The "By [your brand]" line

It is six or seven words of grey text under a product image, and it appears on every Shopping ad every client of yours runs, in the most commercially valuable real estate on the internet. Nobody buys it, because it cannot be bought.

The arithmetic

A mid-size ecommerce client typically generates between 500,000 and 2,000,000 Shopping impressions a month. An agency running twenty such clients is therefore putting its own name in front of 10 to 40 million impressions a month, at zero media cost, on Google Search.

Buying comparable impression volume through the Google Display Network would cost somewhere between 5,000 and 20,000 euro a month, and it would buy display inventory rather than a line under a product a person is actively shopping for.

Why it compounds

Every new client adds their impressions to the total. Every product they add adds more. Nothing decays, and nothing has to be renewed. An agency with thirty clients accumulates hundreds of millions of branded impressions over a year without a line item for it.

What the impression actually does

It will not generate direct response, and treating it as a performance channel is a mistake. What it does is make an unknown agency name familiar in a market where familiarity is most of the sale. A merchant who has seen your name under their competitors’ products for six months takes your call.

The second-order effect on retention

A client whose Shopping ads carry your brand has a relationship with you that is visible on every ad they run. Combined with the fact that the CSS association belongs to you rather than to them, that is a materially stickier arrangement than reselling a third party’s service.