Formal Request to Buy.at

[Qui Gon Jinn]

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After careful consultation between the moderators, this is a polite formal request to Buy.at to ascertain which programs within your network have closed brand bidding groups, and ask to please submit these to the forum & include within the merchant information details within their own interface.

This will assist towards transparency & a fairer environment for affiliates.

Please could you also confirm that you don't do any ppc at network or employee level, or at least don't make themselves members of closed groups at the same time?

We'd be grateful if you could supply this information and help alleviate some of the issues that have arisen due to closed group activity.

Thank you for your co-operation.

[Steven Brown]

I am pleased to confirm the following. buy.at has affiliates selected in consultation with our clients that have different terms and conditions to other affiliates. These include the rights and obligations that come with having permission to use trademarks and/or lower or higher commissions depending on a number of criteria. The criteria vary from client to client and cannot easily be summarised. The terms for standard terms for affiliates are included in our interface, and we always welcome opportunities to discuss with affiliates variation of these to propose to our clients for mutual benefit.

We do not have employees or other parties controlled either by our company or its shareholders conducting paid search on behalf of our clients, and therefore the question as to whether such parties have varied rights and obligations with our clients is not applicable.

buy.at instigated a ‘Request for proposal’ process (see buy.at rolls out intial steps of an inclusive RFP process ) for its clients to ensure all affiliates may make a fair case for inclusion in gaining special terms from our clients and details of these are circulated as and when the process kicks off for each merchant. Please contact buy.at if you would like more information on the process for any particular clients.

We are considering the request to name specific merchants that have affiliates with varied terms as this information in many cases is commercially confidential, and therefore it is extremely unlikely we would be able to offer a list. We consider for all clients that their affiliate (including paid search) strategy is confidential and they would not appreciate it being known, even in part, to a competitor. Therefore we consider it is unlikely we will comply with this request.

If any merchant would like to discuss how we run our affiliate campaigns we would be delighted to discuss this. buy.at has an operational philosophy described at http://buy.at/affiliates/different.php. In such a fast moving industry, we long ago decided a rigid code of conduct is not appropriate, but we adhere to a set of philosophies:

affiliates can expect to earn on sales that they'd expect to earn on
merchants only pay out on sales they expect to be paying out upon
Intellectual property (e.g. keywords) is protected, as are merchants wishes as to how their brand is used

Please contact me if I can help further.
____________________
Steven Brown
Chief Operating Officer

www.buy.at
steven.brown@buy.at

[Julie H]

Steve,

So, to cut through the half page of waffle the answer is no. You could have made reading it a lot easier by saying 'our response is NO' instead of wasting 5 minutes of my life I'll never get back!

[bapages]

Steve,

Let me understand what you are saying correctly. You have merchants that operate closed bidding but you will not disclose who they are, also the affiliates are chosen from a select group you have and not based on individual performances from all the affiliate group?

[Steven Brown]

We do run groups of affiliates for many of our clients. We know our clients view their marketing strategies as confidential, and therefore we would not wish to publish such merchants in a list.

Indeed as all clients are open to ideas as to how to drive more volume, one can consider all our clients as either having affiliates on special terms, or open to the possibility.

The affiliates who benefit from varied terms and conditions most certainly are not from a 'select group'. They are appointed on their merits (criteria include experience, performance, potential, having a differentiated approach) for each merchant to offer the best long term performance in accord with the merchant strategies. There is continual review.

We are always keen to discuss with affiliates how they might drive more traffic for our merchants and would welcome taking a call. We can then discuss whether any one affiliate will help us improve our service to our clients.

The RFP process we operate - the first that includes more than paid search - is a transparent process for getting the best affiliates for each client working with them. One recent RFP process had interest from more than 40 affiliates. Another benefited from publicity in our weekly newsletter and in this forum.

We have a dedicated team ensuring we are liaising with affiliates and understanding how we work with them to get the most for our clients.

We are proud of having the highest revenue per client in the UK, and this means not resting on our laurels, but continually working with affiliates to grow their business with our clients. These are both affiliates with whom we have a long association and newer ones who have what it takes.

We know that we should also focus on the affiliates outside the groups that have these special terms. There are top performing affiliates who do great work on the standard terms too.

I appreciate this is a long reply, but is important to emphasise the playing field is level, we like newer affiliates with ambition and potential, and we drive volume by working with affiliates from both within and outside the groups of affiliates that have special terms.

____________________
Steven Brown
Chief Operating Officer

www.buy.at
steven.brown@buy.at