I can see the affiliate PPC debate pretty clearly from all sides, but have been asked to try to get some consensus from affiliates about what an appropriate and acceptable compromise is. Would also like to know if you have seen any creative solutions to the affiliate PPC conundrum.
Someone asked me to get some feedback from you guys about the following issue. 1st I'd like to say that I don't agree with the merchant's viewpoint, although I can see their point. I'm making some assumptions, but based on what I know of the situation this is the scenario.
Merchant has a wide range of products and an aggressive PPC campaign covering hundreds or thousands of targeted and long tail key phrases. Merchant is getting good PPC conversion and a better ROI from PPC than they get from the affiliate channel. So the financial person overseeing the PPC marketing channel wants to prohibit affiliates from doing any PPC bidding. The primary concern is that on Google, affiliates can knock the merchant out of the bidding for their own products, based on the one URL per domain rule and/or drive up the merchant's PPC cost. NOTE: the concern is not Trademarks - trademark bidding is not allowed. We are talking generic and product key phrases.
So if someone wanted to present options to the merchant that would allow affiliates to still do key word bidding (no trademarks) without negatively affecting the merchants existing PPC campaign so the affiliate channel could continue to do PPC - what would some of those options be? Have you seen any creative compromises? Possible options and repercussions:
<strong>Merchant says no direct URL bidding, must use a landing page.</strong>
(Extra work for affiliates. Possible change in quality score and conversion rates.
Extra click for the consumer.)
<strong>Merchant offers a separate domain affiliates can use for PPC.</strong>
(Extra work for merchant. Duplicate content issues for merchant? That one extra domain could still only have one affiliate sending direct traffic.)
<strong>
Merchant is leaning toward prohibiting affiliate PPC bidding altogether,
if no workable compromise can be found. </strong>
<strong>
So What other options are there? </strong>As more and more affiliates turn to PPC to drive traffic, I assume this is becoming an increasingly pressing issue and wonder how other merchants handle this or if affiliates have come across any type of acceptable compromise.
I've not been involved in merchant/affiliate PPC policies for awhile, so when this company asked me for possible solutions, I said I'd put it out there for discussion in the forum.
So please come and weigh-in. What are some good option that you have found? Link to what you feel are good PPC policies if you know of any.
Someone asked me to get some feedback from you guys about the following issue. 1st I'd like to say that I don't agree with the merchant's viewpoint, although I can see their point. I'm making some assumptions, but based on what I know of the situation this is the scenario.
Merchant has a wide range of products and an aggressive PPC campaign covering hundreds or thousands of targeted and long tail key phrases. Merchant is getting good PPC conversion and a better ROI from PPC than they get from the affiliate channel. So the financial person overseeing the PPC marketing channel wants to prohibit affiliates from doing any PPC bidding. The primary concern is that on Google, affiliates can knock the merchant out of the bidding for their own products, based on the one URL per domain rule and/or drive up the merchant's PPC cost. NOTE: the concern is not Trademarks - trademark bidding is not allowed. We are talking generic and product key phrases.
So if someone wanted to present options to the merchant that would allow affiliates to still do key word bidding (no trademarks) without negatively affecting the merchants existing PPC campaign so the affiliate channel could continue to do PPC - what would some of those options be? Have you seen any creative compromises? Possible options and repercussions:
<strong>Merchant says no direct URL bidding, must use a landing page.</strong>
(Extra work for affiliates. Possible change in quality score and conversion rates.
Extra click for the consumer.)
<strong>Merchant offers a separate domain affiliates can use for PPC.</strong>
(Extra work for merchant. Duplicate content issues for merchant? That one extra domain could still only have one affiliate sending direct traffic.)
<strong>
Merchant is leaning toward prohibiting affiliate PPC bidding altogether,
if no workable compromise can be found. </strong>
<strong>
So What other options are there? </strong>As more and more affiliates turn to PPC to drive traffic, I assume this is becoming an increasingly pressing issue and wonder how other merchants handle this or if affiliates have come across any type of acceptable compromise.
I've not been involved in merchant/affiliate PPC policies for awhile, so when this company asked me for possible solutions, I said I'd put it out there for discussion in the forum.
So please come and weigh-in. What are some good option that you have found? Link to what you feel are good PPC policies if you know of any.