Reversed commissions, policy changed, expert help please!!!

[Qui Gon Jinn]

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juxtaposition

jux·ta·po·si·tionPronunciation[juhk-stuh-puh-zish-uhn] Pronunciation Key
–noun
1. an act or instance of placing close together or side by side, esp. for comparison or contrast.
2. the state of being close together or side by side.

Kier, re negatives, I think what is being said is they shouldn't be allowed full stop, if they are then the merchant should define exactly what is considered misspellings which and any point could be interpreted by the individual with different views.

[KieronD]

Yeah, good point!

I must say I find amusing the juxtaposition of some of the views in this thread concerning contracts being made clearer with the views in the thread on negative keywords where people seem to be opposing just such clarification.

The other thread has nothing to do with how clearly worded the terms and conditions are regarding negative keywords. Its about how some of us are opposed to them as a matter of principle.

[Gavinio]

Why have terms which are ambiguous (and simply saying 'misspellings and similar words' is ambiguous) when you can have terms that are crystal clear - I suspect the only reason merchants don't want to do it is because they don't want to find there is an obvious one they have missed out.

There is that, but a merchant shouldn't be put off entering affiliate marketing if they think they have to specify all this. If a new merchant (wrongly, I hope!) thinks that the affiliate industry is full of sharks who want to exploit every loophole they can it could put them off, and we're back to people who think that affiliates are "grubby" again.
I can imagine a spreadsheet of hundreds of entries that several programmes would want to cover all their brand mis-spellings.

I agree with Kieron's point over the page...

There will always be people who are pedantic and if something isn't specifically quoted in black and white in the terms and condititons, will exploit it. We need to be mature enough to interpret the t's and c's in a responsible and professional way.

I'd expect the affiliates that I deal with to understand what a mis-spelling is and isn't, and would be happy to clarify if they are unsure.

[kier]

Yes but they are about different aspects of the same issue: how clear T&Cs should be and by what means merchants should regulate affiliate acitivity, whether by listing in detail everything you can and can't bid on, whether by giving general guidelines and hoping they can be adhered to, or whether by specifying that certain keywords should be put in as negative on your campaigns etc.

I guess the two give maybe a good opportunity for a third thread namely what is best practice for regulating affiliate activity and what are the most effective and acceptable means of doing so.

[gadget]

.. but it is time across the board that affiliates, agencies, networks and merchants started to have contracts that held water rather than a contract that a first year law student could ride a cart and horses through.

Totally agree. Is the starting point for the networks to offer a template to new (and perhaps inexperienced merchants)?

[DavidCartlidge]

Turning your "chances are, if you think it's a mis-speling, it probably is" argument on it's head, does that mean then that if I don't think it's a mis-spelling, it probably isn't - ok then - I don't think Tesko is a misspelling of Tesco - so it probably isn't!!

How can anybody possibly think that Tesko is not a misspelling of Tesco ?!?

Maybe I am being dim here but a misspelling is any word that is not spelt correctly - by saying misspellings are not allowed I don't see where the ambiguity comes into it.

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Tesko is a hypothetical example, Tesko is another brand ie Tesko Laser's

So with tesco finance bidding on the misspell

tesko - Google Search

are they not bidding on somebody elses brand or is google contextually broadmatching assuming that the user wanted the misspell ... where do you draw the line,. You don't have to bid on a brand to appear for that brand. It's not black & white anymore, since you can sometimes bid on a generic word & appear for the brand, problem is you don't know which keyword triggered it.