Hi,
Perhaps I'm paranoid, but has anyone else experience of the following, or is it just a coincidence ?
Did a bit of research on a merchant.
Found quite a few keywords & phrases they weren't bidding on.
Set up Adwords.
Within a couple of hours, some generic adverts to the merchant (pretty crap and irrelevant actually) had appeared which contain the 2 important keywords within all the keyword terms I was bidding on. So bye bye to that campaign.
Merchant is on the
TD network. I haven't figured out if these are aff ads yet.
So is it possible for merchants to monitor keyword bidding on Google and automatically launch adverts based on keywords they weren't bidding on. ie. some affiliate does the thinking for them and then they just grab the space ?
Because if it is, then the network should have a note next to the merchant to stop us wasting time. A big red notice actually.
PS.
I was a bit surprised with this (big) merchant to find that they allow their name in the ad text and also redirects using their url direct from PPC ads.