Affiliate Marketing Blog from UK Offer MediaWelcome to Kieron’s blog - the life and times of an Internet Marketeer

November 4th, 2007 at 2:08 am

Right, I see they rank no.2 on google for “toy shop”, time to do some black hat to push them MUCH further down.

I must admit I’m getting very tired of the PPC restrictions some of these merchants impose. The worst, by far is when you are not allowed to even bid on competitors trademarks ! (hello Blockbuster and Netflix !)

November 4th, 2007 at 10:48 am

The sad thing, Kieron, is that the merchants get away with restrictions like these, as the majority of affiliates promote them irrelevantly - especially for such a seasonal program, there’s very few affiliates who would not jump onboard.

November 4th, 2007 at 12:14 pm

sorry, but why would you bid on competitor names eitherway? That would only cause problems for everyone

November 4th, 2007 at 5:44 pm

Hero, why would that cause problems for everyone ? In my example, if someone searches for “blockbuster dvd rental”, that’s pretty much the only opportunity you have to sell them on Netflix instead at least in PPC world.

I don’t see how presenting alternatives when someone uses a trademark in a search term causes problems.

People use trademark terms all the time when referring to generic products (example: people often ask for a coke when they really mean pepsi, but coke although trademarked is the general term now).

I seem to recall Kieron saying he used competitor terms when promoting some products.

November 5th, 2007 at 9:37 am

Merchants like this should be shot. Leave the online marketing to your affiliates, don’t compete with them. Don’t hire a “ppc agency” to come in and fill your heads with glorious stories of ppc domination due keyword restrictions. Those same ppc agencies are know to tell horror stories of how a brand name was tarnished because the merchant allowed affiliates to bid on their brand name. It’s all crap. I love using these lists to promote their competition though as they usually have a couple good keywords in there. Bidding on competitor terms is natural. If you’re searching for a bottle of coke, you don’t mind seeing pepsi advertising on that page too, it’s called alternatives and those are a good thing.

Anyhow, the best are the companies who sell magazines and they won’t let you bid on the magazines titles! LOL

November 5th, 2007 at 10:41 am

I struggle to believe that ‘most’ affiliates would actually do this though. Kieron, have you ever been asked to add the negative words and if so, what did they say when you said no?

November 5th, 2007 at 12:21 pm

Mark - yes I have told lots of merchants that I won’t add their brand name to my negative keyword lists. I’ve also told them that if they don’t like it, it will take me 2 minutes to remove all their links from my sites. None have ever taken any action after that.

November 5th, 2007 at 12:26 pm

Here we go again…

I had a similar incident only a few weeks ago, with a program on AWin. The company, “Garden Bird Supplies” didn’t want anyone bidding on their trademarked name, which IMO is fair enough. However, they then contacted me and asked me to negatively a whole range of instances, including PHRASE matching on GARDEN BIRD.

So, negatively phrase matching on GARDEN BIRD… lets have a think about this. Should a visitor search on WINTER GARDEN BIRD FOOD then because of their request my advert wouldn’t show. A couple of email bounced to and forth and I ended up speaking to them on the phone.

Their PPC restrictions says;
Affiliates MAY run PPC campaigns using generic keywords.
OK, so to me, GARDEN BIRD is generic words, so when in a phrase such as WINTER GARDEN BIRD FOOD, then I was well within their PPC guidelines. Sadly they asked me to negatively list near enough every possible generic keyword known to man, which I laughed at.

I dropped and disassociated myself with the program, however what was more disappointing was that I copied AWin in and asked that Awin or Garden Bird Supplies updated their PPC guidelines to reflect what they had asked from me. The program terms haven’t yet been updated and I suspect they never will be either.

November 5th, 2007 at 3:33 pm

I don’t see how competitor terms are beneficial - more frequently than not, the customer IS searching for that brand and being sent on a competitor is not good practice. In retail for instance, it’s not THAT frequent that a service/product is associated with a particular brand (coke, tipex, sellotape etc).
Furthermore, the merchant gets in trouble with the competitor because the affiliates are using this method. I can’t even count the times when a client of mine was threatened by competitors for trademark infringement and I had to contact affiliates to remove links.
It’s one of the worst things in customer experience, expecting to go to one place and ending up in another. And if affiliates are doing that, well, that doesn’t help with their reputation, does it?

My advice - if you don’t like the restrictions, move elsewhere. There are PLENTY of merchants who value you and your traffic and your expertise, without you having to resolve in petty moves.

In most cases I have come across to restrictions like these, the merchant does not do ANY brand ppc themselves - they regard their top natural position to be enough to give them all the traffic. And they want to make sure they do not pay any affiliates who broad match on their generic name.
Whether they’re right or not, that’s not for me to say - whether they work successfully with affiliates, that’s for you to say.

November 5th, 2007 at 3:44 pm

If an affiliate is passing off, that is wrong. One of the main reasons we bid on competitor names is because the merchant has put these keyword restrictions in place for their own brand. That’s fine, it’s their sandbox, but what is wrong with and ad like this:

Looking for XYZ?
You should also try ABC
Check out ABC here.

Something like that is harmless and gives the user more options. Every other advertising medium on the planet allows multiple ads for different companies in the same product. Newspapers show more then one car dealers ads and magazines are built around showing competitors all in one place. It’s only the ppc world where advertisers get these silly ideas in their head. I’m not sure how those things could be labeled as a bad customer experience? Giving the customer a choice is a good thing, tricking them is not and is a totally separate issue.

