Iab Amc - Key Issues Merchants

[benwood]

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As discussed in our meeting last week, we will be kicking off a thread this evening for MERCHANTS specifically asking for feedback from the community on the KEY ISSUES that face merchants/ clients which we could look to resolve via the development of BEST PRACTICE case studies for the whole community.

Please post thoughts and comments, which me and the IAB will then review and cluster for debate in the next session.

Thanks in advance for positive comments.

Ben

[hpops]

Heres 5 from a merchant perspective
1) Am I paying multiple times for the same sales - or am I paying for sales I would have got anyway?
2) Why do people get to break the rules and stay on a network?
3) Whats the best way to deal with vouchers without affecting marginality to the point of loss
4) What does open/closed/restricted keyword policy actually mean and which is best for me
5) What should I expect from my network for their override

[nim-b]

I think a number of merchant-specific points cropped up in the other thread for Publishers, so this might repeat some of those, but here are some points that I think would be useful to include in any 'Best Practice' guidelines for merchants.

- The inclusion of a clear PPC policy and what that actually involves. I think all merchants would benefit from some guidance on what should be included in a clear policy.

- product feeds- making sure there are no broken images and characters, and that the feed is regularly updated.

- sales validation- the importance of setting a regular task to check sales, and allocating someone in the company to do this.

- tracking downtime. If this is something that is planned, due to a complete site rehash or similar, affiliates need to be given fair warning. If it is unplanned and due to something like technical error, affiliates should be compensated accordingly. If its just the tracking and not your site that goes down, this can be done by assessing which sales came from networks, and splitting commission approximately using clicks. If its the whole of your site that has gone down, you need to tell affiliates immediately, and then consider compensating them based upon the amount of sales sent during (for example), the previous day or week.

- changing or leaving affiliate networks. I think the best practice notice period to affiliates for this should be at least 2 months before the programme finally closes. One month to change or remove links, one month for honouring cookies already set (provided of course that the cookie period is 30 days).

I'd be interested in knowing what everyone else thinks about the following:

1. is there an optimum level of communcation from merchants? Is it worth setting some kind of guidelines on this? My feeling is it can be very personal to the affiliate as to how much communication they want from merchants so its difficult to quantify.
2. I think it would be good to have a definition of 'leakage' and why this is important. Phone numbers are an obvious one, but what else is there?

[Spreader]

Morning folks,

I hope you are all well.

Bearing in mind it's Monday morning, here's some of the key issues for merchants...

• Voucher Codes being used by Affiliates for whom they were NOT intended.
• Local Cookies – and how to deal with them – especially if you are with multiple networks
• Brand name bidding
• Best practice guidelines for producing creative
• Best practice guidelines for production of datafeeds
• Sales validation ¬– time consuming and inevitably a manual process. Is some form of automation a viable option?
• 3rd party reporting. As a merchant we currently have to rely on the figures produced by the network when validating sales/commission. It would be good if there was an independent 3rd party reporting tool to validate that the networks figures are correct.
• Arbitration. Sometimes if there is a dispute between the merchant and an affiliate the merchant will get “flamed” on the forum – very often before they have had chance to reply. It would be better in my opinion if there is some for of intermediary whom both merchants and affiliates are governed by.

If I think of anything else I'll get it on the list.

Cheers,


Zak.

[ChrisBishop]

I think Naomi and Zak raise good points which would be on my list and there does seem to be a general theme to which I will add to.

Brand Protection - What is being done by the networks overall to protect their clients in the way of brand bidding, unethical tactics and gross misuse of voucher codes.

Override & Transparency between Networks - Last year we definitely all witness a few weird advertiser signings and it is still clear some affiliate networks are pitching their major USP as reduced overrides - is this going to continue? Therefore are merchants simply going to need to hop from network to network to remain prudent?

Close Groups - Are these ethical and/or effective? Especially within PPC, are closed groups creating monopolies for complacent giants? And how does a new affiliate enter this?

Sales Tracking - Admittedly this could solely sit with merchants, however the inevitable question always arises that "affiliates are taking commissions on sales you would get naturally anyway"... how and when will affiliate tracking improve to nail this discussion? Is this something for the network to manage, via a 3rd party or the merchant themselves.

Affiliate T&C's - are we at an age when standard terms are need across the board, that affiliates, networks and agencies need 3rd party accreditation for?

Anyway, it’s late at night but that’s what on the top of my tongue at the minute...

Chris

[nim-b]

Affiliate T&C's - are we at an age when standard terms are need across the board, that affiliates, networks and agencies need 3rd party accreditation for?

I think this is a really good point and an important issue. I think its getting to the point now where at least for PPC T&C's it would be useful to work on some kind of 'template' that makes terms clear for all parties. Some kind of IAB Affiliate terms and conditions that could then be adapted according to needs would be really useful and generally help keep everything clear.

Arbitration. Sometimes if there is a dispute between the merchant and an affiliate the merchant will get “flamed” on the forum – very often before they have had chance to reply. It would be better in my opinion if there is some for of intermediary whom both merchants and affiliates are governed by.

That's a really interesting idea, and I think would help the industry a lot. Its extremely frustrating for well meaning merchants when an affiliate flames them on the forum without contacting them first. Do you have any further ideas about how arbitration might work? Do you see this as something the IAB Council could take up?

Some other points I thought of:

- Affiliate incentives- how effective these are, what types of incentive there are, and some basic dos and don'ts. It could be useful to highlight the importance of making sure incentives don't just constantly reward only your top affiliate, otherwise other affiliates will lose interest.

- Supplying additional resources for affiliates above and beyond what is available through the networks (Zak with his enviable ARC is probably better qualified than me to talk about this!). I think its important to recognise that there's loads of stuff merchants can do outside the network structure to inform and support affiliates (for example me, Zak and Chris all have affiliate blogs now).