Google CSS Partners: The ultimate guide

CSS partners can place Shopping adverts on behalf of the vendors they represent. It is currently possible to run advertising campaigns through other Comparison Shopping Services other than those from Google. Using multiple CSSs simultaneously is possible. There are then several merchant centers and associated campaigns which advertise on behalf of the merchant.

The following two processes must be implemented to advertise via a CSS partner:

The Merchant Center which is being used must be associated with the CSS partner. All products advertised must be on the CSS partner's comparison site.

If you are going to advertise by means of campaigns via a CSS partner, the Merchant Center which you have linked to your shopping campaigns must be associated with the CSS partner. A merchant center is linked to Google CSS by default, although this can consequently be converted to the CSS partner. You can thereby continue using your current Merchant Center and campaigns. It is also possible for the CSS partner to create a new Merchant Center, which could be linked to a different account and/or campaigns.

What about Producthero?
It is extremely easy to convert a merchant center to Producthero as well as to place products on our site. You can do this here: https://producthero.com/en/google-css

Here too we note some major differences between CSS partners. What if you have a question or want to test a new function, how does the CSS partner deal with this? Premium Partners receive more support from Google.

It is important to know that the financial benefits that Google provides are the same for every CSS partner. The CSS partner will naturally choose how it wants to deal with it. One starts their own campaign at their own expense and then purchases advertiser traffic via an agreed to CPC (cost-per-click) charge. Another is that CSS offers advertisers to connect to its CSS for a possible fee, so that the advertiser can take advantage of the Google benefits with their own existing campaigns.

The most important differences between CSS partners:

1. The type of CSS: self-service, managed or outsourced
   

   Do you advertise with shopping campaigns yourself or does the CSS do this for you? In the latter case, the CSS partner could manage your private campaigns or even deploy your private campaigns on behalf of you and settle with you based on an agreed to compensation model (usually CPC/CPS).

2. The business model: fixed costs per month or CPC/CPS to place the products on the CSS partner's website
   

   It is considered mandatory by Google that all the advertised products are on the CSS partner's comparison site. What you pay for differs considerably per CSS partner. Some parties charge a fixed monthly amount, others work on CPC rates.

3. The service that the CSS partner provides
   

   Here too we note some major differences between CSS partners. What if you have a question or want to test a new function, how does the CSS partner deal with this? Premium Partners receive more support from Google.

4. The countries in which the CSS partner is active
   

   The CSS program is active in 21 countries. Not all partners are active within the 21 countries.

What about Producthero?
We believe in the power of your own shopping campaigns. That is why we assist merchants with improving their private campaigns. We do not recommend running a CSS partner campaign on your behalf without it being your own. These seem to always be in competition with your private campaigns. You should not believe any stories that claim anything else. At Producthero you pay a minimum fixed monthly amount to place all your products on our website. We have noted that with parties that work with variable costs, the costs can rise considerably, and you have no control over such as all the products must be on the site. We have a fantastic support team for our customers, and we are active in all the CSS program countries!

The difference lies in the size. A Premium CSS partner represents more than 500 merchants with shopping campaigns. A premium partner receives more support from Google, which enables them to provide a higher service level.

What about Producthero?
Producthero is a Premium CSS Partner

Many CSS partners offer you the possibility to run your own campaigns. Your merchant center is then associated with the CSS and linked to your campaigns in your Google Ads account. In such case, the CSS partner does not even require access to your accounts. Other CSS partners manage the campaigns for you, these are usually agencies which do that. There are also CSS partners who run the Shopping campaigns themselves, you pay them a cost-per-click (CPC) or cost-per-sale (CPS) charge.

What about Producthero?
We believe in the power of your own Google Ads campaigns. Our objective is to ideally make your campaigns more powerful. That is why we do not advertise ourselves with Shopping campaigns as various other CSS partners do. These campaigns are in fact competitive with your own Shopping campaigns.

