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Judging panel says Summit achieved “truly innovative integration with a traditional retailer” for paid search initiative   Summit, strategic online marketing and e-commerce agency for retailers and Comet, the electrical retailer, have won EconsultancyÂ’s 2009 Innovation Award in the paid search and pay-per-click (PPC) category.  

Judging panel says Summit achieved “truly innovative integration with a traditional retailer” for paid search initiative

 

Summit, strategic online marketing and e-commerce agency for retailers and Comet, the electrical retailer, have won Econsultancy’s 2009 Innovation Award in the paid search and pay-per-click (PPC) category.

 

The Econsultancy judging panel praised Summit’s search technology (called Portfolio Manager) saying it “used the power of the long tail of search to expose the stock sitting in Comet’s warehouses delivering truly innovative integration with a traditional retailer”.

 

Dynamic stock control and customer clickthrough

 

Portfolio Manager is the only technology available to UK retailers that lets them synch their warehouse with their PPC campaigns on all major search engines in real time, according to the agency.

 

As an integral part of Summit’s wider suite of online marketing applications (called Stingray), Portfolio Manager keeps Comet's PPC adverts and keywords accurate to the minute in relation to stock, price, availability, margin and customer reviews. Its rules engine creates and optimises ‘long tail’ campaigns automatically against Comet’s business information (margin and stock) received in its daily product feed.

 

As a result, Comet has been able to drastically increase its reach across key categories while maintaining its desired cost of sale – all within the first 48 hours of going live. These results are particularly significant as Comet’s key objectives for PPC were to increase reach and sales volumes while maintaining margin.

 

Rapid results, no looking back

 

Neil Collins, online marketing manager at Comet Group said: “Portfolio Manager’s use of product feeds to power search campaigns has transformed our approach to PPC and delivered a step change in results within just 48 hours of going live.”

 

Hedley Aylott, managing director of Summit Media said: “The numbers we’ve delivered for Comet and the fact that we won this award clearly proves that Portfolio Manager is the market-leading search tool for retailers and can transform their opportunity in PPC.”

 

Peter Fitzgerald, retail industry leader at Google UK said: “Since businesses must bid on hundreds of thousands to millions of terms to successfully mine the long tail of shopping searches, technology is the only solution. Taking a product feed and turning it quickly into a powerful way to drive new customers and profitable sales is a significant achievement.”