Paid search provider FindWhat.com today announced that it has integrated the Miva Marketplace product of its Miva e-commerce division with its own pay-per-click keyword offering.
The move has been expected since FindWhat purchased Miva last year.
The new, version 2.0 edition of Miva Marketplace centers around a tool integrating merchants' product databases with paid search listings delivered by FindWhat.com to its search partners. Using the new tool, Miva users can merge their product catalogs into FindWhat.com -- turning product descriptions into keywords, for instance.
Marketplace users can manage their advertising campaigns through a Web application on MivaMarketplace.com. Businesses that are users of both Miva Marketplace and Miva Merchant -- the company's popular shopping cart, inventory management, online ordering and payment processing platform, which is traditionally sold through resellers, such as hosting providers -- can leverage additional synergies, managing their FindWhat campaigns directly through Merchant.
Miva and FindWhat officials said the upgrade would benefit online merchants.
"Online sellers already have excellent functionality through the various components of Miva Merchant to convert a Web site visitor into a buying customer," said Miva general manager Joe Austin, in a statement. "Now with the Miva Marketplace 2.0 functionality, they have even more, with the power to drive highly targeted traffic directly to product displays in their online storefronts."
The upgrade to Marketplace 2.0 serves to link two previously disparate FindWhat properties. Miva Marketplace 1.0 offered placement on many search engines, through relationships with search providers including FindWhat. But the integration wasn't fully automatic.
In that respect, the move is also good news for FindWhat.com, which stands to gain from increased keyword marketing, thanks to the closer ties between Merchant/Marketplace and FindWhat.com's flagship search offering. Miva claims more than 85,000 registered storefronts using Merchant or Merchant Pro.
The recent upgrades to Merchant and Marketplace also simplify the task of linking product catalogs with search listings.
"This seamless integration is the first of its kind connecting storefront 'product' information with performance-based advertising, empowering merchants to save time and money managing their advertising campaigns on the FindWhat.com Network," said Jason Williams, senior vice president and general manager of FindWhat's merchant services division, in a statement.
The upgrade builds on FindWhat's efforts to capture more business from the same small and medium-sized firms that have proven some of the most aggressive adopters of paid search. While FindWhat remains significantly smaller than Google and Yahoo!'s Overture, the company historically has made a practice of focusing on serving the lower-cost market and concentrating on listing distribution deals with smaller search sites. Last year, the company increased minimum bid prices and said it was focusing its sales efforts on increasing advertisers' spending on its service.
Accordingly, FindWhat executives added that they plan additional services for online merchants.
"This integration is the first of a carefully selected expansion into full merchant services," said Craig Pisaris-Henderson, FindWhat.com's chairman and chief executive officer, in a statement.
Christopher Saunders is managing editor of eCommerce-Guide.com.
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