TD break keyword bidding rules...

[Jeff]

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I've just been having a look at the page on TD's site that describes their keyword tracking functionality, which helps people calculate the effectiveness of PPC campaigns.

The page includes a screenshot of the keyword report. The report features Carphone Warehouse related keywords.

Carphone Warehouse don't allow people to use PPC for their brand name.

If TD are expecting affiliates to know which merchants allow PPC they should at least make sure they know themselves!

[TD Nick]

Hi Jeff,

thanks for pointing that out, I will make some time to get that screen shot updated.

TradeDoubler realise that it is extremely time consuming for publishers to see who has keyword policies, and, having discussed this in depth with several publishers the general sentiment is the link matrix or program overview may be the best place to display this information.

Of course, clients who wish to restrict keywords are asked to contact the provider, so, whether a "keyword policy page" becomes a permanent feature on TradeDoubler or a stop-gap while clients appply to the service provider is yet to be finalised.

If you have ideas or suggestions about what you would like to see, please send me an email.

Kind regards,

Nick

nick.roveta@tradedoubler.com

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Having a single splash page like on the link matrix page would assist affiliates to view at a glance, 1 click as against reading 300 descriptions, whereby the keyword policy might be tucked in there somewhere. However there are an equal number of cases whereby you know there is a restriction but the information cannot be found on the networks site. Something which all networks need to address.

What is quite strange is that on one network keyword bidding is not permitted, whilst on another it is allowed, there are too many mixed signals currently out there.

However the easiest solution in combination with this, is for the merchant to send their trademark certificate details to the ppc engines, who then can put a blanket negative keyword or phrase across the whole advertiser network. The advantage of this would be saving the network time in communicating with Individuals for those in breach.

Therefore any advertisers inadvertantly or deliberately bidding on keywords will automatically rejected from their campaigns in the first place, saving any unnecessary hassle.

One case could be that this is only restricted to the actual trademarked name, not mis-spellings or variations. As some merchants come back saying they plan a campaign themselves, but often don't have the slighest idea on how to go about it and end up losing a lot of potential customers or they do not appear in the natural search as they don't know jow to optimise for this. Therefore in a sense allowing publishers to cover this side may actually protect their brand. Legally it is a grey area if they can actually enforce mis-spellings or variations.

It is important that the merchant informs the network prior to sending in any certificate, who in turn duly notify affiliates of their intentions. This must be communicated by email and again the splash page, saving embarrasment on the publishers behalf of any change in policy they were totally unaware off and any ill feeling within the symbiotic relationship that could arise.

The solution really is that simple.

[Jeff]

Originally posted by Qui Gon Jinn
However the easiest solution in combination with this, is for the merchant to send their trademark certificate details to the ppc engines, who then can put a blanket negative keyword or phrase across the whole advertiser network. The advantage of this would be saving the network time in communicating with Individuals for those in breach.

Therefore any advertisers inadvertantly or deliberately bidding on keywords will automatically rejected from their campaigns in the first place, saving any unnecessary hassle.

The problem with this is that some trademarked names will only apply to a specific type of product, so you'd end up banning people from using legitimate keywords in a different area.

For example Egg don't like people using their name to promote their credit cards But if you banned the word Egg you might stop people promoting recipe sites!

I imagine most trademarked names could be used legitmately in some areas, because very few are unique words, they're either words that have another meaning and can be found in the dictionary, (such as Egg, Index, Argos, etc), or people's names (Smiths, John Lewis, Kays etc).

[sboxster]

I have had a very rocky ride with a certain merchant over this very issue, and only the threat of "outing" them on the web has convinced them to reimburse me the commissions that they cancelled from my account. They also terminated my account without notice and the whole thing left a very bad taste. This was no small deal - I was generating around £1.2 million per month for them and they were clearly happy with the traffic.

I should point out that it was not a TD thing, but thought that this was very much on topic for this thread.

However, the real culprit here was Google Adwords, who will happily suggest competitor brands as keywords and allow the ads containing those words to run within minutes, with no editorial review. Overture, Espotting and the others all throw out competitor brands.

Having been bitten quite hard by this, I now make a point of asking about keyword restrictions before setting up a campaign, and would advise others to do the same.

Fortunately, the net result is that I have used the situation to leverage another merchant in the same market to increase their payout to match the "banned" merchant's offer, but I still feel that it's a worthwhile cautionary tale for any newbies.

[Ballswinger]

However, the real culprit here was Google Adwords, who will happily suggest competitor brands as keywords and allow the ads containing those words to run within minutes, with no editorial review.

I've had many campaigns stopped after editorial review by Google Adwords, they do respect certain trademark keywords.

Andrew

[jesss1]

Google Adwords, they do respect certain trademark keywords.

I second that!