eBay: Sponsored Links
Project Sunshine: It started out as a way for Shopping.com's partners to integrate the world's deepest product catalog available online with millions of unique products and merchant offers to their blogs and websites, but when Google purchased DoubleClick it became much more.
When we caught rumor of the impending purchase (Google was perceived as an serious rival with their competitive launches of Froogle.com and Google Checkout) eBay didn't want to fund Google with revenue from DoubleClick, so we were charged with creating a new revenue generating advertising module that would replace DoubleClick, but not cannibalize clicks on eBay auction listings.
I designed a keyword search targeted content module that was placed at the bottom of all eBay search result pages that showcased the most relevant merchant listed products. The idea being if you didn't find exactly what you were looking for in the auctions, Shopping.com would showcase the most relevant items, with the lowest prices from the most trusted/reviewed merchants. The only thing that has changed since I originally designed it, was the Shopping.com co-branded logo was removed, eBay has adopted it as their own.
View Sponsored Links at the bottom of eBay search results.
Five years later the Sponsored Links are still live on all eBay search results pages.
Shopping.com was purchased by eBay for $620 million June 2005 and is still a top product review and prices comparison service owned by eBay. It operates websites in USA, United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia.
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