TPE #35: how to get 20% discount on Shopping Ads
Mar 27, 2023Read time: 3 minutes
Did you know European advertisers can get a 20% discount on all Google Shopping clicks?
How, you ask? With CSS partners!
Most of you will know about this, but for those that don’t, this newsletter is going to help you save 20% on Shopping clicks.
Before we dig in: yes, this also applies to Shopping clicks in Performance Max campaigns.
Get 20% off on Google Shopping clicks with CSS partners
Let’s start with a quick breakdown of why this is actually a thing.
Merchants can list their products on the Google Shopping through a Comparison Shopping Service (CSS). Before 2017, Google was the only CSS, giving them an unfair advantage. Why? Because they took a margin of 20% on all clicks.
Yes, you read that right: if you paid €1.00 for a click, €0.80 would go into the auction and €0.20 would go to Google… As an additional margin.
What?!
In 2017, Google received a record fine of 2.4 BILLION euros by the European Commission for abuse of power and unfair use of monopoly. As a result, Google launched the CSS program, opening up the platform to third parties.
Most of these new CSS partners (like ProductHero for example) only charge a small monthly fee and don’t take a 20% margin on top of clicks. Therefore, you get a 20% discount on Shopping clicks - that you can save or use to push harder:
This is how to recognize CSS partners on the search engine results page:
Case study: higher Impression Share, lower CPC
After implementing ProductHero CSS in one of our accounts, the average CPC instantly dropped with 19%, delivering its promise.
As a result, we were able to push harder and get +4% Search Impression Share with the same budget:
Just watch how the blue line (average CPC) beautifully went down and the red line (impressions) went up after implementing ProductHero CSS.
How to choose the right CSS partner?
If you go online, you’ll quickly see there are hundreds, if not thousands of CSS partners to choose from. Most of them offer the same benefi: 20% discount on Shopping Ads. They all cost around the same price too.
It doesn’t really matter which one you choose as long as they have a trustworthy name and good support.
However, we always use ProductHero CSS, because they offer additional tooling alongside the CSS benefits:
- Optimizer for title optimizations
- Labelizer for advanced Shopping/pMax campaign structures
- Pricelizer for price scraping and benchmarking
With regard to additional benefits, ProductHero is the best and our preferred CSS partner.
Check out more info on how to get 20% off Shopping clicks with ProductHero here.
Disclaimer: this newsletter is NOT sponsored by ProductHero but we did include affiliate links. We only ever recommend tools we actually use ourselves. ProductHero is a fantastic company that has a big, positive impact on the PPC world and we’re 100% sure you will improve your Shopping/pMax performance just by using them as your CSS partner.
That’s all for today - see you again next week!
Cheers,
Bob & Miles
p.s. YES, the 20% discount on Shopping clicks also applies if you run Performance Max campaigns!
