New York, NY, October 10, 2006--Standard data exchange formats designed to simplify online advertising were announced today in New York City at the annual convention of Shop.org, the online division of the National Retail Federation. These standard formats will allow advertisers to send detailed product-level information to search engines more efficiently.
The new standards were developed by a diverse committee working with the Association for Retail Technical Standards (ARTS). Committee members included representatives from search engines including Yahoo, AOL, Microsoft; from online retailers including Target, Penney’s and REI; and from online marketing agencies including Mercent, Channel Intelligence, The Rimm-Kaufman Group, and MARS.
“Standard data formats help retailers and search engines by providing a common language for describing product data,” said Richard Mader, Executive Director of the Association for Retail Technical Standards, a division of the National Retail Federation. “This in turn helps consumers by ensuring product data on the search engines is more complete, timely, and accurate. ARTS is pleased to be working with a diverse set of search engines and online advertisers on this important standard.”
“The current situation is a digital tower-of-Babel, where different online shopping search and shopping engines take SKU data in different formats. These specs allow advertisers, engines, and agencies to exchange product data more efficiently,” said Jay Heavilon of MARS, who chaired the committee.
The data formats are specified in XML, the data language of the internet. One format allows retailers to submit detailed product information to the search engines including product name, price, URL, image, description, color, size, in-stock status, and shipping fees. Another format allows search engines to send back standard acknowledgements and/or any appropriate error messages.
The first beta test of the standard occurred on October 5th, when engineers at marketing firm Channel Intelligence used the format to submit product information from their client Circuit City to the AOL Shopping platform.
“Circuit City sells 9,000 great consumer electronics products online,” said David Mathews, President of Circuit City Direct. “Standard data formats will help us get our product information out to our search engine partners with more speed, accuracy, and consistency. Our goal is to help online shoppers get better information when researching and buying consumer electronics.”
According to Shop.org and Forrester Research, online sales will top $200 billion this year.
The Association for Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) is an international membership organization dedicated to reducing the costs of technology through standards. Since 1993, ARTS has been delivering application standards exclusively to the retail industry. ARTS has three standards: The Standard Relational Data Model, UnifiedPOS and IXRetail. Membership is open to all members of the international technology community- retailers from all industry segments, application developers and hardware companies. www.nrf-arts.org.
Shop.org is the network for retailers online. It’s where the best retail minds come together to gain the insight, knowledge, and intelligence to make smarter, more informed decisions in the evolving world of the Internet and multichannel retailing. Founded in 1996, Shop.org became a division of the National Retail Federation in January 2001. The association’s membership includes interactive executives from store-based retailers, catalog-based retailers, Web-based retailers, and retail solution providers. www.shop.org.
