Brand Bidder on Inkfactory. Rogue or Closed Group?

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This is an affiliate, anyone is free to dive in if they'd like

You mean anyone can start bidding on the Inkfactory brand?

If so, I can assure you it is protected in Google so the only way it can be done is with approval from the merchant for an affiliate.

[KirstyM]

Hi Hi,

I've had a play with this overnight, and I set up an adgroup that got impressions on brand terms no bother at all. I can't see any trademark protection at play here?

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and i qoute....

Trademarked Term
Due to trademark reasons, we do not allow advertisers to use 'Inkfactory' in their Google AdWords ads. This term may be trademarked either for a certain product or service category and may apply only in certain countries.

You must have special powers Kirsty...

[angelabx]

and i qoute....



You must have special powers Kirsty...

And the affiliate bidding at the moment obviously also has special powers

[Azam.net]

Not the manner in which we were planning to announce it but Azam Marketing will be managing the InkFactory affiliate program. We haven't made an announcement yet because we are working on the strategy: our aim to make it by far the leading affiliate program in its sector.

I noticed this forum thread last night and have already contacted Ink Factory and Affiliate Future a few times to get to the bottom of it.

Ink Factory say that lots of rivals were advertising on their brand, so they asked Google to put a stop to it. Google did do that.

However, as we can all see, one affiliate has been able to slip through the net. How this affiliate has been able to bid on the brand name does perplex me, as I can't see how they are doing it if the trademark is protected (if anybody knows who this could have happened, please contact me). Anyhow, we will write to Google to ask them what's going on and why this one advertiser has been able to get past the restrictions.

One of the reasons why our agency has been taken on board is because issues like this need to be resolved and communicated to affiliates promptly, and the merchant themselves did not have the inhouse set-up for it. The affiliate program has been doing very well for years, but it has been on autopilot for a while; that will no longer be the case. We have got lots of exciting plans and will let everybody know when they are implemented.

If you wish to discuss anything related to InkFactory's affiliate program, you are welcome to email inkfactory [at] azam.net or call 0800 018 5600 anytime

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email sent ....

[KirstyM]

and i qoute....



You must have special powers Kirsty...

Ah, at last my innate Harry Potteresque PPC abilities have been exposed! Next month I'll be launching my new line of Kirsty McCubbin PPC magic wands. One wave and you'll get a away with murder on Google! A bargain at just £999.99p

Seriously, though.. this particular affiliate has been on that term for donkeys years. I wonder if that's got anything to do with it. Oh well, Super Nadeem will sort it out (soon to launch his range of affiliate marketing capes of invisibility).

[Azam.net]

Thank you to everyone for their advice and input. The merchant has decided to adopt the policy that affiliates may not bid on the brand name or any related terms via paid search. This includes the words 'ink factory', 'inkfactory', 'inkfactory.com', 'inkfactory.co.uk' and the words with or without spaces, hyphenated, misspelled or prefixed with the definite article.

The affiliate bidding on the brand name in Google has been emailed and asked to no longer do so. Further action will have to be taken if the request is not adhered to.

[KirstyM]

Ouch, he's not going to be happy. I bet he makes really, really good money just from being on the brand.

On the plus side, it should improve conversions for all the other affiliates!

[Travel Pixel]

Good work Nadeem.

Fair playing field is all we ask for....

[Travel Pixel]

well the affiliate future brand bidder now seems to have gone but wait......

another affiliate steps into the breach (or perhaps the same!) from TD:

inkfactory - Google Search

I N K F A C T O R Y

lol

oh dear

[petro]

my 2 pennies.. I personally don't think ink cartridges are a considered purchase, yes you may look at work and buy later.. but I will not be considering my purchase like a holiday. Each sector will differ, what's clear to me is that de-duplication needs to become much more transparent for all involved.

[aotagain]

Just on the subject of merchants (or their agency) tracking their own PPC brand bidding using an affiliate code - Google conversion tracking seems to work reasonably well - which if the merchant wanted to, would avoid cookie overwriting. Or independent tracking of course.

A merchant can put the affiliate tracking in the destination url for their own generic PPC and leave it out for brand-bidding PPC, using Google conversion for the latter.

Plus the chances are that if the affiliate terms stop affiliates brand bidding, the brand bidding by the merchant can be so cheap (as its the only bidder) that any errors in tracking don't really cause much hand-wringing.

I can understand why a merchant wouldn't want to be paying out commission to affiliates for PPC brand bidding, as a big proportion of people put shop names into the search box and then hit the nearest ad. they can see. So the merchant could spend plenty in offline advertising to capture customers and then spend again on commissions.

However, allowing affiliates to brand bid seems a little odd to me, its not rocket science to set up a brand-bidding campaign in house. Why pay affiliates to do it, while at the same time irritating (to put it mildly) content affiliates who are actually your real potential source of new customers ? Why not just use an agency, or is that too expensive ?

Surely the bulk of real new customers are by definition not coming from brand-bidding ?
So if a merchant is sold on the idea of an affiliate scheme - shouldn't they also be sold on how best to use it ?

Is there an independent information source of what to do and how to do it ?
Only it seems to me that just about everyone has a vested interest.

[Travel Pixel]

So its now been over three weeks since this post was made and the brand bidder is still up, albeit on Tradedoubler rather than AF who, to their credit (and the merchant), acted quickly to stop the bidding.

Would anyone care to update the situation please?

Dave

[Azam.net]

Thanks for your concern.

Google have been contacted. They finally responded after me waiting over a week requesting information that had been provided in the first email. So I wrote to them providing the information they asked for again. That was over a week ago and there has been no response.

Tradedoubler also instantly contacted the affiliate in question.

Dave, we are doing everything we can and have instantly addressed all your concerns by Messenger, email and on these forums. Further to your communications, I have written over 15 emails to the advertiser, affiliate networks and Google.

I have emailed Google again just now asking for them to get back to me. I am sorry this issue has not been resolved to your satisfaction, but there is nothing I can do to force Google to take immediate action. Google work slowly. You are welcome to contact them yourselves should their lack of action concern you.