What is a Comparison Shopping Service (CSS)?
Until 2017, Google gave preference to its own Google Shopping ads and disadvantaged other offers from external price comparison portals in Google Search. For this reason, Google was fined 2.42 billion euros by the European Commission. Since then, the revised Google Shopping Europe (GSE) ad platform has been in place, which treats all competitors equally.
Accordingly, the competing Comparison Shopping Services can advertise on Shopping ads just like Google Shopping on behalf of merchants and thus serve as intermediaries between Google and the merchants.
A Comparison Shopping Service is therefore, like Google Shopping, a price comparison portal that can be used to display shopping ads on search results pages. CSS Partners opened up the competition for product searches external to Google Shopping.
Why can it help to switch to an external CSS provider like Shopstory?
Switching to an external Comparison Shopping Services (CSS) provider can help achieve lower click prices. Using an external CSS provider, such as through Shopstory, can result in lower click prices. Google adds a margin of about 20% when using Google's own CSS. This means that about 20% of the bid is not effectively used for bidding. How high this margin is exactly, Google unfortunately does not reveal and it is also shown.
How does the bidding work?
If the Google CSS is used and is bid on a shopping ad with 1 €, Google effectively goes with about 0.80 € in the bidding. With an external CSS provider like Shopstory, however, the full amount of 1.00 € would be used for bidding.
The change to Shopstory CSS has led to lower click prices for many of our customers and we want to pass on this advantage.
Where can I see the Shopstory CSS?
Which CSS is used is visible in the shopping ad. It is displayed small below the shopping ad. Otherwise, it is visible in the settings, both in Google Ads and in Merchant Center.
How does the change to the Shopstory CSS work?
Switching to the CSS of Shopstory is usually simple and fast.
1) If we already have access with administration rights to the Merchant Center of your store, we can perform the change completely independently.
2) Otherwise, we have the option to make a request to switch to our CSS, which can then be accepted directly by you in the Merchant Center (see screenshot).
That's it - now you have the chance to benefit from lower click prices.