This is something you should pay attention to. This concerns what was agreed to between the CSS partner and Google. If nothing has been agreed to, then Google support staff and account managers no longer have access to your campaigns. If there is an agreement in place in which it has been agreed to that Google may provide access and service, then Google can continue to provide support. For larger advertisers, who are used to receiving assistance and support from a Google account manager, it may be that the account manager will place the (especially the strategic) assistance on a somewhat lower level. In such a case, it is good to be affiliated with a Premium CSS Partner. These receive much more assistance from their Google team and these short lines of communication make it possible to continue receiving strategic support from Google.

What about Producthero?
Google and Producthero have an agreement (waiver agreement) that Google employees can continue to provide support to the campaigns under Producthero CSS

A CSS partner receives a 20% discount on the CPC (cost-per-click) charge to be able to “compete” against Google Shopping compared to Google CSS. Shopping campaigns work just like Google AdWords through an auction in which the advertiser can bid on the cost-per-click that he wishes to pay.
In practice, this means the following: a bid of €0.80 via Producthero CSS has the same value as a bid of €1.00 via Google Shopping CSS. This means that an advertiser has to bid 25% more via Google Shopping to match a bid via a CSS partner.

This is one of the most frequently asked questions from customers who have just switched. The 20% discount on the CPC is not an amount that is refunded or displayed in your Google Ads account. It is a bidding advantage with respect to Google CSS. The effect is the same as if you were to stay with Google CSS and increase your bids by 25%. You realise better positions of your product displays and you will be included in more auctions with it being higher. The number of your campaign(s) displays will therefore increase.

To show you how it works, we have included the statistics for an account that has just been converted. In this test we have let an exact copy of the campaigns run via Producthero CSS.

You will note that the total number of clicks increases considerably after the conversion:

The increase in clicks was achieved while the CPC of the campaigns decreased:

There are actually two strategies which you could pursue with the CSS discount. You could increase the turnover of your shopping campaigns or improve the profitability of the campaigns.

1.Increase your turnover

If you have a perfect ROI (return on investment)/ROAS (return on ad spend) profitability on your shopping campaigns and you are looking for more volume, it is best to leave the bids of your campaigns unchanged. You will note (and I have clearly experienced this in multiple accounts) that your displays and clicks are sharply increasing. The same thing actually happens if you were to increase your campaign bids: your display increase. That extra volume in shopping campaigns is found in displays on less specific search terms (higher up in the funnel). Also note: that extra volume has a lower click-through ratio (CTR) and conversion ratio. The overall performance of your campaign thus does not stay the same. Choose this strategy if you have some room in your ROI and if you are looking for growth.

We recommend that most advertisers start off with strategy 2: from an improved profitability and volume retention perspective, the turnover of the campaigns are subsequently monitored in a controlled manner.

Campaigns that are not sent via a manual CPC, but via automatic bidding by Google Ads, also receives the bidding advantage after the account has been converted to Producthero CSS. You have a lot less control over the campaigns with these automatic optimisations. The CPC and the number of displays are naturally more difficult to control if you bid on such manually. If you leave the CPA or ROAS target unchanged, you will (after the bidding algorithm is accustomed to the new situation) realise more conversions and turnovers against the same CPA or ROAS.

If you set the CPA target lower or the ROAS higher, you can ultimately achieve the same conversion or turnover results at a lower investment by connecting to Producthero CSS.

The following two processes must be implemented to advertise via a CSS partner:

1. The Merchant Center which is being used must be associated with the CSS partner.
2. All products advertised must be on the CSS partner's comparison site.

A new merchant can be created by the CSS partner, although if you want to convert your existing campaigns, the association of the current Merchant Center must be switched to the CSS partner. The advantage of this approach is in allowing you to simply continue your existing campaigns and for the Ad Rank (the quality score of products stored in the Merchant Center) to be maintained.

