December 13, 2019
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 use of Shopping Ads. The ability to place Shopping Ads by collaborating with Comparison Shopping Services enabled the OTTO team to explore new growth opportunities in terms of efficiency and brand awareness.
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 was to evaluate the efficiency potential of Shopping Ads by comparing different CSSs.
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 shopping24 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 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.Juliane Raemsch, responsible Online Marketing Manager at OTTO
Finding the optimal test setup
Within a few weeks, first results were visible to OTTO. Click and conversion volumes for Shopping Ads through shopping24 were at least on par or even higher than before. The average CPC level on shopping24 was significantly lower. This allowed OTTO to acquire click traffic more efficiently.
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%.