ChannelAdvisor: Portfolio Bidder's Predictive Analytics Increases Retailer ROI

ChannelAdvisor Corp. (ECOM), a company that specializes in cloud-based ecommerce solutions for manufacturers and retailers, has unveiled a portfolio bidder feature that automatically adjusts bids within retailers’ campaigns and ad groups. The ChannelAdvisor Portfolio Bidder predicts traffic and revenue metrics to help retailers increase return on investment (ROI), ChannelAdvisor said.

For retailers, portfolio bidding typically involves setting business goals for an entire campaign. The ChannelAdvisor Portfolio Bidder is designed specifically for retailers and allows them to evaluate traffic and revenue metrics at various possible keyword ranks.

“We developed the Portfolio Bidder with the retailer in mind,” ChannelAdvisor Senior Product Manager Jackie Jenkins said in a prepared statement. “Based on product-specific cost data, our bidder can incorporate margin metrics to help maximize profits and increase overall revenue by using predictive analytics to place optimal bids for each keyword.”

ChannelAdvisor tested several identical campaigns to compare the results generated with manually managed bidding, rules-based bidding and its Portfolio Bidder. The company said campaigns managed by its Portfolio Bidder consistently outperformed those that were managed manually or by rules-based bidding.

In addition, ChannelAdvisor customers who have already used the Portfolio Bidder have watched their conversion rates increase up to 300 percent, ChannelAdvisor said.

“ChannelAdvisor’s Portfolio Bidder technology is not only automating a very tedious process for us, it is testing different bid scenarios thousands of times in a way that humans aren’t well equipped to do manually,” Mark Grennan, Vice President of Sales and Marketing for beverage equipment retailer BeverageFactory, said in a statement.

ChannelAdvisor said its customers can manage their overall online selling process through a single inventory feed. The company points out its e-commerce solutions enable manufacturers and retailers to integrate, manage and optimize their merchandise sales across myriad online channels, including Amazon, eBay, Facebook and Google.