January 29, 2006

Work To Begin Next Month on Developing a Standard For Shopping and Comparison Search Product Descriptions

A DMNews.com article: Retailers, Engines Want Standard for Product Description, discusses a session at Shop.org's FirstLook 2006 event where representatives from Yahoo, MSN, AOL, Become, and Shop.com, along with several retailers and trade groups, about the need to develop, "a common standard for describing products for online SKU-based advertising and comparison shopping."

Retailers and engines shared their frustration at the lack of a common platform to describe products and receive advertising reports, [Alan] Rimm-Kaufman said. He noted that "organizations with widely different interests all agreed that the current situation was far from good and that an industry standard would help greatly." Participants agreed to work on an industry standard for describing products online using the expertise and process of the Association for Retail Technology Standards, he said. The group plans to meet Feb. 27 in Menlo Park, CA, to begin work on a spec.

Posted by Gary Price at January 29, 2006 12:19 PM