The Google Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) program is a program from Google that allows online shops to list their products on Google Shopping. Google works with so-called Comparison Shopping Services (CSS). Using these CSS providers, online retailers can advertise their products on Google Shopping to increase their visibility. The Google CSS program was launched after the EU Commission fined Google €2.42 billion in 2017 for violating EU competition law. The court ruling said that Google had placed its own price comparison (Google Shopping) on Google more prominently than other price comparisons and now had to ensure fair competition. As a result, Google Shopping Europe (GSE) was spun off as an independent company and acts as the standard CSS provider for all merchants who have not decided on any other CSS. In order to have an economic raison d’être, GSE must generate profits. It does this by retaining around 20% of all CPC bids that go through GSE, according to popular belief. This means that only 80% of the CPCs are used as a bid for shopping ads. If an online shop chooses another CSS partner like adstrong, this fee does not apply. As a result, CPCs are up to 25% higher than when using GSE. In order to use a CSS, one must register with a CSS provider who then sends a CSS switch request to the respective Merchant Center. Once accepted, the Shopping Ads will benefit from the CPC benefit and the CSS provider’s name will appear at the bottom of the Shopping Ads.

With a third-party provider, you only get the CSS CPC advantage. That’s better than nothing, but no longer enough to stay ahead, since many competitors do the same — eliminating your relative bidding advantage.

Owning your own CSS changes that. You get the CSS CPC benefit plus additional value: free Google Shopping traffic, valuable extra support, and strong branding — or improved ad relevance and CTR through keyword highlighting.

Clicks on the “From CSS” link in Google Shopping ads are free and go to the CSS provider. If that isn’t you, the traffic goes to an external player who, with 99% likelihood, sells those clicks. That means the free traffic ends up with competitors.
With adstrong’s solution, it’s different. We’ve built our CSS technology so that free “From CSS” traffic almost exclusively sees your products — and still remains fully Google-compliant.

In most cases, the value of this free traffic alone exceeds the cost of our solution.

adstrong is not only the clear market leader, operating over 20% of all Google CSS Centers worldwide, but we also have unique USPs that no other provider offers.

• adstrong is the only provider that gives you your own CSS that is both 100% compliant with Google’s policies and meets the legal requirements for price comparisons applicable in Germany.
• We hold the highest Google CSS status: the Google CSS Premium Partner status. This includes dedicated account managers as well as technical contacts, tracking support, and more. When needed, we activate this premium support for our customers, which has led in countless cases to issues being resolved much faster and in many cases, resolved at all. Most other providers don’t have this status.
• Our solution is fully programmatic and requires no additional effort on your part. Unlike other options, your CSS page runs on its own. You don’t have to manage extra feeds, Merchant Centers, or configurations.
• We don’t operate our own agency, so we will never compete with our agency customers.
• Our organic cost structure ensures fair and affordable pricing for both small and large clients alike. And with our low setup fee, we make the initial investment. We believe in our product and only earn money long-term if it’s truly worthwhile for our customers.

Have you ever wondered why the world’s most famous brands, like Nike and Apple, spend so much money on branding campaigns? Surely not because no one knows them…

They invest heavily in branding to stay top-of-mind with their audience, so that when it’s time to buy, consumers choose them. Numerous studies confirm this — when branding campaigns are turned off, people start shopping elsewhere.

Placing your brand in the highly visible “From CSS” link is the most effective way to gain massive visibility, build trust, and stay present in the minds of your target audience, so they choose you next time they make a purchase decision.
Even if the final conversion comes from a paid ad, marketing experts attribute the majority of advertising effectiveness to branding campaigns, not performance campaigns.

So use branding to your advantage — with no extra cost and no extra effort — even if the impact is sometimes hard to measure.

Download our Agency CSS White Paper or Keyword CSS White Paper right here to see customer examples.

After you have invested 10 – 15 minutes to provide us with the data necessary for CSS set up, it takes one to two weeks until you have become a CSS provider with our Branded CSS solution.

Yes, adstrong’s Branded CSS solution can also achieve CSS Partner status for you.

The exclusive Google CSS Partner status allows the use of the Google CSS Partner badge and leads to listing in the Google CSS Partner directory.

If you are one of the 25% largest CSS Partners, measured by shopping ad impressions, you will receive Google CSS Premium Partner status. Some of our Branded CSS customers have done so already.

Google CSS Partner Status is an exclusive premium status granted by Google to larger CSS providers. It allows the use of the Google CSS Partner Badge and leads to listing in the Google CSS Partner Directory.

In order to become a Google CSS Partner, one must meet the requirements for a Google CSS provider and also (A) have access to the Google CSS Education Hub, (B) have at least two employees with CSS certification in the company and lastly (C) have at least 50 active Merchant Center accounts linked to their Google CSS domain.

These advanced requirements can also be met using adstrong’s Branded CSS solution.

The Google CSS Premium Partner status is the highest attainable CSS status. It allows the use of the Google CSS Premium Partner Badge and shows the status in the Google CSS Partner directory.

