The Power of the Brand Bidder Cookie !!!

[pistol101]

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They are not the same thing in every respect of course, but the core issue Matt raised in the article is the same in both cases, namely that a brand name bidder or cashback site by placing themselves as the last referrer can in many cases easily get the credit for a sale which another affiliate did the actual work in producing without adding any additional value into the transaction themselves.

Lol, what rubbish. So are you saying the consumer just happened to wander into the cashback site? The cashback affiliate has built a brand, and educated the user they can earn some money back when they shop online. In many cases the cashback brand is much stronger than the merchants. I can think of numerous examples of where the affiliate has done the work and the end consumer has gone and bought from a competitor due to the cashback. Over to Paul's thread about cashback sites as this is a whole different thread with some major positive and negative issues.

But, to widen the debate a bit further, what about when the client is doing their own brand ppc activity (whether in house or via an agency) - should that still be last referer and negate the affiliate cookie?

So why has the user typed in the brandname? Becuase of some previous marketing. Are merchants going to start clawing back TV, print or other marketing cost? No, so why should they claw back the affiliates commissions. Brand PPC is a brand retention cost and as such should be budgeted for.

Slightly different twist on this, when I was working for a merchant we were approached through our affiliate network by an agency who would take over all our Adwords management on a CPA basis. No risk to us, pay only for sales. Sounded good. Except they wanted exclusive brand name bidding rights. We said no. We would have basically given them a license to print money. They could have made enough off our brand name ads (at 1p a click as no-one else was allowed to bid) to have covered half the keywords in the English language even if no-one who ever clicked those ads bought anything.

This is really disappointing that you'd get this via a network. This is where we need the association to put pressure on people doing this. Good on you for saying no. Your generic terms have a cost, either you can afford to pay them or you can't. Messing up your affiliate programme is not a cost that should be included.

[kier]

Lol, what rubbish. So are you saying the consumer just happened to wander into the cashback site? The cashback affiliate has built a brand, and educated the user they can earn some money back when they shop online.

Nope that's not what I'm saying at all and I think that's pretty clear from my post. What I'm saying is that in many cases it's entirely possible that the preselling of the product has been done by other affiliates only for the cashback site to scoop the commission without adding anything useful in to the mix. That doesn't happen all the time by any means, but it is an issue that shouldn't be considered as being exclusively related to brand bidding.

[Qui Gon Jinn]

From mentioned on the cashback thread

Will it push some other affiliates concerned about this to seek alternative payment models such as cpc or cpm? Because of their cookie being overwritten?

It it might be a safer option to look at cpc or cpm for those eventualities so at least the initial presell affiliate is seeing some reward, thus what a network think they are gaining with in one hand, they lose out more in the other?

[GW-Sean]

Hi guys,

I wrote a post recently about one of my clients who we've worked out a way to pay the affiliates 50% of their commission for having an involvement with the sale process - but who have not been the last click referrer (PPC brand finished the sale)

Would it be feasible to work on something similar in this case? If we could develop the tracking to an adequate level, then we could identify the fact that more than one affiliate has been involved with the customer journey, and distribute any commissions accordingly?


Just my 2p

[hpops]

Sean, its great to see a larger agency thinking outside the box but there can be a dangerous path opening here with multipayments, although conceptually it may be sensible, practically it becomes unworkable, if you seriously examine the customer touchpoints to a purchase for SKY TV for example you may have
1) Saw an ad online (Post-imp cookie dropped)
2) Looked for "best Sky package" online and found a content affiliate - clicked through (click cookie aff network 1 dropped)
3) Sent link to partner, received IM with further details on available packages which partner foud via PPC (click cookie aff network 2 dropped)
4) Asked parents for advice - they already have SKY so sent an e-mail voucher (marketing initiative tracked)
5) Searched for discount voucher (click cookie)
6) Explored site and requested information (internal marketing cookie dropped)
7) Searched on the brand (brand PPC cookie dropped)
8) Went through cashback site (affiliate network 1 recredited!)

8 touchpoints one sale - should each be recognised/rewarded as 12.5% of the potential commissionable value? Are some touchpoints more valuable than others? Which ones actually added value to the
a) User
b) Merchant
c) Internet
d) Economy!!

Its a minefield, I'm telling you!

[channel5]

I wrote about this recently in my one and only blog post: Macf.co.uk

Just read your article, and I have to say it's a very interesting concept and one I would support.