChannelAdvisor are attending the Search Engine Strategies (SES) conference this week in San Jose. SES San Jose is historically the largest search conference and this year is no exception.
Highlights thus far:

Keynotes - very solid keynotes from Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com and Marissa Mayer, VP Search Products & User Experience at Google. Both stressed that search technology still has a long way to go to help users find what they want faster. Search is an “impatient activity” and both sites are changing how they display results with the goal of getting users what they are looking for, faster. Interesting to see how this develops as they have taken very different approaches to solving this problem. Google believes the best way is to integrate other types of search results (maps, books, images, etc) in the core search results and rank them based on relevancy - this is Universal Search which was rolled out in May of this year. Ask.com has taken a different approach and places different types of results in different places on the page using a columnar approach with what they call Ask 3D. Look for some new commercials from Ask starting next week that attempt to really set them apart in this regard.

Google Dance - as always, Google knows how to throw a party and last night’s Google Dance lived up to high expectations. Between product demos, food from the Google Kitchen, meeting with the Google engineers or just a full on dance party there was something for everyone.

Catching Up - SES is a great event to catch up with customers, partners and other friends in the business not to mention just getting a pulse on what everyone else is talking about.

More sessions and meetings to get to before heading back to the office and putting all we have learned to work.

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