Adword-Campaigns suspended for "Identify Affiliate Status"

possible consequences on this policy

[Bernie]

I run a couple of adword-campaigns with klick-urls pointing directly to a merchant's site (of course I spoke with the merchant before and my suggestion was welcome).

Considering a high comission % and the advantage of the weak dollar it's big fun for the moment.

A couple of days ago these campaigns were suspended due to unidentified affiliate status. I just added the word "affiliate" somewhere in the adtext of each campaign and all of them went online again in realtime.

Somehow a bitter aftertaste remains: I think in this case it is problematic to mark adwords with the expression "affiliate" since the traffic is directly transfered to the merchant's site and there is absolutely no relationship between the affiliate and the customer (not even a second klick). Concretely I am seeing the following problems:

• user irritation -> possible harm to CTR/Conversion
  how many (non english speaking!) users do know what affiliate actually means?! People who actually speak english and do know this expression could also be irritated because they find themselves directly on the merchant's site. In sense of user irritation - you are somehow waking up sleeping dogs which makes no sense at all.

• legal issues
  being an affiliate in some countries causes legal issues such as valid represantation vs. becoming contracting party. In Germany for instance you have to make sure that the user understands who is his contract partner (the merchant and not the affiliate) otherwhise you may become legaly responsible for the accomplishment of the contract. Now how can you possibly explain this on the very limited space on adwords?
  

Sending PPC-Traffic directly to merchant's sites should be a smart way of affiliate marketing especially considering plan B strategies in case of a second stage florida (with a macro version of the current thesaurus).

Recapitulating these problems I am no longer so enthusiastic about it and I must say that I do not understand neither appreciate this adword policy.

edited for spelling

[dmorison]

I totally agree, Bernie, in that your affiliate status is absolutely none of Google's business. The relationship between yourself and the merchant for whom you work is a private one; and of no concern to anyone else.

However, Google do not see it like that, and in a recent thread on this matter arguments to support Google's position were posted. The policy, whilst "dubious", infact favours both the merchant (who ordinarily would not be allowed multiple AdWords on a single page to target their website), and you, the affiliate; who, as a result of this policy are allowed to run AdWords linking directly to the merchant's website.

Google, always keeping the searcher's interests in mind do not want 8 AdWords all linking to the same site; however they smelt the money and let you get away with it by declaring affiliate status...

[skibum]

Including "Aff" instead of "affiliate" in the ad in the US seems to be sufficient if affiliate takes to much real estate.

In addition, when you are talking about the general public, 99% of people probably have absolutely no idea what aff or affiliate means in the ads anyway.

[Bernie]

you made some good points!

I know understand G's interest not to setup redundant campaigns.

dmorison: do you have a link available to that WebmasterWorld-discussion?