Klarna launches Comparison Shopping Service

Klarna announced the launch of their new Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) in 21 markets. Klarna CSS offers their partner retailers across Europe an increased customer reach and budget savings to boost their return on advertising spend and drive traffic from high shopping intent consumers. In addition, the Klarna comparison shopping page will provide new opportunities for brands to reach browsing consumers with their products.

Increasing customer reach

Through Comparison Shopping Service, Klarna says to offer retailers a more effective and cheaper way to increase their customer reach. In addition to converting highly relevant traffic from consumers who are searching for products they want to purchase. Thereby maximizing merchants’ return on advertising spend.

The CSS program was created by Google to diversify the search results for Product Listing Ads (PLA). A CSS partner can facilitate the publication of a PLA on Google. Then they are the link between the advertiser (the retailer) and Google. Unlike competitors, Klarna Comparison Shopping Service provides PLA hosting for a small flat monthly fee. By switching to Klarna CSS, retailers can save up to 20% on their Cost-Per-Click spend by avoiding a fee charged by Google CSS. This means that if a merchant bids €1 for the top slot, it would only be worth €0.80 with Google, but the full €1 euro with Klarna.

Opening up Google Shopping

Many CSS partners work this way. This is ever since the European Union gave Google a penalty of €2.4 billion in June 2017. Google was forced to increase competition in the Shopping ad unit. Ultimately, this led to Google Shopping being opened to other CSSs to advertise on behalf of merchants in Europe. One of the ways Google did this was by offering up to 20% savings on CPCs for merchants who adopted a CSS partner.

Klarna will be facilitating the publication of Product Listings Ads on Google. Moreover, Klarna will also list a retailer’s product listing inventory on the Klarna comparison shopping web pages. This means that retailers can further boost their product visibility and customer reach.

Listing advertisements more efficiently

David Sandström, Chief Marketing Officer at Klarna: “We are extremely excited to launch the Klarna Comparison Shopping Service today. With this new product, we enable retailers to list their Google Product Listings Ads more efficiently. Concretely, this means that we offer retailers a more effective and cheaper way to increase their customer reach and convert highly relevant traffic from consumers who are searching for products they want to purchase, thereby maximizing merchants’ return on advertising spend. As a growth partner for our retailers, we are thrilled to be launching even more products and services to support their strategy in the near future.”

Klarna’s new Comparison Shopping Service is available in in multiple countries across Europe. Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.