Brand Bidding Questions

[mdrussell]

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I have just been doing some searches on some of our merchants and other merchants in the industry on Google, for the merchant name plus variations of other words. Examples:-
Offers
Code
Discount
Freebie
Competition
Sale
Voucher
Clearance

So if you search for a merchant name with any of these keywords on the end or before, an advert could appear for the merchant through an affiliate.

What do people think of this, do you consider this to be a violation of PPC policy if the merchant says no Brand Bidding?

Thanks in advance for your comments.

[mattb811]

I'd say this is a tricky subject Mark. The difficulty is in proving that the ad is showing through the affiliate exact matching on the term, which would be against Ts and Cs presumably, or appearing there via broadmatch against the generic part of the search phrase.

The only way to stop this, and something that seems to be becoming more widespread, is ensuring in your Ts and Cs that affiliates are negative matching against brand terms.

[hpops]

Hmmmmmm.....
It isn't direct brand bidding, but its using the brand.
I'm going to go on a limb and say no
We don't currently include it in our standard checks

But I can see more people adding it to ts and cs
Matt is quite right that its a can of worms and EVERYONE will say its broad match (even when it clearly and obviously isn't)

[Matthew Wood]

I don't see this as a violation in terms and conditions at all.

Unless as Matt suggests there are express negative match terms. Even then it would be very, very hard to monitor and prove - and if a merchant asked me to negative match in this instance I'd most likely tell them (politely).........no! - I'm all for best practice and guidelines but it will be guidelines on SEO strategy next - affiliates need to protect their revenue model too!

[nim-b]

This is specifically against our PPC terms (and is stated in them). However it can be hard to tell if its down to broadmatch or not. I normally go after any affiliates who use firebox in the url and are appearing on these terms (eg sitename.com/firebox), and any who are using our name in the text. This indicates they are bidding on the firebox term as well.

Apart from that, I tend to look at which adverts appear on the generic phrase, these are probably only appearing through broadmatch. The others I take a closer look at (does the ad direct to a Firebox landing page? Are they definately on our programme?).

[nim-b]

I don't see this as a violation in terms and conditions at all.

I disagree. If a merchant has a no brand bidding rule, bidding on any term containing their brand should be against the terms. So bidding on 'firebox voucher' would be against the rules. However I agree that bidding on 'voucher' and then appearing on the term because of this isn't against PPC terms and cannot be stopped.

[Shane]

I think the industry teminology needs to be moved from :

"bidding on" to "appearing on"

but there are two distinct parts of it.. a) brand bidding and b) brand plus generic, some merchants don't allow brand but don't mind brand plus generic.. others don't allow either..

Basically any affiliate bidding on brand + generic knows they are on an easier ride than pure generic, if the merchant is ok with that then that's fine but if the merchant has spent many years and mucho cash buiding up it's brand and has equity in it that it does not want to be taken advantage of by affiliates in a "brand+generic" scenario then it's within it's rights to say please don't appear on these terms.

affiliates can choose whether to push a merchant on that basis or not (personally I probably wouldn't but I'm trying to be objective and look from a merchant point of view too) but utlimately anyone doing brand + generic knows they are partially on an easier ride and taking advantage of merchant destinted traffic anyway... having said that it's a nice carrot to offer your affiliates for doing good generic traffic work!

Affiliates will generally argue they are doing broad match and not targeting the restricted keywords .. e.g bidding on "supermarket" broad match and it's showing them for "sainsburys" and "asda" etc.. but is a case simply solved with adding negative keywords if they wish to be on the program and not appear on searches containing the restricted terms whether deliberate or not... hence the terminology "appearing on" puts more onus on the affiliate to ensure he/she is not only targeting the correct keywords but also ensuring he/she isn't appearing for searches made on restricted ones.

only thing that needs doing to ensure an even playing field is tight affiliate network policing and punishment.. nothing annoys good affiliates more than seeing bad ones get away with flouting restricted practices .. repeatedly.. and paid for it.. repeatedly

am now wearing my kevlar jockstrap.. shall be sat in the corner waiting for a kicking

[Dave@Profitistic]

I think that any requirement for negative matching against a brand to alleviate the broad match issue should be specified clearly in the merchants T&C. We always check with our merchants on this and notify accordingly.

[Qui Gon Jinn]

I have to disagree with you Shane about enforcing negatives on brand name in a generic campaign as there are too many permutations. If there are 1000 merchants with restrictions does that mean you would have to put everyone in every single campaign / adgroup you run, no matter who or what you are promoting. Impractical & impossible. Put the boot on the other foot, would any merchants put 30,000 affiliate websites & names as negatives in all their campaigns abd adgroups. Then we can come onto the discussion on whats the difference between ppc'ing for a brand & seo'ing for a brand or appearing on a hybrid term becuase of the generic element. Absolutely ludicrous and doesn't worth entertaining the 5 minutes of my life wasted in even answering in this thread.

Any merchant which tried to enforce "appearing on" , personally I wouldn't want to be part of that program.

Yet again this could get really anal & draconian if networks started going down this route of trying to enforce the "appearing" avenue.

[D-Mac]

Impractical & impossible.

Is it not just a case of CTRL+C, CTRL+V ? Merchant supplies the list, complete with the negative sign (–), job done?

[Qui Gon Jinn]

multiple by 1000 merchants then multiple by say 1000 adgroups you might have. ... RSI too.
I still maintain Impractical & impossible, and again reiterate would that merchant reciprocate that for All affiliates .. oink oink sonic boom ... pig flying past the window would they!

So if you had 100 or 1000 adgroups promoting would you add that one merchant to every single one? I doubt it very much

wow look at all those seo listings and ppc ads (please note not saying comet has an appearing restriction) .. hmm whatever next negative matching on seo .. lmao

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en...G=Search&meta=

[D-Mac]

ok, the network supply the negative list (or an ingenious affiliate charges merchants a fiver each a month to compile a master list ) then the aff applies it at campaign level..

[Qui Gon Jinn]

1000 ppc affiliates x £5 . cant see merchant paying the affiliate unless the network wants to, plus still doesn t get around adding it to each & every adgroup plus there are only a certain number of negative keywords you can add,, .. adding Campaign level doesn t matter, it depends how you structure your adgroups, campaigns & accounts and the multiples of each. Paid search is not just Google either.

Besides i still wouldn't add enforced negatives out of principle so haven't even got to that stage yet .

Without detracting if this applied to seo or not being permitted to mention a brand on your webpage would you? oh and your webpage cannot appear for hybrids becuase of the generic element within the hybrid phrase. ie your website was about laptops but you had a page about 20 inch laptops but appeared in organic listings for "20 inch Dell laptops", but Dell had an appear restriction. It's the same concept.

http://www.mooseontheloose.co.uk/to-...-question.html

[jonsp]

ok, the network supply the negative list (or an ingenious affiliate charges merchants a fiver each a month to compile a master list ) then the aff applies it at campaign level..

If a merchant (say Comet as it was used in the previous example) really expected the aff to comply with that wouldn't the aff just leave the Comet program, bid on such terms as "comet tv" etc then send the user to a landing page saying actually you can get a much better deal on TVs with this merchant

[D-Mac]

Hey Paul, I'm just ribbing you The day will come though..