Earlier this year, Google unveiled a partnership with Shopify that gave the ecommerce platform’s more than 1.7 million merchants the ability to reach consumers through Google search and other services. Now Microsoft is announcing a similar deal. The company recently announced that it is partnering with Shopify to expand the product selection on its own search engine, Microsoft Bing, as well as in the Shopping tab of its Microsoft Edge browser and on its new news service, Microsoft Start.
The integration is made available to Shopify merchants through an updated Microsoft Channel app where they can make some tweaks to extend their reach across the Microsoft network. Once configured, merchant products will appear in the Shopping tab of Bing, Microsoft Edge, and Microsoft Start as free product listings.
Image credits: Microsoft
Like Google, Microsoft’s advertising revenue can be affected by the growth of Amazon’s advertising business over time.
Google has set out to meet this challenge with an overhaul of its own Google Shopping service, which it presented to online advertisers at its Google I / O developer conference this spring. The company went on to describe its “Shopping Graph,†which would bring together website information, pricing reviews, and product data to help consumers find where to find items, who had the best price, and more. Last year, the company also allowed merchants to sell their products on Google – a change Google touted resulted in an 80% increase in the number of merchants on Google, with the “vast majority†being small and medium-sized businesses.
Microsoft, meanwhile, has seen its search advertising revenue increase in recent quarters as the global advertising market rebounds. But Amazon quickly increased its market share. In the first half of 2021, Amazon reported $ 14.82 billion in ad sales, up 82% from the same period a year ago, the WSJ noted in a report on Google’s ecommerce overhaul. .
As more consumers begin their product searches directly on Amazon instead of the web, bypassing search engines and homepage portals, Google and Microsoft’s revenue could suffer. To make their respective offerings more competitive, a partnership with Shopify gives the two tech giants more direct access to a plethora of online inventories to showcase and market, including many listings that Amazon may not have.
Shopify’s integration with Microsoft will also allow merchants to create new ad campaigns and view marketing performance via real-time reports in their Shopify store, Microsoft said when announcing the merger. The company also said it has other “purchasing enhancements†planned for the future, but has not detailed what these new features might include.
Microsoft is one of many integrations that Shopify has announced over the past year. He also recently partnered with Spotify to enable artists to sell merchandise through their Spotify profiles and worked with TikTok on e-commerce experiences.