November 5th, 2007 at 3:51 pm

yes, you are right, if it’s clear that this is about an alternative suggestion and you’re telling the customer that this is a different merchant they will be directed to. However, I must point out that according to a study I had come across (where have I saved it? damn my filing system!) most people don’t actually read the copy of the ad - they just click on the first one they see (a controversial study, yes). So, if that’s true, even this method is a potential lawsuit.

Obviously I was referring to ads where you bid on X brand name and send them to Y merchant and you don’t tell the customer you’ll be sending them to Y’s site.

November 5th, 2007 at 4:27 pm

Off topic… but notice in the Overture screen shot “toy r usa”. A bit of broad match technology getting it wrong.

November 5th, 2007 at 5:20 pm

I lost over 1,000GBP/month due to stupid trademark restrictions last year.

I was ranking well (not PPC) in the SERPs for the name of a popular diet. Was generating thousands of dollars each month for said diet.

Then they decide to boot me out of the affiliate programme, without even bothering to explain why. So I contact them and they tell me it’s because I have their brand name in the URL.

So my site was still receiving thousands of visitors a day, all searching for this particular diet, and yet I wasn’t allowed to send them to the merchant’s site.

Net result - the visitor would land on my site looking for this diet, and I would have to direct them to a competitor, “try this diet instead” kind of thing.

They lost out on sales, and thousands of their potential customers just got directed to another merchant instead. And they were happy with that? Pathetic.

November 5th, 2007 at 6:24 pm

Hero and everyone else, you aren’t and shouldn’t use competitor trademarks in your ad copy, google definitely don’t allow that and if caught you will be stopped.

However, someone searching for “coke”. Can and should be able to see ads like

Pepsi - Cool and Rereshing
blah blah blah
pepsiblah.com

This not only isn’t deceptive it’s standard operating procedure.

And as far as the study goes that people blindly click the first ad, well, I call utter bollox on it. People click on what catches their eye, which is your ad-copy in these cases.

Yes, the first ad they see is obviously going to get the most attention, but that’s been proven over and over that the no.1 spot isn’t always the best.

November 6th, 2007 at 11:55 am

Times like this I’m glad I’m an SEO affiliate, merchants can’t stop you then.

November 6th, 2007 at 2:57 pm

Mr Daz, they can refuse to work with you (yes, some really are that idiotic). See my comment above.

November 6th, 2007 at 3:58 pm

Chromate, that is one hilarious story. I see what you mean, stupidity on behalf of the merchants sometimes reaches unparalleled heights.

I did have a film producer once threaten me with legal action for using a domain name he thought he should own. Luckily the studio realised I was actually helping to promote their movie and said to ignore him. He hated that, but everyone else was happy

November 7th, 2007 at 10:56 am

It’s getting a little crazy, I can understand the “Please don’t bid on……” rule. But asking affiliates to add negative keywords is a little nuts. Personally I do SEO so it doesn’t effect me, although I’m seeing some crazy url restrictions. Soon the content on the page won’t be able to mention brands or the products. My answer to this is to outrank the merchant for all there restricted terms and send the traffic to there competitors affiliate program, low conversion but less annoyance.

November 7th, 2007 at 2:11 pm

Colin, yep that’s the problem - conversions suffer big time.

You mentioned about page content. Funnily enough, I don’t think my merchant was happy that I even mentioned their brand in the page, as it was helping my rankings. Here’s a quote from one of their emails…

“It is unfortunate that my previous explanation of NO bidding on trademarked terms on ANY site or use of trademarked terms was somehow unclear. Each time we search our terms and see that your sites used those terms, links, and affiliations to draw extraordinary traffic, it is a conflict of interest.”

November 7th, 2007 at 2:29 pm

“It is unfortunate that my previous explanation of NO bidding on trademarked terms on ANY site or use of trademarked terms was somehow unclear. Each time we search our terms and see that your sites used those terms, links, and affiliations to draw extraordinary traffic, it is a conflict of interest.”

This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard

November 7th, 2007 at 3:54 pm

I’m shocked, I work client side on SEO and I can see the point when merchants think they’re losing sales that they would already be gettin. however search engine have 10 position, merchants can only be listed in 1 or 2 postions

Unless they control all positions in the SERPs

And that works, I done a test on google with the term “Pc World Ayr” and got 8 out of 10 positions, including the first 5.

Back to the point, At the moment I’m controlling the message that visitors looking for PC World in Ayr see. I can change that message to be negative towards a merchant, but that wouldn’t make money. If I WAS evil I could out rank them for the first 30 positions and then sell the rankings to them, or they pay for me to go away, might be worth looking into if they continue to get crazy with restrictions

November 11th, 2007 at 2:38 pm

oh how I love the term “compulsory negative keywords” shortly after reading it I pull links and move them over to a merchant who’s happy to get all the traffic they can instead of cherry picking the most profitable on their own ppc and paying affs for the stuff they can’t be bothered to chase.

same with no bidding on the top generics, I still remember interflora’s “you can no longer bid on the word ‘flowers’ ” meglomania a couple of years ago.. still makes me smile even now that a company can be so dumb.

I do make sure I contact the merchant and tell them just why I’m no longer promoting their program though so suggest we all do the same when encountering compulsory negatives, don’t just pull links, make sure you email them saying exactly why in a courteous and professional way of course.. no need to fall out with anyone, just make your views and reasons known and that you are moving all your traffic to merchant x now as they have no restrictions in place.

in time only a few dumb/uneducated merchants will try it on and only a few dumb/ueducated affiliates will wear it.