Sponsored Products for Vendors
Add-on ID: kv_vendor_sponsored_products · Edition: Multi-Vendor only · Latest version: 1.0.0 · Compatible with: Multi-Vendor 4.17.2 – 4.21.x, PHP 7.4 – 8.3 · Changelog: view
Sponsored Products for Vendors adds paid product placements to a CS-Cart Multi-Vendor marketplace. Vendors create campaigns for their own products and pay per click or a fixed daily price. The money comes from their vendor balance: the add-on posts the charges into core vendor accounting as ordinary Payout rows, the same kind of row the Vendor plans add-on writes for plan fees. There is no payment gateway and no second ledger, and balances, the Accounting page and payouts stay correct.
- Campaigns for vendors: products to promote, placements, cost per click with a bid and a daily budget, or a fixed daily price; an optional total budget, start and end date, pause and resume.
- Four placements: under the category description, under the search results title (only products that match the search), a “Sponsored products related to this item” row on product pages, and a “Sponsored products” block you can place anywhere with Block Manager (for example on the home page).
- Clear ad disclosure: a “Sponsored products” heading, a “Sponsored” label on every card, the vendor’s name and
rel="sponsored"links. - Moderation: campaigns wait for approval (all vendors, only vendors without automatic approval, or none). Approve, reject with a reason, suspend. Block a vendor from advertising.
- Your prices: a minimum bid and a fixed daily price for every placement, the number of slots, and a cap per vendor.
- Paid from the vendor balance: a click is charged only when the vendor’s balance covers it above the minimum you keep. Budgets and balances are checked under a lock, so they are never exceeded. Charges are posted once a day (or every hour).
- Click protection: repeated clicks of a visitor, bots, clicks of the marketplace staff and of the vendor’s own team are never charged; per-IP limits stop click flooding.
- Statistics: impressions, clicks, invalid clicks, CTR, spend, average cost per click, orders and ordered revenue (ROAS) per day and campaign, for vendors and administrators, with CSV export.
- Full page cache ready: the sponsored slots are the same for every guest and cached with the page; impressions and clicks are sent by a small script to an endpoint that is never cached.
Documentation
Section titled “Documentation”| Page | Contents |
|---|---|
| Installation | Requirements, installing, upgrading, disabling, uninstalling |
| Configuration | Every setting, placements and prices, click protection, posting and cron, privileges, license |
| Usage | Campaigns for vendors, moderation, the storefront slots, the block, statistics, posted charges |
| Developer notes | Money model, tables, hooks, caching, tracking endpoint, file map |
| FAQ | Common questions |
Compatibility
Section titled “Compatibility”- CS-Cart Multi-Vendor 4.17.2 – 4.21.x (tested on Multi-Vendor 4.17.2 with PHP 8.1 and Multi-Vendor 4.21.2 with PHP 8.3). CS-Cart (Standard/Ultimate) refuses the installation by the edition check.
- PHP 7.2.5 – 8.3, depending on your CS-Cart version.
- Storefront themes: Responsive, Nova and themes based on them.
- Works with Vendor plans (commissions), Vendor debt payout (vendors top up their balance to keep advertising), Product variations and Common products for vendors (master products).