brand, brand, brand

[Hero]

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It's the hot topic of the past few weeks, so I thought I'd post about a couple of issues I've been dealing with recently.
*At what point is a merchant's name considered an actual brand? When people are searching for the name? And how is a collection of generic terms like "my soothing hand cream" a brand name?
*Is there an effective way of explaining to the merchants the broad match, so they don't go ballistic when an affiliate's ad for "hand cream" appears when someone searches for "my soothing hand cream"? It appears to be very rare in PPC policies that the merchants actually instruct affiliates on negative keywords.
*How can a merchant justify restricting brand bidding when they do not do ANY ppc themselves, and regard their top position in organic (obviously!) to attract all that brand-driven traffic eitherway? Especially when there are competitors bidding on their name? Where is the "brand protection" there?
*And, how can a merchant justify restricting misspellings and variations, when they don't do PPC themselves and they clearly don't rank anywhere in the organics for those? Aren't they losing serious traffic there?

In other words, how can merchants restrict something they don't understand and don't listen to the advise from people who actually do PPC full time? How exactly are they "protecting their brand" (as is the latest trend in the merchant phraseology)?

[ChrisAF]

*At what point is a merchant's name considered an actual brand? When people are searching for the name? And how is a collection of generic terms like "my soothing hand cream" a brand name?

I feel this needs to be looked at on a case by case basis but would argue any name that isn't a generic term or phrase should be considered a "brand" when discussing brand bidding. Anybody who has done any brand PPC knows almost any company name, no matter how small, is used as a search term, if this wasn't the case this kind of question wouldn't be relevant, as an ad on their name wouldn't generate any traffic.
If the search phrase only makes sense in reference to the merchants name then I would regard it as a brand. Using your example "my soothing hand cream", what does this refer too (in terms of a search) apart from a product/company name? Yes they are each generic terms but in that combination don't make any sense as a search phrase apart from referring to a company or product with that name. Had "soothing hand cream" been the example then I wouldn't have considered it a "brand" in terms of brand name bidding.

*Is there an effective way of explaining to the merchants the broad match, so they don't go ballistic when an affiliate's ad for "hand cream" appears when someone searches for "my soothing hand cream"? It appears to be very rare in PPC policies that the merchants actually instruct affiliates on negative keywords.

I feel this is up to the affiliates to some extent, if a merchant says "no ads can be run on our brand name" affiliates should use the name is as a negative keyword, the same goes for any other restricted keywords.

*How can a merchant justify restricting brand bidding when they do not do ANY ppc themselves, and regard their top position in organic (obviously!) to attract all that brand-driven traffic eitherway? Especially when there are competitors bidding on their name? Where is the "brand protection" there?

I don't think merchants need to justify their decision, at the end of the day it's their brand, their business, their affiliate programme. I think networks should be providing good advice on this but merchants need the freedom to set the restrictions they want. If the network feels the restrictions are unrealistic they shouldn't launch the programme. The same applies to affiliates; they aren’t forced to join a programme and should only do so if they are willing to work within the restrictions laid down by the merchant.

*And, how can a merchant justify restricting misspellings and variations, when they don't do PPC themselves and they clearly don't rank anywhere in the organics for those? Aren't they losing serious traffic there?

Again I agree they are losing traffic but as with the previous point isn't this up to the merchant to decide?