Sears Marketplace launched last week with an impressive roster of retail clients for its new shopping portal. On the surface, Sears appeared to have been quite successful at lining up an array of A-List partners. Since PM Digital typically arranges and manages the feeds for these types of product listings, we were curious why many of our clients were there without our direct involvement.
It soon became clear that a few of our comparison shopping engine partners (CSEs) and their blind syndication networks were at play. Our tracking revealed that Sears Marketplace was getting their content from Shopping.com. Further research told us that Shopping.com was syndicating to Shop.com, which in turn was feeding to Sears Marketplace.
Unfortunately our own clients had never given permission to provide content to Sears Marketplace, and based on what many have told us over the past few days, they definitely would not have agreed to such a thing. It is no surprise that marketers — especially those with upscale brands — would have preferred to decide for themselves whether partnering with Sears was brand appropriate.