Forum Moderators: martinibuster
I hear you say - "Why in the world would I want to block such advertisers?" - Now, on my endless quest to increase EPC and revenue, I investigated the issue further, with interesting findings.
Let's say widget.com is such a legitimate business. Apparently they appear on many pages on my site. They must be spending serious $$ for Adwords. Great, you think, finally someone who is serious about Adwords/Adsense.
But wait! Widget.com are also running an affiliate program. This allows affiliates to direct traffic to widget.com and to get a share on the revenue of goods sold through widget.com. Originally meant for webmasters who run their own site and want to generate revenue from widget.com's affiliate program. They would link to www.widget.com/landingpage/AFFILIATEID
Clever marketers, however, have recognized this as the ultimate opportunity. Why run a website at all? Why pay hosting cost? Why worry about content? Why acquire traffic and then have the risk of users NOT clicking the ads? It's much easier to spend $$ on Adwords using the affiliate code, directing traffic directly to widget.com!
Ho-hum. Could this be true? Looking with the preview tool at the URLs from widget.com on my site, I noticed that widget.com was targeting landing pages using <I>different</I> affiliate codes. One might think that they use it to track different campaigns. Another option could be that indeed different affiliates are buying space, and widget.com does not spend a penny directly on Adwords. Again, these affiliates add NOTHING to the web. They just buy clicks (cheap) and (hope to) monetize from the affiliate program.
I am running a test now. I blocked widget.com and will monitor EPC and revenue closely.
I have done the same thing and had good results.
Again, that is nonsense;-)
These affiliates are in fact the outsourced sales department of the supplier of the product.
The core business of this supplier is making products, the core business of the affiliates is selling these products. They invest money in advertising so the public knows about these products (and hopefully buys these products).
But to answer your question; some have success in blocking affiliate ads, others don't. I guess there is no harm in giving it a try.
But, I can assure you, you don't want to block some of my affiliate ads cause I pay up to $ 1,- for good converting clicks.
(And 'up to $ 1,-' means a real buck to me and not the lousy 10 cents as with the firefox referral;-))
These affiliates are in fact the outsourced sales department of the supplier of the product.
Yes, I agree, to a certain degree. That thought crossed my mind as well.
My problem is that the "affiliate advertisers" are actually hiding the fact that they are not part of widget.com - they use a landing page on widget.com but they are not widget.com.
Also, as the affiliate advertisers are apparently specialized for this kind of marketing, their highly optimized activity might result in lower EPC than a typical mom-and-pop business that tries Adwords for the first time.
Mom and pop want to make a living too so they will also bid as low as needed...
I have many pages where almost every ad comes from companies selling "real" products.
Nonetheless they sometimes give me only $ 0.01 clicks.
I am running a test now. I blocked widget.com and will monitor EPC and revenue closely.
Just an update - I stopped my test after one day, seeing that the CTR dropped to 70% of the previous Saturdays without any significant change in EPC. As I really like their site, and their site/product is adding value to my visitors, I have unblocked them. Will focus on real MFAs again. *sigh*
You against affilates?
You are against epople who have affilates?
You are against promoting affilates from your websites?
I think they have evry right to hide the affiliation if they are smart enuff to use search marketing to get the original product the sales.
Between yu and the orginal maker the smartest work is done by affilates who employ search marketing campigns and monitor and take the risk of spending moolah out of there pockets so i guess they have every right to earn money.
I probably dnt get why you would want to block affilates unless you want become a affilate yourself and promote directly?
I probably dnt get why you would want to block affilates unless you want become a affilate yourself and promote directly?
Affilliates aren't necessarily bad, as we have learned from this thread. In fact, the right product can be a positive asset to a site. The debate is if affilliates = MFA in that they are placed on our ad blocks by Google's faulty algorithm and earn you less money and get you smartpriced down the toilet. Nobody here has anything against affilliates, but if they are poor payers, then like MFA's we don't want them. Clearly in this instance that wasn't the case, and the expermient has been useful in ascertaining this.
You against affilates?
You are against epople who have affilates?
You are against promoting affilates from your websites?
No - against affiliates who do not run a website and just do all the marketing for the owner of the affiliate program, without letting users know.
The value chain is changed from...
Advertiser > Google > Publisher
...to...
Advertiser > Affiliate > Google > Publisher
Each participant in the value chain typically wants a share of the overall transaction. In other words: they might be taking away money that might have ended up in your pocket!
My experiment has shown that it does not make sense for me to block such schemes. Whether this is a general statement, I don't know.
I think they have evry right to hide the affiliation if they are smart enuff to use search marketing...
And I have evry right to block these if I do not think they contribute substantially to my bottom line.
the smartest work is done by affilates who employ search marketing campigns and monitor and take the risk of spending moolah out of there pockets
Yes, these guys are taking a risk. BUT they must know that the ROI is substantial and secure, otherwise they would go out of business soon.
The value chain is changed from...
Advertiser > Google > Publisher
...to...
Advertiser > Affiliate > Google > PublisherEach participant in the value chain typically wants a share of the overall transaction. In other words: they might be taking away money that might have ended up in your pocket!
If the "advertiser" (I prefer to call them merchants, its often affiliates who do the advertising) does not work with affiliates, he has to hire folks to run his own sales department. Most products do not sell themselves by magic, you need folks to promote the stuff!
An in-house sales department takes its share of the transaction too, but you left them out of your first chain!
Actually, if merchants prefer to work with affiliates over an in-house sales department, affiliates might be a cheaper solution! That is because many affiliates are not successful, they are promoting products virtually for free because they don't have a sound business model. So perhaps affiliates are bringing extra money in your pockets in some cases.
back to business what i conclude is this if you have a website which has content on a particular theme to move up the food chain you need to find out the related products maybe on click bank or directly and become affiliate yourself and promote them.
Just blocking wldnt make much sense. Quite honestly most people who are advertising in adsense are resellers and even if a merchant does have a adsense program it might be bidding lesser for keywords and a affiliate who knows his marketing might be bidding higher and giving better conversion.
take a situation where merchant and affilate both have adsense running.
But an affiliate has better conversion rates as he targets the right people on the right websites.
In this case an affiliate might be paying more than the merchant.
Blocking might just harm right?
Adi.
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[edited by: tedster at 3:50 pm (utc) on May 1, 2006]
I was trying to make fun of your typos in a (removed) post. I wish to apologize for that. I had no intention of being rude.
Kind regards,
H.