What about Producthero?
It is extremely easy to convert a merchant center to Producthero as well as to place products on our site. You can do this here: https://producthero.com/google-css

Yes, switching to Producthero CSS is a completely painless process. There is also no downtime with regard to your campaigns. You will notice the effects in your statistics in the days following the switch.

Yes, it is possible to test such, although this require a good testing design. An additional Merchant Center must be created which is associated with the CSS partner. This merchant must be linked to an exact copy of the current shopping campaigns in the Google Ads account. When evaluating the results, one has to consider the fact that the new Merchant Center may not currently have an Ad Rank history and that this must still be constructed. It is actually necessary that the bidding strategy of the campaigns be set on manual CPC. If an Enhanced CPC is enabled, such may also result in a distorted image. 

Most parties which had conducted this test with us eventually switched the original Merchant Center, as the result of the advertising advantage via a CSS partner became clear. The majority of customers choose to switch to the current merchant center instead of testing due to this, as well as because of the complexity of the test.

The short answer would be: No. The (extremely) expanded answer would be:

Many CSS partners offer to run additional campaigns in addition to your private campaigns. This would increase visibility and improve results.

This is what Google has to say about this: “In a second-price auction, a seller never competes against himself on an offer. This rule is always applicable regardless of how many and which CSSs the seller uses. If two CSSs place bids on behalf of the same seller, the winning offer and the price paid by the winning CSS are the same as if these bids were placed by the same CSS.”

It is therefore not the case that if one works with multiple CSSs it increases the CPC for a product advertisement. Having multiple CSSs from this perspective, theoretically does not have to be harmful. Although one has to consider that the additional CSSs may win the auction in comparison to your private campaigns. This is therefore at the expense of your private campaign results. We have seen how the results of their own shopping campaigns deteriorated at several webshops due to several CSS partners advertising for them.

We believe that a webshop that uses shopping campaigns often does not want its private campaign results to deteriorate due to the fact that other parties are fishing in exactly the same pond. A webshop that has a high-quality and extensively optimised shopping campaign is not expecting that CSS partners grab some of the clicks and conversions. And the webshop doesn't benefit much from such either. The CSS partner(s) who wish to advertise are also hoping to earn and will focus on the “easy” clicks (best products, specific terms and high conversion). The CSS partner also has to create a margin, so the webshop could possibly have created these conversions with its private campaigns for cheaper.

Google continues to write: “We do our best not to display the same offer (the same product offered by the same seller) multiple times. If we determine that the same product from the same seller has been uploaded by multiple CSSs, we will only display it once in the advert block. In rare cases where we cannot determine whether two offers are the same, they may both be displayed in the same Shopping advert block.”

A CSS can realise additional displays for you on other products other than the products that you are displaying. But you can do this yourself with your own account. Suppose you search for “washing machine” you will then receive a display with your own Google Ads account for a certain type of Samsung, for example, and a CSS partner in the same block can receive a display of your shop, of a different type. However, it is not that you can only achieve this by advertising via a Google CSS partner. You may, from your own shopping campaign, simply have multiple products displayed in the same block.

In fact, we can conclude that connecting an additional CSS partner who advertises for you only leads to additional displays if:

1. The CSS presents offers on products that you do not do the bid yourself or offers higher on products where you would not have won the auction for a display with your bid to receive a display.
2. The CSS has a different product feed that (because the content is, for example, enriched with additional information) matches the product to the search term, while that was not the case with your feed.

In short, there is no difference between what an additional CSS connection could mean for generating additional displays in comparison to the possibilities that you have (bid optimisation, feed optimisation) to increase your visibility.

What about Producthero?

Connecting an additional CSS partner offers nothing extra when compared to what an advertiser can do himself to improve the visibility and results of his campaigns. Our mission is to fully empower our customers' own Shopping campaigns. For example, Producthero offers an interesting tool for advertisers who wish to achieve additional visibility through feed optimisation. With our SEO for Shopping Ads tool you are able to enrich your own feed based on our data. Thus, strengthen your private campaigns.