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Google will acquire Channel Intelligence (CI) for $125 million in cash. CI works with brands and retailers to drive online product sales across the Internet - including search engines, comparison shopping engines, and platforms such as Facebook - and offline channels as well. The acquisition gives Google tremendous insight into its competitors' performance in paid search in the ecommerce space - among CI's supported channels are Amazon Product Ads and Bing Shopping.

CI has worked closely with Google for years and is a Google Product Search partner and Google Shopping launch partner. In this July 2011 interview with CI's Alan Fulmer, he explains how retailers can send one feed to CI, which then optimizes it for all channels, whether it's search engines such as Google or Bing, or CSEs such as PriceGrabber or Shopping.com - saving the merchant from having to optimize the data feed for each channel.

Last year was a critical year for merchants coping with changes to Google Shopping. CI's technology helps merchants maximize sales and ROI for Product Listing Ads (PLAs), and its Managed Services team employs unique bidding methods to boost retailers' Google Shopping performance. In August, CI's Vice President of Performance Marketing Larry Weeks shared his thoughts on how Google Shopping changes were impacting merchant traffic and provided a formula to help merchants calculate the amount they should be willing to pay for clicks on Google PLA.

CI had been working with clients on PLA ads before Google required merchants use it for exposure on Google Shopping, and that expertise helped CI call 2012 a "record" year.

But this is much more than Google buying a company with expertise in optimizing product feeds for online merchants. CI has a range of technologies and works with hundreds of major brands as well, giving it access to something Google loves - data! CI helps hundreds of brands drive shoppers to retailers through its Where to Buy service, for example. The company says "Consumers already engaging a brand are highly qualified and are often ready-to-buy. With CI Where-to-Buy, brands drive these high-converting leads to Where-to-Buy enabled retail partners."

In Wednesday's announcement, Channel Intelligence said it would continue to offer all CI services and wrote, "For over ten years, we have focused on making it easy for consumers to find and buy products online and help our clients grow their business. We've worked with Google for years, and look forward to the great things we will be able to do together."

The transaction, which is subject to customary closing conditions, is expected to be completed in the first quarter of 2013.

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About the author:

Ina Steiner is co-founder and Editor of EcommerceBytes and has been reporting on ecommerce since 1999. She's a widely cited authority on marketplace selling and is author of "Turn eBay Data Into Dollars" (McGraw-Hill 2006). Her blog was featured in the book, "Blogging Heroes" (Wiley 2008). Follow her on Twitter at @ecommercebytes and send news tips to ina@ecommercebytes.com.

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