Shopping.com is to be rebranded as eBay Commerce Network to mark what eBay calls it’s “evolution from a single-destination comparison shopping site” to a “robust commerce network”.
In other words eBay is throwing in the towel for operating a single destination shopping comparison site in favour of being an ad network connecting merchants to the likes of Bing, The Find, CNET and of course the eBay site itself.
We’re finding it hard to get excited about this, Shopping Comparison sites have been troublesome for many years. eBay themselves write off the model in their rebranding info – Shopping.com was once the worlds 6th largest Shopping Comparison Site “but the world looks very different today”. eBay say that merchants can no longer rely on shopping destination sites, but need to advertise across multiple channels to reach consumers at every stage of the buying process.
eBay boast 4000 retailers already use shopping.com eBay Commerce Network which has a funky new website. The tired old shopping.com website is live as per usual with no word from eBay on when it’ll be redirected – probably no time in the near future, this is most likely a bigger change for ad publishers than shopping.com consumers.
