In the long run, she said, the shopbots that offer more services and features, as well as the best information on the products buyers want, will succeed. Some of the largest sites with shopbots, such as AOL and the Walt Disney Co. s GoNetwork, list only vendors who have paid for the service. Neither AOL nor GoNetwork returned calls for comment. Ken Cassar, principal analyst with Jupiter Communications, a market research firm, said the practice is less useful to shoppers and raises questions about whether the sites are serving customers or merchants. Payment for placement Some sites, such as CNET Shopper and mySimon, charge fees to vendors who want shoppers to see their products ahead of merchandise from companies that don t pay, regardless of relative price.
Vendors can also pay for the display of a logo, slogan, or other branding information.
Brian Rolfe, mySimon spokesperson, defended the practice, saying the company needs a revenue source. He also argued that its business model is fair because it doesn t exclude vendors that don t pay. It s like the Yellow Pages, he said. Everyone has a listing, but some merchants pay more to have ads. Rolfe said that mySimon users can have product information sorted strictly by price but noted that less than half do so.