Brand Bidder on Inkfactory. Rogue or Closed Group?

[Travel Pixel]

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Having just checked a brand search on google for inkfactory I came across the only PPC ad which goes through an Affiliate Future redirect. Their t&c's state no brand bidding allowed.

Is this a rogue bidder who should be kicked off or is there a closed brand bidding group affiliate future/inkfactory should be informing us of?

Hope to resolve this soon

Dave

[Greavsie]

hi dave

There are a few options

- it could be them using the tracking for their own campaigns.
- they might allow a one/two affiliates to brand bid
- it's a rogue bidder.

I'd go for the latter; but drop them a message highlighting the link; see if they respond.

[pistol101]

Hi Dave,

I'm not sure where you found the terms your refering to but here are the terms that have been in place for years.

PPC Policy: Ink Factory currently allow their affiliates to use PPC advertising (Google Ad-Words for example) to publicise affiliate links. There are a huge number of search terms for the products they sell (ink cartridge product codes and printer names for example), some are less fought over than others and with these terms with a very low cost per click their shrewdest affiliates are already seeing a very handsome return on investment.

So there is no issues with the affiliates ads. Obviously we'd prefer there to be no brand bidding by affiliates or merchants using affiliate links to track. I'm sure this will change in due course.

[Travel Pixel]

Yes apologies Pete, I must have confused inkfactory with another of the numerous ink merchants on AF when it comes to the PPC policy...

However, the issue here im more concerned with is if the merchant has allowed one affiliate to bid on the brand, without informing the rest of the affiliates who bid on generic phrases or are content based. Its fairly reasonable to assume that the brand bidder will be creaming off some of the commission from these other affiliates who are not in the group.

Im interested to know the answer.

Dave

[pistol101]

Yes apologies Pete, I must have confused inkfactory with another of the numerous ink merchants on AF when it comes to the PPC policy...

However, the issue here im more concerned with is if the merchant has allowed one affiliate to bid on the brand, without informing the rest of the affiliates who bid on generic phrases or are content based. Its fairly reasonable to assume that the brand bidder will be creaming off some of the commission from these other affiliates who are not in the group.

Im interested to know the answer.

Dave

Yes you are correct with you assumption that brand bidding affiliates will be creaming off commissions from other affiliates. I've seen an example of 75% of transactions being overwriten.

[loquax]

Yes you are correct with you assumption that brand bidding affiliates will be creaming off commissions from other affiliates. I've seen an example of 75% of transactions being overwriten

Is that 75% with respect to PPC affiliates or every affiliate? Is 75% an extreme or an average? Are you essentially saying that for every 1 sale a non Brand Bidding affiliate is making 3 are being lost to the brand bidder?

Jason

[angelabx]

Yes you are correct with you assumption that brand bidding affiliates will be creaming off commissions from other affiliates. I've seen an example of 75% of transactions being overwriten.

I have seen it happen myself in the past when a merchant changed their own brand name bidding from non-tracking to a 'last man in' basis and started overwriting affiliate cookies with their own. It resulted in a significant fall in affiliate sales.

That was a travel merchant but looking at inkfactory I'd guess it's their own campaign because it seems they have trademark protection with Google on the 'inkfactory' term.

[Travel Pixel]

That was a travel merchant but looking at inkfactory I'd guess it's their own campaign because it seems they have trademark protection with Google on the 'inkfactory' term.

Well i would have thought that except for the fact the link goes through the affiliate future redirect and presumably overwrites any other cookies.

D

[angelabx]

Well i would have thought that except for the fact the link goes through the affiliate future redirect and presumably overwrites any other cookies.

D

Yep, I'd guess that the merchant is using an AF affilaite link for it's own campaign so it doesn't have to pay out affiliate commissions on trademark searches. Using their own AF link is the easiest way to acheive this. It would just cost them the network override rather than the full commission + Override.

I do remember a story a while back of the in-house affiliate manager of one programme using his own personal affilaite account for trademark bidding with Google. He obtained Google trademark protection for his campaign and milked the money for himself. It was on this forum.

The travel merchant I referred to didn't use the network link. They used their own coding and stopped sales tracking to affiliate networks when their own Google adverts had been clicked. I assume you already know about that one though. By looking at the link in Google you wouldn't think it negated affiliate cookies but it does.

[Travel Pixel]

Yep, I'd guess that the merchant is using an AF affilaite link for it's own campaign so it doesn't have to pay out affiliate commissions on trademark searches. Using their own AF link is the easiest way to acheive this. It would just cost them the network override rather than the full commission + Override.

So if that is the case its the same old story of a merchant overwriting any affiliate value that has been added and hoovering up the 'potential' commission that should have been paid to the affiliate for their part in the buying process.

[drivetowin]

It's probably not even costing them the network override - it would be easy for the merchant to register as an affiliate, set up a private commission tier of zero for that affiliate and use that, so for those links the affiliate never earns any commission (which is ok as it's the merchant who is the affiliate) and the network earns no override since 30% of 0 is 0.

[angelabx]

It's probably not even costing them the network override - it would be easy for the merchant to register as an affiliate, set up a private commission tier of zero for that affiliate and use that, so for those links the affiliate never earns any commission (which is ok as it's the merchant who is the affiliate) and the network earns no override since 30% of 0 is 0.

Of course. Very sly.

We, as affiliates, help build a brand and the merchant doesn't recognise it and 'steals' all brand traffic even from previously cookied customers.

Just boycott them if you're not happy.

[Travel Pixel]

Just boycott them

Id like to actually know the truth either from AF or Inkfactory before I do that. Hopefully they will address this soon. Even though it all points to either a closed group or a merchant hoovering up commission you never know in this game!

[pistol101]

Is that 75% with respect to PPC affiliates or every affiliate? Is 75% an extreme or an average? Are you essentially saying that for every 1 sale a non Brand Bidding affiliate is making 3 are being lost to the brand bidder?

Jason

This was 75% of all the affiliate sales were crossing tracking with the brand adverts. The brand adverts were run for some seperate cookies for the test.

In this case yes affiliates would have lost 3 sales for each sale they generated.

Id like to actually know the truth either from AF or Inkfactory before I do that. Hopefully they will address this soon. Even though it all points to either a closed group or a merchant hoovering up commission you never know in this game!

This is an affiliate, anyone is free to dive in if they'd like. We're well on the way to getting brand ads stopped on all merchants across the network, i'm sure the Ink Factory wont be far behind.

[wwwb]

Jude

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