There are no downtimes or interruptions either with a Merchant Center CSS switch or with our Branded CSS setup. Everything runs continuously, safely and steadily.

After the CSS switch the CPC boost kicks in, the brand of the CSS provider is shown in the shopping ads, and the “by CSS” link leads to the CSS’ price comparison site.

The Google CSS program works independently of bidding strategies, campaign settings or account settings.

By using a CSS, the effective CPC of Google Shopping ads increases by up to 25% in all setups. In addition, the name of the CSS provider is highlighted at the bottom of the shopping ads.

If you use the adstrong CSS or the adstrong Branded CSS, your shopping ads will not lose any reach – the campaigns will be displayed in the same way as with Google Shopping Europe.

However, this is not the case with all CSS providers. In order to get the full range, the CSS provider must provide special opt-ins with Google. Therefore, make sure that your CSS provider has opted in regarding “Shopping Ads beyond general search”.

You can use free listings when using a CSS.

However, when changing CSS, it can happen that a Merchant Center loses its free listings. Because when switching CSS, the free listings are assigned to the oldest Merchant Center that is assigned to a specific shop.

Free listings lost in this way can be easily retrieved. If this is the case for you, contact us and we will help you quickly.

That depends on the CSS provider. A special Google opt-in is required so that products outside of Europe can also be advertised with a CSS Merchant Center. Therefore, make sure that you work with a professional CSS provider who has opted in to “Shopping Ads outside of Europe” on Google.

At adstrong, we have all the opt-ins. This means that our CSS and all of our white label CSS are optimally configured – also with regard to shopping ads outside of Europe.

If you have chosen a professional CSS partner like adstrong, you will not have any disadvantages from using a CSS. It comes down to the following things:

1. You have to make sure that your CSS provider has activated the Google opt-ins regarding “Shopping Ads beyond general search” and “placing Shopping Ads outside of Europe”.
2. In addition, the CSS provider must be certified by Google in all countries that are relevant to you.
3. In addition, the CSS provider should be known for good support. Since Google is continuously developing the CSS program, things go wrong from time to time. Especially the cheap providers like to leave their customers out in the rain.
4. Finally, it’s important to know that PMax campaigns can have stronger performance fluctuations for a day or two after a CSS switch. This is because the algorithm has to adapt to the new bidding situation. He does this by experimenting with the bids to find the new optimum.

As one of the largest CSS premium providers in the world, adstrong is certified in all CSS countries and has all Google opt-ins. In addition, we are continually praised for our top-notch customer support.

Doesn’t “By Google” in Shopping Ads inspire more trust than the name of any CSS provider? And doesn’t that affect the CTR?

We could not measure that ads “By Google” have a better CTR than ads “By CSS”. And if there is a positive effect here, it is certainly not worth up to 20% of all CPCs! In this respect, the use of CSS is always the better option.

In addition, we were able to measure that the CTR increases if the CSS provider’s brand is relevant to the product category searched for. This is particularly important if the CSS provider is a well-known brand or owns a keyword domain. So “By Nike” or “By sneaker heroes” would certainly perform better when searching for Nike sneakers than “By any CSS”.

The Google CSS program is currently active in 21 European countries and adstrong’s Branded CSS solution works in all of these countries. The countries are: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland.

Google Shopping Europe (GSE) has repeatedly confirmed that they keep a portion of all CPCs. However, GSE does not publish the exact size of this part. Therefore, no one knows exactly what percentage of CPCs are withheld by GSE.

At the beginning of the CSS program, some CSS providers ran A/B tests in which they pitted identical campaigns against each other with and without CSS. Several vendors have independently come to the conclusion that they had to reduce the CPCs in the CSS campaign by around 20% in order for it to get the same amount of traffic as the non-CSS campaign. For this reason, most CSS providers write that GSE retains 20% of the CPCs.

This means that at GSE a €1 CPC bid is reduced to 80 cents. Or to put it the other way around: to get an effective bid of €1, I have to enter €1.25. So 25% more.

That’s why at adstrong we say that a CSS increases effective CPCs by up to 25%.

Google Shopping Europe retains up to 20% of the CPCs.

That means a €1 CPC bid is effectively reduced to 80 cents. To counteract this, I would need to increase my CPCs by 25%. My CPC would then be €1.25 and if 20% is subtracted from that the effective CPC is €1.

Since using a CSS neutralizes the negative effect of GSE, the effect is equivalent to up to a 25% increase in CPCs.

A CSS provider can easily remove Merchant Centers from their CSS. They can either click the corresponding button in the CSS account or submit a request through the CSS Support Portal.

Once this request is accepted in the Merchant Center, the change takes effect. If the Merchant Center admin refuses to accept the request, the CSS operator can request the deletion of the Merchant Center.

Yes, you can also switch Multi Client Accounts (MCAs) including all Merchant Centers they contain to a CSS. This is done via the “standalone account switch” that the CSS provider can use.

You can integrate your Google Tag Manager on your CSS page to measure user interactions.