Each day I am surprised by the level of misinformation that is being spread regarding PPC marketing. It all started with Google’s one URL rule and has snowballed from there. Some is being propagated by internal search teams and some by outside agencies. Either way it all boils down to protecting their turf.
The Direct Linking issue has been one that is most often misunderstood. Here is an example of a recent communication that I had with a program manager via email.
[PROGRAM MANAGER]
IMWAVE is in violation of MERCHANT’s keyword policy. MERCHANT affiliates are not allowed to use www.MERCHANT.com (or any variation thereof) as the visible URL. Please comply ASAP or we will have to deactivate you.
[ME]
Thank you for your email. I have paused all of our promotions for MERCHANT while I review our campaign. Imwave does not currently build out landing pages for our merchant partners and instead works only with ones that we can direct link to. Do you have an alternate URL that we can use to promote your company? If not, I’m afraid we may have to stop promoting the MERCHANT program permanently.
Thanks in advance,
Tony
[PROGRAM MANAGER]
Thanks! I'll get back to you with our Search Policy as I am waiting for an update from the Search team over here. As far as I know, you can use your affiliate links to link to MERCHANT but the display URL in the ad can not be www.MERCHANT.com or any variation of that.
Otherwise, our own ads get knocked out. I'll get you the search terms as soon as I have them in hand.
Note that the Internal Search Team is apparently writing the Search Policy
[ME]
I appreciate you looking into this. There are a few concerns that I wanted to share with you. In Google, if I directly link to the URL from your CJ links (MERCHANT.com) Google requires me to show MERCHANT.com in my ad. If I show something else, they will shut off my ads for violating their guidelines (inaccurate display URL). It may not happen immediately (usually does) but it will happen, so that is not a good long term solution.
As PPC marketers, the chances that our ads will “knock out” yours, is almost zero even if we use your URL. Many times, internal search departments do not understand this and simply think that allowing it will increase their costs.
In the rare case where our keyword terms do overlap, we would typically not be bidding high enough to have our ads show over yours. The hope is that we can generate a huge list of terms that you are not currently bidding on and if that’s the case, then again there isn’t a conflict on ads. We have done this with other advertisers very successfully and without increasing their internal search costs. If this sounds like something you may want to pursue, please let me know. I’d be happy to have a call to discuss how we have made this work with other large merchants.
Tony
[PROGRAM MANAGER]
According to our Search team, 2 ads can't use the same display URL on the same keyword. One will always be knocked out. If you are seeing otherwise, we'd love to see a screenshot.
Per Google’s policy: http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/text/18928.html
Affiliate Policy: Affiliates get paid a commission to promote a merchant's website and drive traffic or create sales on that site. We allow affiliates to use AdWords advertising. Please note that we will only allow one ad for affiliates and parent companies sharing the same display URL per search query.
As far as bidding on terms we are not bidding on, you are right. It would not raise our costs. However, MERCHANT has not given any affiliates permission to use the display URL www.MERCHANT.com so, for right now, that option is blacklisted. This is not to say that it won't change in the future. We're in the process of building a new affiliate/search policy to present to MERCHANT so this is something we will bring up with them.
[ME]
Yes, that is Google’s policy. It is 100% correct that 2 ads can not show at the same time for the same keyword and using the same display URL.
The issue is which one will get “knocked out.” My point was that even if we had the same display URL AND the same keywords the chances that we would knock out MERCHANT are slim to none. The merchant will typically always be bidding higher than an affiliate and that higher bid will knock the affiliate out, rather than the other way around.
It’s about gaining a volume of keywords. I realize that you must adhere to their policy. I just wanted to point out that they may be losing volume due to a lack of understanding of the process
Tony
PPC affiliates typically can not afford to bid high enough to trump the merchant’s ads. There is also another key point in this correspondence. Channel conflict with the affiliate program. The affiliate channel is like hiring a commission only sales person, generating sales at a fixed cost per acquisition.
In my mind, placing an Internal Search Team in charge of creating the Search Policy is tantamount to having the fox guard the hen house. Our industry has got to find a way to get our message up to the “C” level.
Can you imagine a conversation with a company CFO about what we do?
“Wait, you are generating incremental sales, I don’t pay you unless you sell something AND each sale is at a fixed CPA.”
UPDATE:
As it turns out the Program Manager here works for an Agency not the merchant. The Agency is apparently handling both the Internal Search AND the management of the Affiliate Program....now that REALLY is the fox guarding the hen house!
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