Trademark Bidding Rules – Open Letter to Affiliate Program Managers
Filed Under Affiliate Marketing, Brand Name Bidding, Google Adwords, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Marketing
I have been dealing with this issue for too many years not to put in my two cents on the issue. Over the past 18 months or so it has become increasingly popular among affiliate program managers to ban trademark bidding. This trend was accelerated when Google Adwords adopted the limited display URL policy. Google will only allow one ad per search to contain any given display URL. This means that merchants that have their own in-house PPC effort are operating in direct competition with their affiliates. As an affiliate who manages close to 20 PPC accounts just for affiliate marketing, I will offer my position on the issue. This is an open letter to any affiliate program managers who care to listen to an affiliate marketers point of view:
Pay-per-click marketing is most effective when the marketer is able to send traffic directly to the merchant’s site. This eliminates any confusion in the mind of the consumer when they arrive at an affiliate site, when they were really looking for the merchant site. Linking directly also limits the need for the customer to make the transition from the affiliate site into the merchant site. Many are lost in this process, even on well optimized affiliate pages with the highest click-through rate possible.
In regards to direct TM bidding on the search engines, I believe this is the best way to dominate the search page for your own trademarked terms. I have seen far too many merchants enforce a no-bid policy for their trademarks, only to find that as soon as they clear out all their affiliates from the search results page, their competition appears. Of course, you have less control over what the competition does, than you have over your affiliates. It is currently Google’s policy to allow trademark bidding as long as the trademark is not in the ad copy. They have had this policy in effect ever since they won the landmark Geico vs. Google lawsuit. So any competitor can buy ads on the results page of your trademark.
Many affiliate managers feel you shouldn’t have to pay affiliates for traffic generated on your own brand name, because you have worked hard to establish the brand awareness. While I have the utmost respect for the work involved in creating brand awareness, I do not subscribe to this way of thinking. Many affiliate managers think those customers are already theirs, but until they convert, perhaps they are not. There is a significant percentage of traffic that is not being captured by the merchant website, even on a search for a branded term. The goal of the merchant should be to capture as much of that branded traffic as possible, because all branded traffic is by nature highly qualified.
Affiliates are a great way to increase the coverage across the search page for a branded term. This is why affiliate marketing is such a huge industry today. Isn’t it better to make a sale through an affiliate than to lose a sale to the competition?
6 Reasons I think all merchants should outsource their PPC efforts to the affiliate community.
- You would have less risk in the PPC arena.
- You (through your affiliates) would dominate the search results page for your own trademarked terms.
- You would be preventing your competition from bidding on your trademarks, because the affiliates would compete for the top positions.
- You would only have to pay commissions on actual sales, not potential sales.
- You would not have to risk spending your whole advertising budget in a few hours because of inexperience.
- If you have chosen to hire a SEM company, then you would not have to pay enormous fees to a company that is doing something the affiliate community would be happy to do based on their own proven performance. Most SEM companies are not paid based on a percentage of sales. They are paid whether they increase your sales or not.
What I am currently seeing from affiliate managers are complicated rules that allow bidding on one variation of a trademark term but not another. Or “you can bid on trademarks if you do not use our display URL”. Or “you can bid on our terms but you cannot link directly to our site”.
All of these policies are clearly rooted in merchant efforts to meet the needs of their programs, but I have to say they are all preventing affiliates from doing the job they are so good at doing, MARKETING. To be honest, I prefer not to work for programs that have complicated terms, because I have to spend far too much valuable time and resources making sure we are in compliance.
I have one suggestion for those affiliate managers who are trying to help their affiliates deal with these issues. This is especially important since Google hit affiliate landing pages with a penalty causing affiliate bid prices to rise dramatically in the Fall of 2006. Read more about Google’s efforts to eliminate affiliates from the search results pages.
Buy up domains with your brand in them and offer landing pages to affiliates that are mirrors of the site itself, but are on different domains. This would allow affiliate managers to keep the root domain for in-house PPC efforts, as well as allow affiliates to reap the rewards of linking directly to the merchant site without competing directly with the merchant. I have not seen any affiliate managers do this yet, but I think it is something all affiliate managers should consider. Especially if they are concerned with capturing as many customers as they can for a search on their brand name.
2 Responses to “Trademark Bidding Rules – Open Letter to Affiliate Program Managers”
6 Reasons Merchants Should Allow Affiliate PPC Trademark Bidding…
6 Reasons all merchants should outsource their PPC efforts to the affiliate community. Some very good points about why affiliate programs SHOULD let affiliates bid on their brand and dominate the paid search results.
……
[...] If there are 6 reasons to have an open keyword policy for affiliate there are also many reasons to keep some control over PPC either in house or via a search specialised agency. [...]