Woolworths - I'm not amused

[tbp]

I had the email too, and I don't promote Woolworths currently, signed up to have a look.

I must admit the tone of the email was a bit off, sounded accusing. Whilst they may be having problems with certain affiliates, they should of phrased it differently if it was going out to everyone.

[ogopogo]

Same here, got the email with the accusatory tone, and I've only sent them 7 clicks since the start of December! If wind Woolworths to be a waste of time for the things I promote.

I replied asking them to explain why they bothered even asking me the question, when I've not had a single sale - I mean, if I was PPCing to them, what are they gonna do about it?!!!

[aotagain]

I think everyone has got them - presumably a mistake although whether there will be any falling on own swords as a result who can say If its not a mistake then its scary how much damage might have been done by a badly thought out email.

ie. for starters, as I don't do much PPC at all, I didn't happen to have noticed that there was one affiliate on brand bidding. Now I know, that completely changes my approach to promoting Woolworths as I now know my cookies could well get overwritten. Did quite well at Christmas, but left wondering how much better it would have been without being overwritten.

Secondly, if Woolworths are running their own PPC as an affiliate themselves and overwriting cookies with their own imo that pretty dismal, as they are not even having to pay out an affiliate. Unless of course an agency is getting paid directly from Woolies based on performance.

Hardly 'performance' is it - to set up a list of brand terms and then leave it for the next 10 years.

Particularly iffy because its a fact that loads of people put brand names into the searches and if there's only one or two adverts appearing, often at the top above the natural search results (I'm thinking Google here), the customer will often hit that link.

AT 5P A GO PROBABLY !

So as has been said before and probably needs to be said again, you do some work on your content site, get the customer and then 2 days later they get the brand bidding cookie instead of yours when they put the name into search.

Is using an affiliate to PPC brand bidding a cheap way of paying for it ? ie. an agency would cost a load more, even for a simple repetitive campaign that you set up once and then forget ?

And by the way if the affiliate in question hadn't even done their homework and tracked down the supposed 'offending' brand bidders, then they're not exacly high powered super-affiliates are they ? You only need to do a few regular searches to check who is bidding.

Why would Woolworths give someone useless their brand bidding to do ?

They can protect their offline ad. spend by just doing non-affiliate tracking and stopping all affiliates from brand bidding.

Puzzling in the extreme...

[aotagain]

Actually I can do that - gi'us a job...

[Paulzie]

The way it was worded made me think somebody had accidently used my affiliate numbers and I was being accused of braking Woolworths T&C's.

Panic over and will assign the email to the wastebasket.

[drivetowin]

I got it too.

The tracking is not Woolworths doing it themselves - as I understand it there is one affiliate who has been given brand bidding rights (originally it was for a trial period - whether that period is now over I don't know)

And oh, the affiliate with brand bidding rights is not me - more's the pity

[aotagain]

(originally it was for a trial period - whether that period is now over I don't know)

Does it take that long to learn to spell 'Woolworths' ?


Anyway, I presume they've failed the trial as they obviously didn't find the 'rogue' brand bidders, list the affiliate id's carefully on the interface and then email them individually.

[ash]

I recently had my first sale via Woolworths and had assumed they thought i'd been using PPC.

[andysears]

yup got it and do not run ppc

[ian-d]

I'm still amazed by this and can't beleive that they are giving brand bidding to a single affiliate when they could carry out this role themselves. Some lucky affiliate has probably spent a couple of hours thinking up as many misspells as possible closely linked to the woolworths trademark then sat back, no doubt paying a couple of pence per click and gaining some of the rewards of our original dropped cookies! We warm them up, someone else beds them!

[adamski]

Hi everyone

I'll speak to James first thing in the morning to ascertain what's happened here. Looking at the account, it appears a mistake has been made and an email intended for one affiliate has accidentally been sent to everyone on the programme. We would never ask affiliates to supply keyword information in this manner. The wording of the email is also highly questionable and I will also be addressing this.

I can confirm an affiliate does run a brand and generic PPC campaign for Woolworths as stated in the Woolworths account description. This was activity shifted from Woolworth's PPC agency into the affiliate channel a few months ago on a trial basis. The trial was successful and the activity has recently recommenced.

We have a meeting scheduled with Woolworths early next week in which this topic will feature high on the agenda. Whilst Woolworths have always de-duped PPC brand activity against the affiliate channel, this is something I would like to change. We have a technical solution in mind to resolve this and I will update you all following next week's meeting.

I would like to apologise for any alarm, inconvenience or lost time this email caused. As always, anyone is welcome to contact me directly to discuss this.

Adam

[cDc1979]

Thanks for the update, I too received this email and was initially concerned and spent some time investigating - but glad to know it was sent in error.

[getvisible]

But why use the affiliate channel to "control" your brand in ppc?

It's just nonsense. Affiliates who spending a good amount of time writing great content eulogising Woolworths and their products are loosing out to someone probably paying 2p a click and spending 2 minutes creating the advert and keywords!

I've bloody had enough of this industry!

[ian-d]

I've bloody had enough of this industry!

Its has certainly lost its way hasn't it.

[Ditzy]

Just want to say thanks to Adam for his apology, especially as he wrote it so late last night after working hours.

As for the politics of the issue my brains are too fuddled this morning to get in to it although it does continue to amaze me just what goes on!