Become.com's End-of-Summer CPC Sale

Shopping search engine Become.com marks down its CPC advertising by half during the month of August. The promotion is intended to introduce advertisers to the site while it’s still in beta.

Become.com will offer advertisers a 50 percent discount for advertising campaigns running in the month of August. Cost-per-click rates range from $.10 to $.40 depending on the category. Ad units consist of individual product listings based on a data feed provided by each merchant. Paid product listings also appear on the right hand side of the page in each search.

“The promotion will run until the end of August, and it’s based on those merchants engaged in CPC,” said Greg Haslam, director of business development at Become.com. “We will credit them back 50 percent of their ad spend, which we hope they will use on future advertising.”

Credits can be taken in cash, or applied toward future campaigns.

Become.com plans to generate traffic to the site through public relations channels, but will engage in search engine marketing campaigns later in the quarter. It also plans to bolster its relationships with Google and Omniture.

“We recognize that other comparison shopping sites have relationships with Google and Overture that drive millions of users to their sites. We will be working with [them],” said Haslam.