Publisher Spotlight: idealo
idealo is Europe’s largest price comparison site, so we interviewed Harry Groves, UK Affiliate Marketing Manager, to know in more depth how working with them can benefit your business and help advertisers to grow. Not only that, but we also asked about which advertisers better suit their audience and their plans for the next 12 months.
Can you briefly introduce yourself?
I am Harry, I have been looking after the Affiliate Co-operations at idealo UK for the last 8 months. It is my job to work with our Affiliate partners to ensure idealo are displaying the best quality offers at the best price. I am also responsible for onboarding new partners and optimising their performance on idealo.co.uk.
Working for idealo has been a fantastic experience and it is great to work for such a forward thinking international company who are changing the way people shop in Europe.
Can you introduce idealo and the core business values?
idealo is Europe’s largest price comparison site. We work in Germany, France, Italy, Austria, Spain and the UK. Based in Berlin, idealo provides many fantastic features to help our users to find the best offers from reputable retailers.
Honesty is our core policy. It is our aim to not only provide our users with the cheapest offers, but also the best quality offers. idealo UK now has over 208 million offers from over 3200 partner merchants.
What would you say are the biggest benefits for an advertiser working with idealo?
Product comparison is associated with great conversion rates as our users often know exactly what they are looking for and are simply looking for the best possible offer. Offering detailed product specifications as well as user and expert reviews allows our users to make truly informed purchase decisions.
Displaying offers on an idealo adds a real sense of honesty and integrity to our partners. Being willing to put your products head to head with other merchants shows that an advertiser believes in the quality of their offers and stands by their prices.
Tell us more about your audience and what types of advertisers do you work best with?
We have a very wide range of user at idealo. the Majority of our users are between 25-64 years old. Roughly 60% of our users are male, Our best performing categories are electronics, Gaming and large appliances.
We have noticed a real upturn in the number of searches for cosmetics and fragrances, and with that an increase in the number of female users.
This year, roughly 50% of our traffic has been created via our smartphone app. This is particularly pleasing as we have invested a lot into creating the many great features of this app such as our barcode scanner. This allows users to Scan products on the high street and see if they are getting a good deal, or whether they could save a lot of money by shopping online.
What makes idealo an exciting company?
idealo is the true market leaders in price comparison. We are based in Berlin and now have over 1050 employees servicing 6 European countries. Working in such a multinational company is fantastic and each country team is inspired by the great success of the others.
Any exciting plans coming up in the next 12 months?
idealo is currently going through a period of hyper growth with average lead outs across all countries increasing YOY by 12%.
More and more people are now using idealo to compare products before making a purchase and it is very exciting to be involved in this growth.
In the UK specifically, we are now introducing many new features including a UK shoe size filter.
We receive huge amounts of traffic for footwear and this new feature should greatly improve our conversion rates.
Where do you think is the Affiliate space heading to in the next year and what are the main
market disruptions?
The European court of justice has now backed idealo in our claim that Google has been misusing its market position to promote its own services. idealo has now begun legal proceedings against Google seeking damages of 500m Euros (Please see link Times article below). This is a very exciting development and a true David v Goliath story which
shows we will not tolerate Google acting in this way I believe the next few years will see honest product comparison sites such as idealo continue to grow at a great rate.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/idealo-sues-google-for-antitrust-breach-xt9d699lw
What is the most exciting time of year for you as a business?
As you would expect our busiest time of year is Black Friday and Christmas. Making your money go a long way is very important at this time of year and we experience a huge increase in traffic over the festive period.
Currently, we are seeing huge increases in the amount of traffic to outdoor shops in the build-up to Summer and the Festival season.
Is there anything else you’d like our advertisers to know?
We have lots of great features on the website that helps our users compare products. We have a price tracker that allows our users to see how the price of a product has evolved over time. We also have a great price alarm which will send the user an email when the price has fallen to a pre-designated level.
We have a feature which allows users to compare the specifications of 2 products side by side. This is particularly useful when looking at products such as smartphones or laptops.
Our innovative barcode scanner app was recently featured on the Lorraine Kelly show which resulted in a huge increase in our app downloads in the UK.
What is one fun fact about idealo?
Barack Obama follows us on twitter He clearly is a man who loves a bargain!
Interested in working with idealo? To find out more please contact our Partnership Development team or search their ID 1667431
Do you have your own publisher story? We want to hear about it! Please contact our Marketing team.
