Something is shifting inside the Google Shopping partner ecosystem, and it’s making some of the biggest DTC media buyers in the country very nervous. Sources close to the matter say that Perion Network, the Tel Aviv-headquartered ad tech company that generated roughly $480 million in revenue in 2024, is allegedly in the late stages of a strategic retreat from its Google Shopping-adjacent product lines — a move that could strand a meaningful slice of mid-market and enterprise ecommerce ad spend heading into Q3.
The rumors first surfaced in late April at a closed-door session during Shoptalk Europe, where several agency principals were reportedly comparing notes on unusual account migration notices from Perion’s WAVE product team. By mid-May, three separate agency operators — none willing to be named — told Ecommerce Times they had received what one described as “very gentle off-boarding language” from Perion account reps.
Perion declined to comment for this story. A spokesperson said the company “does not comment on product roadmap speculation.”
What Is Perion Allegedly Pulling Back From?
The alleged retreat, according to sources, centers on Perion’s shopping feed management and Google Performance Max integration tools — capabilities it largely inherited through its 2021 acquisition of ContentIQ and bolstered through partnerships with feed optimization vendors. The company reportedly notified a handful of enterprise agency clients that certain managed service contracts tied to Google Shopping campaigns would not be renewed past Q3 2026.
“They’ve been quietly moving resources away from shopping inventory for at least six months,” said one performance marketing director at a mid-size DTC agency who requested anonymity. “The account team communication dropped off. Deliverables got vague. These are classic signs.”
“When a vendor starts using phrases like ‘transitioning our focus toward AI-native solutions,’ that usually means the SKU you depend on is getting cut. We’ve started contingency planning with Google CSS partners instead.” — anonymous agency media director, $40M+ annual Google Shopping spend
It’s worth noting that Perion has been under significant pressure since Microsoft-Bing’s ad revenue softness hit the company hard in 2023-2024. CEO Tal Jacobson, who took the helm in 2023 after founder Doron Gerstel stepped back, has publicly pivoted the company toward CTV and high-impact display. Sources say internally the Google Shopping business was viewed as low-margin and operationally heavy relative to its CTV and DOOH ambitions.
Which Vendors Are Circling the Displaced Budget?
If the Perion retreat is real, the beneficiaries are already lining up. Sources at two competing platforms say their enterprise sales teams have received inbound inquiries from agencies referencing Perion accounts specifically.
- Feedonomics (now part of BigCommerce) is reportedly fielding inquiries from at least four agencies looking to migrate Google Shopping feed management. One Feedonomics sales rep, speaking informally, confirmed “unusual inbound volume from what sounds like the same vendor situation” without naming Perion directly.
- DataFeedWatch (acquired by Cart.com) has allegedly been mentioned in several agency Slack communities as a likely landing spot for mid-market Perion clients, particularly those running catalogs under 500,000 SKUs.
- Skai (formerly Kenshoo) is said to be in active conversations with at least one Perion enterprise client spending north of $8 million annually on Google Shopping, according to a source familiar with the negotiation.
- Alli AI and Channable have both seen upticks in demo requests tied to shopping feed consolidation, per agency sources.
The timing is particularly sensitive. Q3 is when most DTC brands are finalizing their back-to-school and early holiday campaign infrastructure. Migrating a shopping feed operation mid-year — especially one touching Performance Max, standard Shopping, and Merchant Center configurations simultaneously — is not a weekend project. “You’re talking 60 to 90 days minimum to do it cleanly at scale,” said one feed operations specialist. “Doing it in July for a brand with a September peak is genuinely scary.”
Is This Connected to Google’s Own CSS Partner Shakeout?
Several sources raised a related but distinct concern: that Perion’s alleged pullback is partly a reaction to Google’s ongoing recalibration of its Comparison Shopping Service (CSS) partner program in Europe, which has reportedly made the unit economics of operating as a CSS intermediary significantly less attractive since late 2025.
Under EU Digital Markets Act pressure, Google adjusted how CSS partners can capture margin on Shopping auctions — a change that sources say squeezed several mid-tier CSS operators by 15 to 25 percent on net revenue per click. Perion operates CSS partnerships across several European markets, and the margin compression may have accelerated internal decisions about where to invest engineering and account management resources.
“The CSS economics in Germany and France got materially worse after the DMA compliance changes. For a company like Perion that was already pivoting to CTV, it probably made the math easy. The shopping business stopped penciling.” — senior performance marketing consultant, London-based agency
This theory is unconfirmed, and Perion has not acknowledged any CSS-related strategic shifts. But two sources who work directly with Google’s CSS partner team in EMEA said they’d observed a general “thinning of the mid-tier” among CSS operators over the past two quarters — a pattern consistent with the alleged Perion situation.
How Are DTC Brands Responding Right Now?
Operationally, the brands most exposed are those running hybrid setups where Perion’s tooling handles both feed management and campaign bidding in an integrated stack. Disentangling those two functions — especially when Performance Max campaigns have been trained on months of signal data — risks real performance regression during the transition window.
Several DTC operators have reportedly begun auditing their vendor dependencies in response to the rumors. A founder of a $35 million home goods brand described her team’s reaction: “Our agency flagged this to us two weeks ago. We don’t use Perion directly, but our agency does. We’ve asked for a contingency plan in writing by end of June.”
- Brands running Google Shopping spend above $500K/month are being advised by some agencies to begin Merchant Center data export and feed versioning now, as a precaution.
- At least one large Shopify Plus brand reportedly paused a planned Performance Max expansion pending clarity on their agency’s Perion dependency.
- Several brands are reportedly accelerating evaluations of Koddi and Productsup as alternative feed platforms with stronger direct Google integrations.
“The prudent move is to pressure-test your entire Shopping infrastructure right now regardless of Perion,” said Kirk Williams, founder of ZATO Marketing and a widely-followed voice in Google Shopping practitioner circles. “Mid-year is a terrible time to discover you have a single point of failure in your feed pipeline.” Williams said he had not personally encountered Perion client migration situations but noted the rumors were “circulating actively” in practitioner communities he’s part of.
What Does This Mean for the Broader Google Shopping Ecosystem?
The alleged Perion situation, whether it fully materializes or not, is exposing a structural anxiety inside the Google Shopping partner ecosystem: too much mid-market spend is concentrated in too few managed-service intermediaries, and brands often have less visibility into that dependency than they realize.
“Most DTC brands couldn’t name who actually manages their Shopping feed if you put a gun to their head,” said one veteran agency operator. “It goes: brand to agency to managed service vendor to CSS partner to Google. That’s four hops. When one breaks, the brand is the last to know.”
“The consolidation pressure in ad tech is real. The vendors that survive are the ones with direct platform relationships and genuine product differentiation. Managed service overlays on top of Google’s own tools are going to keep getting compressed.” — unnamed partner, top-10 U.S. performance marketing agency
For now, the Perion situation remains officially in the realm of unconfirmed industry rumor. No client has publicly filed a dispute, no press release has gone out, and Perion’s IR communications have been quiet on the topic. But the operational footprint of the alleged wind-down — the account rep communications, the contract non-renewal language, the vendor shopping happening in agency back channels — suggests something real is happening, even if the full picture isn’t yet clear.
Ecommerce Times will continue to monitor. If you have direct knowledge of the Perion situation, contact our editorial team securely.
