CJU Course: Feed Me: Why a Product Catalog is Just the Beginning

A product catalog feed for the affiliate channel is critical to the financial success of any advertiser’s program, but that’s really just the beginning. We’ll show you why a product feed is important and what a good, optimized feed should look like. Now for the best part: you’ll learn how to take that feed and expand its use across a variety of other channels. This session took place September 22, 2010.  The panel consisted of:

• Ashley Parducci, Product Manager, Commission Junction
• Jim Harriman, Technical Lead, Commission Junction

Bullet Point Review!

• 40% of CJ advertisers submit feeds.  Out of the 40%, half update the feed daily.  33% have not updated in at least a month, 17% haven’t updated this year.  So only 20% submitting feeds on a regular basis.
• What is a product data feed?
  • Name
  • Price
  • Product page URL
  • Image URL
  • Description
  • Category
  • And more…
• The CJ feeds can also help you push your feed to comparison shopping engines (CSEs)
• Why?
  • Distribution
  • Performance
  • Publisher Business
• Feeds reduce click-to-purchase and increase conversion.  Also increase online exposure with distribution to CSEs (with CJ management help if needed).
• Advertisers generally see a 20% – 25% lift in transactions with an optimized data feed.
• Better to have too much data than too little.
• A good feed has high resolution images, lots of good technical specs in the description, accurate SKUs, and is well written.
• Build a feed!
  • Get involved.
  • It’ll require your technical teams or a 3rd party.
  • A solid feed is worth the time and money.
• CJ advertisers who were live before 2010, but just added their feeds this year:
  • 20% performed well.
  • 20% had zero products.
  • 10% had dummy SKUs.
  • 80% didn’t upload changes daily – of that, 45% hadn’t sent any updates in the last month, and 35% hadn’t updated since May 2010.
• Product feeds are tools.  Poorly designed tools don’t get the job done and don’t get adopted by publishers.
• Feed optimization:
  • Names & descriptions.
  • Utilize the fields.
  • Make sure you have proper categorization.
  • High resolution images.
  • Submit fresh feeds.
  • Have thorough pricing information (tax charged, sale price, shipping costs, retail price)
  • Use tools available (analyze product/sale performance).
  • Customer reviews.
  • Even if there are no updates, send updates to get distribution to publishers.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Explain high resolution images: An image large enough for publishers to manipulate.
• A content feed requires slight tweaks to what data you put in what fields.

Conclusion