Received from CJ: Publisher Account WARNED

04-12-02

Got this nice little note with no idea which merchant it refers to. I did have a run in with Seaeagle in the summer who ditched me because I used the keyword 'SeaEagle' in Google - they did warn me first but because I never read the internal mail I missed their emails. Shame as I'd earned some good commission with them but they were adamant. I use trademarks all the time eg. 'marbles' Capital One' so if I had to stop it would be serious for me ;-( The spelling is original:

Subject: : Publisher Account WARNED

Date: Wed, 27 Nov 2002 12:34:40 -0800

Dear ,

In accordance with the Commission Junction Publisher Service Agreement, you
are being WARNED from Commission Junction for using copyrighted/trademarkes
in search engines to generate traffic. For this reason we have rejected your
affiliation with the advertise. No commissions have been reversed yet. But,
If you continue to use copyright/trademarks your account can and will be
removed from the Commission Junction network. If your account is removed
all commissions will be reversed back to the adverisers.

Regards,

Client Services
Commission Junction

04-12-02

I think it's a bit over the top since some merchants dont mind you bidding on keywords and if your not bidding you can optimise your pages for SE so that it comes 1st anyway.

As for copyrighted trademarks im not sure where you stand as as long as your not using their logo only their words.. anyone care to clarify ?

Anyway I would like to see a list of merchants that dont like you bidding on keywords or something.

04-12-02

CJ did at least reply quickly - the merchant was ebay (Australia). Shame because most of the traffic I was sending them was for other keywords - I could easily have stopped bidding on 'ebay' but they terminated me immediately without warning.

04-12-02

In this very grey area, they should now start considering implementing a section.

At time goes on the greater the need to addressing the issue to avoid unecessary confusion between those affiliates and ANY merchant.

- Those who say Yes
- Those who say No
- Maybe, approve affiliates on a case by case process

For the Yes, it can depend on whether the link goes directly to the mechant, to a doorway page specific for a that merchant or the less attractive page of many merchants where it takes a bit of time routing to find where the merchant is displayed on that page.