• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 16, 2014

Connexity has begun rolling out a media agency within the company. The offering supports search managed services for product listing ads, paid-search ads, and search engine optimization. The company plans to announce the services Wednesday.

Agency teams, data analysts and mounds of insights collected for years from its network of sites like Shopzilla and Bizrate will maintain campaigns for retailers and brands. "We've collected a lot of product information over the years about what does and doesn't convert well," said Bob Michaelian, EVP marketing services at Connexity. "We use the data to help influence the bidding strategy when directly managing retail campaigns."

Connexity began running tests 18 months ago. About 50 brands now use the search services. One PLA campaign running between May 2013 and June 2014 for a party supply retailer shows a 130% improvement in sales volume. Visits rose 152%; orders by 143%, and profit by 118%. The agency used product-level bidding, dynamic offer attribution and creative optimization.

When needed, the teams will also go outside Connexity's network to buy media such as data retargeting, display, and other services on behalf of clients.

Michaelian said the company has been indexing Google query results since 2002. The accumulated knowledge and data helps to manage updates for Google Panda and Penguin, and apply the knowledge to client campaigns. He said Connexity has also built out a connection to the Yahoo Gemini API, in addition to Google and Bing.

Last year, Los Angeles-based Connexity managed more than $60 million in ad spend for paid search and PLA campaigns running across its owned-and-operated sites. These 1.8 billion keyword and landing pages for 100 million products generated $1 billion in gross merchandise sales, per the company.

Earlier this month, Connexity entered into an agreement to acquire Become.com, a global network of Web sites delivering qualified leads to businesses, as well as helping consumers find products and services using its search engine technology. The company expects the deal to close by the end of the year. 

Michaelian said Become.com also has a large amount of shopping data that Connexity plans to integrate into its data warehouse. "The ability to supplement our data with additional shopping data from Become will be super valuable in continuing to optimize campaigns for our agency clients," he said.

Become.com also has a strong footprint in the Europe. Connexity can tap into the strong merchant relationships that the company developed in EU markets to support agency services for new clients.