• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, August 11, 2015

One trend sparking internal conversations at ChannelAdvisor points to rising brand cost per clicks (CPCs) across a few advertisers.

Beginning in late June and continuing into July, ChannelAdvisor noticed unusual behavior in Google AdWords. Google began increasing the price (CPC) of brand terms, which forced retailers to adjust budgets. Analysts at ChannelAdvisor believe this significantly impacted product listing ads in Google Shopping.

A slowdown in Google Shopping also influenced a decline in Comparison Shopping Engines. CSEs came in at 4.3% for July, falling from 15.8% in June.

Search SSS across Google and the Yahoo-Bing network fell 9.3% in July compared with June's decline of 3.5%. The decline, driven by pressure on clicks that rose year-over-year (YoY) only 0.4%, also forced click-through rates (CTR) to fall from 5.5% to 3.35%, respectively, writes Andrew Belsky, manager of strategic accounts at ChannelAdvisor, in a blog post.

He explains that the average order value (AOV) helped counter the decline in clicks and CTRs by growing 1.7% to $170.17. The CPC boost on brand terms caused CPCs to rise 12.7% to $.51 y/y. The rise in CPC forced total costs to reach 13.1%. The decline in clicks, along with the fall in CTRs, caused orders to fall 5.2% YoY.

Overall, ChannelAdvisor reports that Google Shopping for July rose 13.2% YoY. The conversion rate rose 12.2% YoY from 2.21% to 2.48%. AOV fell 3% from $107.80 to $104.60, compared with the year-ago month.

Where Amazon demonstrated strength, eBay fell. Amazon's July SSS came in at 30.1% -- up from June's 26.0%, driven by Amazon's Black Friday in July -- Prime Day sale on July 15. eBay's July SSS at 5.8%, down from June at 7.2% and about a third of the e-commerce growth rate of 15% as predicted by comScore, according to ChannelAdvisor.  

The monthly feature published by ChannelAdvisor highlights SSS across thousands of retailers and billions in gross merchandise value (GMV). The methodology can be found here.