Adwords & affiliates

[radicaleye]

I need some advice from the adwords experts here. I'm just taking over an adwords campaign from someone and I have very little experience with the guidelines and policies of adwords.

I have done a bit of SEO and affiliate marketing but all organic so still climbing the adwords learning curve. Would appreciate it if anyone can give me advice on how to implement this.

What I need to do is affiliate marketing using adwords

The scenario is as below:
>> Say, I am an Ebay affiliate who wants to bid on the same keywords as ebay and drive registrations to their website.
>> Also, I want to track our performance so the is redirected via a tracking URL (like cj tracking URLs) say ads.mydomain.com/ebay --- this is the adwords destination URL for my ad.
>> On clicking the ad the user lands up the at same registration page as the landing page for the adwords ad ebay is running.

Now, I can’t use ebay.com as my display URL since ebay is already using it in their ads on Google.

Note: both me and the merchant are competing for the same keywords on Google adwords.

I ran two similar campaigns for two different advertisers, one got approved but the other one got flagged with the reason --- inappropriate URL.

Could any of you shed some light on this. I can't understand if this is okay or not.

If it's not okay, what are my options in a situation like this.

I hope all this makes sense, if it doesn't I'm more than willing to post clarifications, I really need to get going on this quickly.

thanks in advance.

[wrgvt]

Google will only allow one ad per destination URL for any given keyword. So if eBay or another eBay affiliate is already sending traffic to ebay.com for a keyword you want to use, the only way to get your ad to run is to outbid them. Based on their past history with their ad, that may not be possible.

What you can't do is try to get around that. You can't send the ad to a different site that does an immediate redirect to ebay.com. People have tried to fool it by adding or modifying the display URL in the ad, for example ebbay.com or ebay.com/something_else. Google apparently catches some of these and doesn't catch others. I've turned in competitors who try to game the system and compete with my ads.

[smallcompany]

In order to get it going right, you need a valid web site. Since the one you are referring to is already being used, you have to come up with another one. Keep in mind that the second site has to provide unique content and experience to the user.

Many of us hate folks that are doing non-allowed redirections, invalid display URLs, etc. We do report them on regular bases and ask Google to terminate their accounts if they are repetitive offenders.

If you really want to do it right and for long, think unique user experience. Think what would be that what your “ebay example” does not provide to its (potential) customers.

[radicaleye]

thanks for your responses wrgvt, smallcompany.

I was quite certain this was the case, and it makes perfect sense. I have colleagues who were not so sure, forwarding your comments to them.

thank you :)