Shopee & Google announced their partnership on 17 July and are expected to roll out their offering in the next 60 days.
This is fantastic news as the most frustrating aspect of digital advertising in South-East Asia and with this marketplace, giants are the lack of analytics. No platform in South-East Asia was built with advertisers in mind and it’s a major miss as this would’ve driven a lot of free traffic for the marketplaces. Shopee is the first to produce such a solution and it could position them to edge away from Tokopedia, Lazada, and other marketplaces.
We’re glad to know that there are three options for brands looking to advertise through the Google & Shopee partnership:
- Brand/Agency Managed
- Shopee Managed
- Self-service through Shopee
We will focus on the options 1 & 2 as they are vastly different.
Option 1 – Brand/Agency Managed
By far the most appealing option to savvy advertisers as they maintain complete control of their ads and optimize the way they see fit PLUS they will have the ability to import conversion data from Shopee.
Google mentions that the downside is “limited feed support from Shopee” however when has anyone helped with feeds. Google doesn’t.
Option 2 – Shopee Managed
This option is conveyed as “ideal for customers that want to pay for results without hassles”. Basically saying that Shopee’s team will set up the campaigns and Google’s Smart Shopping solution will optimize for you. The red flags with this option are:
- Shopee owns your account
- Shopee manages your account
- Billing will be retained by Shopee – You will be required to sign a commercial agreement with Shopee
Account ownership is a very clear red flag, there isn’t a need to explain more on this.
What we’d like to focus on is the billing component and make it very clear of what this means. We’d like to outline that we have not read the “Commercial Agreement” from Shopee and this is an assumption we’re making of Shopee’s intentions.
Because the billing is retained by Shopee, it is likely that they will impose a fee for the management of your Google Ad account, however, the level of “management” is one questionable component, the other is the amount you’re actually paying for Google Ads.
From a client of Kaliber, it’s been shared to us that Shopee has offered to match the ad spend of SG$10,000 per month for the months of September and October. Meaning a total investment of SG$20,000 would be matched to provide the advertiser with SG$40,000 to spend. This is definitely too good to be true. This is indicative of a potential media markup of 100% because there’s no such thing as free advertising and Google is known for not offering a commission.
On top of that, Google’s Smart Shopping solution is a hands-free, hassle-free solution which Shopee will definitely plug into. A solution that a brand could carry out themselves without any markup.
At the moment, these are simply thoughts shared from our team at Kaliber and we have no evidence indicating that Shopee will be marking up their managed solution. We will keep our audience posted when we uncover details from the commercial agreement.
We’d also like to note that we are actually big fans of Shopee and this partnership with Google demonstrates their level of innovation and strategic insight which would carry them into being the dominating marketplace in South-East Asia.
Kaliber Asia is a Brand Managed approved Partner of Google Ads with Shopee. Feel free to contact robert@kaliber.asia for more details.
