The third most popular question I get is ‘are there any pure play stock picks for comparison engines?’
The answer is no, but here are some ways to play the comparison engine game. In most cases, revenue and profit contribution from the comparison engines are insignificant when looking at the whole picture.
Indirect investment opportunities:
EW Scripps (NYSE: SSP) – the company owns Shopzilla which is a strong contributor to EW Scripps’ profit
GSI Commerce (NASDAQ: GSIC) – Like ChannelAdvisor, Channel Intelligence, Performics, and Mercent, this company will benefit as more merchants realize the benefits of advertising on the shopping comparison engines. In case you missed it, GSI Commerce released a note last week about the company’s success in generating a higher ROI for clients who advertise on the engines.
CNET (NASDAQ: CNET) – the company owns MySimon and CNET Shopper. CNET doesn’t break out results for the shopping comparison engines.
Even more indirect investment opportunities:
eBay (NASDAQ: EBAY) – the company owns Shopping.com/Epinions, although Shopping.com’s revenue contribution is probably less significant than a rounding error.
Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) – technically not a shopping comparison engine, but with Amazon Marketplace, the company comes close. Also if you’re looking at online retailing, you have to consider Amazon.
GUS plc – the company owns PriceGrabber as well as a number of online marketing/lead gen businesses through its Experian Interactive unit.
Yahoo! and Google both own shopping comparison engines, but when you’re in the multi-billion dollar PPC game, the shopping units aren’t even a blip on the radar.
Private companies:
NexTag, ChannelAdvisor, Channel Intelligence, DoubleClick (which owns Performics)
Related Posts:
GSI Commerce Swings Back – February 17, 2006
In regard to Amazon, they do list prices from top merchants in their Marketplace listings (or “More Buying Choices”) like J & R, TigerDirect, Toys R’ Us, etc. So I definitely agree that they have to be grouped in there… More as a hybrid.
Any predictions as to perhaps one of the private companies listed being bought this year (eg. NexTag)?
You can invest in Shelron Group (SHRN.OB). They own ActiveShopper and it is the #1 activity of the company.
http://www.shelrongroup.com