OTTO increases its marketing efficiency significantly by partnering with Comparison Shopping Service shopping24
Goals
Increase marketing efficiency of Shopping Ads channel
Expand reach in newly added and niche categories
Approach
Otto launched Shopping Ads through CSSs in addition to its existing Shopping Ads
Tested Shopping ads and CSS Shopping Ads alongside one another to understand and identify performance levers for their business
Maintained similar bid levels to ensure equal head-to-head comparison
Results
Improved cost of sales ratio by more than 10% for the campaigns delivered through the CSS partnership with shopping24.
Expanded activities through CSSs in Shopping Ads
How OTTO and shopping24 collaborated
As one of the leading online retailers in Germany, OTTO has developed high proficiency in marketing their product portfolio digitally and cross-channel. A key element of OTTO’s performance marketing strategy has been the usage of Shopping Ads. The recent integration of Comparison Shopping Services into Shopping Ads enabled the OTTO team to explore new growth opportunities in terms of efficiency and brand awareness.
A Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) is a website that collects product offers from online retailers and then sends users to the retailers’ websites to make a purchase. Merchants need to work with at least one CSS to begin placing Shopping Ads on Google’s general search result pages.
OTTO’s savvy Shopping and Price Comparison team used their feed and bid management expertise to run Shopping Ads through the CSS channel. Leveraging their in-house feed optimization technologies and proprietary bid management solution, they partnered with shopping24, an experienced comparison shopping site. The goal: evaluating the efficiency potential of Shopping Ads through CSS compared to their existing Shopping ads approach.
Before launching the test, both sides closely aligned in terms of feed and campaign management since OTTO decided to self-manage the Shopping Ads through shopping24.
Throughout and after the test, OTTO kept full control over campaign settings, access and strategy. This was an essential criterion for OTTO when choosing shopping24 as CSS partner. The technical implementation was done in less than a week with support from the experienced shopping24 experts.
“The integration of Comparison Shopping Services established new growth potential for us. Shopping ads had already proven to be an extremely well-performing channel. Through close collaboration with shopping24, we could quickly identify the advantages of working with CSSs and thus increase the overall efficiency of Shopping Ads.”
- Melanie Schlegel, Head of Paid Search, OTTO
Finding the optimal test setup
To create a valid testing environment, OTTO selected a diverse portfolio of products across categories ranging from home furniture to consumer electronics and apparel. The existing Shopping Ads campaign logic was duplicated into a separate CSS Google Ads account which was linked to OTTO’s feed within the shopping24 merchant center. Thanks to OTTO’s innovative and advanced campaign management approach, all available performance levers in running Shopping Ads through CSS could be tested. Their skilled team quickly iterated on the first results to develop an optimal setup ensuring both flexibility to control traffic and ROI, while achieving their targets.
“Advertising our products on Shopping Ads through shopping24 has proven to enhance our presence, reducing our cost of sales significantly, while delivering on par results.”
- Christina Volz and Juliane Raemsch, responsible Online Marketing Managers at OTTO
Results: more than 10% increased marketing efficiency
Within a few weeks, first results were visible to OTTO. Click and conversion volumes for Shopping Ads through CSS were at least on par or even higher in comparison to Shopping ads. Since Shopping ads is deducting a fixed percentage margin from each merchant bid before entering it into the auction, the average CPC level on CSS was significantly lower. This allowed OTTO to acquire click traffic more efficiently via shopping24.
“Helping our shop partners to increase marketing efficiency is our main goal at shopping24. Shopping Ads through CSS helped a great deal with that.”
- Franziska Hagen, Head of Paid Search at shopping24 internet group
As a result, OTTO could increase efficiency and improve the cost of sales ratio by more than 10%1.
Consequently, OTTO has decided to expand their partnership with shopping24 and move more categories to the CSS channel.
