Channel Intelligence Blog

New Metrics for Measuring the Effectiveness of Display Advertising

Do you currently use online display advertising? Are you interested in learning how performance of this media can be measured more accurately? 

Join us for a webinar Thursday, November 19, at 2 PM EDT. 

Traditionally, online display advertising (banner ads, anyone?) were measured only in terms of clicks or impressions. With clicks on the decline and budgets tightening, it’s important to measure accurately the true effectiveness of display advertising campaigns so marketers like you can make informed decisions to maximize your ad spend.

Now, it’s possible to measure a display ad’s effect beyond immediate clicks. In fact, it’s proven that buying behavior is affected even in consumers who may have seen an ad but didn’t click it. Display ads are also known to produce an effect on other seemingly unrelated marketing campaigns. Now, an ad’s effects can be quantified in concrete terms. 

This improved measurement lets marketers better target future ads to continually improve performance, as well as determine more effective allocation of marketing budgets.

Steven Roth, VP, Performance Marketing at CI, presents this new webinar, promising to help advertisers learn more about the best ways to measure and improve the effectiveness of display ads. 

Register for the webinar here!

Tips for Accelerating Product Sales with Google – Recorded Webinar Now Available

Our latest webinar, Accelerating Product Sales from Google, is now available online.

In this webinar, representatives from CI and Google provide tips, such as which changes to a merchant's data feed can make the biggest impact, and discuss upcoming Google enhancements that will be available for the 2009 holiday season. Access the recorded webinar here.

Some of the points addressed include:

• How to take advantage of Google's new Gallery View feature, which will soon be widely available.
• How a merchant's data feed is used to power other Google properties, including AdWords, OneBox and the Google Affiliate Network.
• What changed with the switch from Google Base to the new Google Merchant Center.
• What to do when a merchant has issues submitting a data feed to Google.
• How reviews can be used to differentiate a merchant's listing.
• Tips for promoting local stores on Google via the product data feed.

You're sure to take away about a dozen points that you can put into practice right away. Enjoy!

New Webinar: Accelerating Product Performance and Sales from Google Starts with Your Data Feed

Have some time available this afternoon? Why not stop by for our latest webinar, scheduled for today, Wednesday, October 14, 2009, from 1:00 PM to 2:00 PM EDT. 

The webinar will feature how to boost product sales through enriched product data feeds and other retailer-tested tips, as well as introduce several new innovations merchants can draw on. Guest speakers from Google, Inc. will join CI to present upcoming Google enhancements that retailers can leverage for the 2009 holiday season.

Guest speakers Vivek Tata, Associate Product Marketing Manager, and Sarah Beritzhoff, Strategic Partner Manager, of Google, Inc., will join CI’s Larry Weeks, Senior Manager of Strategic Marketing Consulting, and Rob Streeter, Sr. Manager Partner Development, to discuss ways merchants can better leverage Google for a more profitable 2009 holiday shopping season.

A foundational element often overlooked when advertising on Google is the provision of content rich, high-quality data feeds, since Google's powerful database leverages data feeds to render the merchants' products to the right consumer at the right time. Expect to learn more about this essential element and its role in successful campaigns, as well as a host of other ways to improve sales performance. 

Register here: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/954874201

Channel Intelligence Acquires Storefront, Order Management and Fulfillment Assets from Vcommerce

CI just announced it has acquired certain key assets of Vcommerce, a  provider of ecommerce software solutions located in Scottsdale, AZ. Through a new, wholly owned subsidiary, CI will provide storefront, order management and fulfillment services to retailers, manufacturers and publishers across several industry verticals.

The combination of the Vcommerce storefront and fulfillment services with Channel Intelligence’s industry leading performance based marketing solutions means CI will now offer the industry’s most complete set of services for manufacturers, publishers and retailers.

With its new capabilities, CI will be a leading provider of Commerce Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions, with over $2B annually in referred sales to leading manufacturers and retailers such as Best Buy, HP Home and Home Office, Kimberly-Clark, Neiman Marcus, Philips, Target, Garmin, OfficeMax,  Samsung, Charming Shoppes, Black & Decker and hundreds more. The acquisition will expand CI’s e-commerce platform services, increasing its overall customer base to 235, with more than 25% represented in the Internet Retailer Top 250.

CI will also maintain a west coast office in Phoenix, AZ, in addition to its headquarters located in Orlando, FL and its European offices.

Read more in the official press release here.

Find us at the Shop.org Annual Summit

Drop by Booth No. 731 at the Shop.org Annual Summit in Las Vegas this year (Sept. 21-23) to say hello and see what’s new with CI.

Our booth this year is going to be all abuzz as we unveil several new services. With our recent acquisition of Vcommerce assets, we’re excited about introducing our new eCommerce Storefront, Order Management and Fulfillment & Integration Solutions.

We’ve also been cooking up a few new offerings on the home front, specifically a new enterprise-level Paid Search Solution and a Display Advertising Solution. These new products leverage proprietary CI technology to help manufacturers and retailers get more from their online advertising channels.

Look us up to get all the details firsthand or check our site for more information next week!

Shopping Engine Self Management Portal Gives Diapers.com a Much-Needed “Change”

We’d like to welcome Diapers.com on board with our SellCast® Solutions. Here’s their story…

Diapers.com had been advertising on shopping engines since 2007 but was outgrowing its initial service provider. The marketing team at Diapers.com still wanted to manage all the major aspects of their shopping engine program, but they needed better optimization of data feeds, better reporting--and most importantly, better management tools that would let them easily manipulate data feeds on-the-fly.

After evaluating offerings from several providers, they choose CI. 

Now after using our BETA Self Management Portal (due for September release) for over a month, they’re seeing an average conversion rate of about 4% and a return of over $6 for every dollar spent. 

See what Diapers.com had to say in the press release...

Now Find us on Facebook!

CI now has its own page on Facebook where you can see our latest news, case studies, and fans.

Click to see Channel Intelligence’s Facebook page. While you’re there, become a fan or add us to your page’s favorites!

You Don't Know the Players Without a Program

Thanks for checking us out. The Channel Intelligence blog will cover a number of different Commerce topics. We've assembled a team of our experts to write on these topics and I'd like to introduce them to you now.

Alan Fulmer - that's me. EVP and co-founder of Channel Intelligence. I'll be contributing to a number of different categories. You can see my bio here.

Chuck Kronbach - Senior Vice President, CI Ad Network and SellCore. Prior to joining CI, Chuck worked for Amazon. You can see Chuck's bio here.

Patrick Thompson - Senior Vice President, Architecture. Patrick is formerly with Microsoft. His main areas of expertise are categorization, keywords and attributes. You can see Patrick's bio here.

Vik Murty - Vice President, SellPath. Vik is formerly with Mitsubishi. His main areas of expertise are branding, content publishing and CI's manufacturer solutions. You can see Vik's bio here.

Tim Tryzbiak - Vice President, Operations. Tim will mainly be writing about data feeds. You can see Tim's bio here.

Roger Robbins - Vice President, SellCore. Roger will focus primarily on publisher topics. Just to be clear, we define publishers as content providers that are neither retailers or manufacturers. In other words, they don't make stuff or sell stuff, they write about or relay information about stuff.

Steve Roth - Vice President, Strategic Consulting. Steve is our resident expert on managed services for retailers.

David Schrader - Program Manager, Market Intelligence. David knows reporting. David knows tagging. David knows data. Market analytics wil be his primary contribution to this blog.