Over the last couple years, some shopping engines have sat on the sidelines during the bigger etailing conferences. Well, it looks like they’ll continue to sit on the sidelines in June. Only Become.com, Shopzilla, Smarter.com, and TheFind currently have booths at IRCE.
-Google isn’t on the list of current exhibitors. Usually you can find Google Product Search next to Google Checkout, Google AdWords, Google Analytics, and 6 other Google products
-PriceGrabber is a stalwart at these shows. Maybe this was an oversight as the old management team as well as the company’s PR Guru is no longer with the company.
-I see PayPal / BillMeLater, but doubt that they’d share a booth with Shopping.com.
-NexTag never advertises at conferences…no change there.
-Amazon Product Ads isn’t on the list, but I don’t think Amazon is ever allowed to ‘sell’ at these conferences due to tax issue…or something like that.
-Where’s Bing? Like Google, Bing usually promotes a couple products including Bing Cashback at these shows. Did Bing go through their $100M advertising campaign and that’s it?
Even for the established shopping engines, I’d think this show has to be at least break even. Total cost is under $20K ($5000 for a booth, $5000 for booth related things – it’s Chicago!, $3000 for travel/entertainment). All it takes is one new merchant spending $10K/month to make the trip worthwhile. And more importantly, it allows the shopping engines to meet face to face with dozens of their most important merchants. Surprised not to see Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, and Bing on the list.
Maybe they’ll just roam the show floor and cut way down on the cost of the event. Sometimes works.
