What is a CSS partner?
A Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) is a price comparison website. In other words, it is a website that collects prices from different webshops, with the intention to help its visitors navigate to these webshops.
Google Shopping is Google’s own CSS that advertises shopping ads on the Google search results page.
After Google started advertising with shopping ads on their search results page, comparison shopping sites lost their chance to compete fairly for their online webshops. The European Commission decided to fine Google for this and decided to create the Comparison Shopping Services program. CSS partners, like Producthero, are comparison websites that can also advertise for a Merchant (webshop) in Google’s Product Listing Ads.
Just like Google CSS, partners are able to show product listing ads for products that are available on their comparison website. Besides Google’s CSS, there are many other Google CSS partners such as Producthero.com.
A shopping ad from a CSS partner looks the same to those of Google CSS. The only visual difference is that instead of a link beneath the ad stating 'By Google', there is a link with 'By [CSS name]'. Clicking this link will take you to the comparison shopping website of that CSS partner.
What are the benefits of a CSS partner?
There are a couple of benefits to using a CSS partner instead of Google CSS.
Comparison shopping services pay 20% less in the ad auction. This gives you more bidding power than when you advertise through Google. You can read more about how the 20% discount works here.
Comparison shopping services provide more visibility for products and better ad placement.
It can result in more sales without hurting your return on ad spend (ROAS).
It can help you use your advertising budget more efficiently.