The Search Monitor Launches New MAP Compliance Service for Manufacturers

September 11, 2014

Orlando, FL September 11, 2014 — The Search Monitor, the leader in precision ad intelligence for marketers and affiliate managers, today announced the release of its new MAP Compliance service.

The service was designed for manufacturers who need to prevent heavy discounting on their products by approved re-sellers and identify unauthorized re-sellers.

The amount of revenue at risk for these violations is not trivial. Consumers spend approximately $1.5 billion each year on comparison shopping engines, according to WizeCommerce. Google’s Product Listing Ads (PLAs), which help shoppers easily compare products, now receive more than half of all clicks when they appear in search results, according to eMarketer.

“MAP compliance is currently a formidable challenge for manufacturers,” explained The Search Monitor’s CEO, Lori Weiman. “Price discounting and unauthorized sales happen every day, across multiple shopping engines and Product Listing Ads. Manual monitoring consumes significant time and can easily lead to mistakes.”

Weiman continued: “Now, our ad monitoring technology can do all the work and alert manufacturers when their Minimum Advertised Price (MAP) is being violated or when unauthorized re-sellers appear. It’s a huge time and cost saver for manufacturers.”

Manufacturers start by providing The Search Monitor with the products they need monitored, the assigned MAP price for each product, and a list of authorized re-sellers. The Search Monitor responds by crawling the leading shopping engines daily for the specified products and capturing price violations and unauthorized re-sellers.

Manufacturers choose how they want to be notified of violations. They can log in to run reports, schedule regular delivery of re-seller activity reports, or get automatic email alerts with full details.

The power of the new service is in the level of detail captured. Manufacturers receive the seller’s URL and name, the name of the shopping engine, the dates and frequency of the violations, the price difference, and screenshots of the listings. This last detail lets manufacturers easily prove to re-sellers that they were violating their policies.

“We’re excited to launch our MAP Compliance Service since it fits so nicely within our platform of ad monitoring tools for advertisers,” Weiman added. “Most advertisers know they need to monitor the ads of competitors and industry leaders, but we are shining light on why manufacturers must closely monitor their re-seller relationships, too.”

Learn more about the new MAP Compliance service at TheSearchMonitor.com.

This press release was originally published on PRWeb.