Many of these ads do not make any sense at all. If you search for a popular
author you will see ads like "AuthorName for sale" and "Buy your AuthorName here"
Does this type of advertisement detract from the user experience? I can not
see any value added by displaying them. If anything they might teach the user
not to read the ads at all...
What do you guys think?
Affilate ads have no place in the AdWords adspace.
Those who want their affiliate ads should have their ads only in the bottom footer of the SEPR pages.
No need to be confusing. It's just that simple.
Furthermore - merchants always have more margin than affiliates,
and should always be able to outbid and outplay them signficantly.
If I see affiliates in my space playing competitively, that
usually means that I'm missing something: that someone with
less margin than me is still beating me.
Telling them to go away isn't the answer. You want to figure out
how they are competitive on a smaller budget. Then, get better, and
push them out of contention - or, get them to work for you.
2. I am not opposed to one ad per company, but where do we set the limit. Since Amazon and EBay sell for multiple vendors, aren’t these vendors being diluted with one ad? Amazon has hundreds of partners and can be thought of as its own shopping portal. EBay has millions of retailers. Should they all only get one advertisement spot? What about shopping comparison sites. Many link to the same sites. Should we only allow one shopping comparison site to be advertised?
3. Arguments that affiliates are fraudulent and unaccountable is complete nonsense. If you have a complaint about a particular advertiser, Google takes care of it immediately.
4. Relevancy is an issue. If Google wants to maintain the most relevant results, it should limit the use of dynamic insertion in the headlines. Search results were far better before people started abusing this technique. If people actually have to make each individual ad, it is highly probably that the link URL will be highly relevant.
5. Google should really listen to complaints or suggestions from there users and not from people who simply want to reduce their advertising costs. I guarantee you that online shoppers have no problem being linked directly to the product they want for the most competitive prices on the Internet. Google adwords is very profitable when ads are relevant, prices are good, ordering is easy, and shipping is quick and inexpensive. I cannot stress this point enough: if you are having problems competing as a distributor you need to optimize your business. The profit margins of affiliates are much lower than a distributor and in theory affiliates should not offer significant competition. I am both an Internet retailer and an affiliate advertiser. As an Internet retailer, affiliates have never posed a problem for me since they cannot possibly compete with my profit margins.
Unaccountable to whom?
A real domain is out there as a real site marketing itself. An affiliate is anyone hiding in anonymity behind some other site, not having any real value of resource to offer on their own. Notwithstanding anyone can buy a domain, at least it is a site that is a domain. But becoming an affiliate can cost a person nothing and they can hide behind that anonymity without having spent anything to show they have anything to actually offer on the keyword topic.
Fraud, where does that come from?
In controversial topics, someone (even an existing advertiser) can create a new affiliate account, create a new AdWords account, and then create a useless AdWords ad. They bid just high to come just under some existing advertiser so as to force the "targeted" advertiser they are attacking to pay its actual Max CPC. The frauder sets their Daily Budget to something below their own Max CPC bid so that once they do get one click that day, their ad is removed for the rest of that day. By having their ad so obviously useless, it does not get clicked until later in the day. That's what they want. But during the time when their ad is displayed, they cost the advertiser above them to pay more than they should have paid. Yet the frauder only pays for one click per day.
That's just one example of the frauds that unknown affiliate advertisers can do. I've seen and heard about others too.
G$ currently allows such frauds at present, but doing so is dilluting the adspace product and destroying its value for both the users and the real advertisers.
Bottom line, affiliates should only be at the bottom footers of SERP pages -- if at all.
[edited by: MultiMan at 4:04 am (utc) on Nov. 11, 2004]
if the adverts were not relevant no one would click them,
if they weren't offering a service/product that the clicker wanted no one would buy from the page and then no affiliate would spend money to advertise.
fact is they do, so it's not "that simple".. the fact is users read, click, compare, buy from adwords that affiliates run, thus they have used something that may have not been there and they may not have found in the serps, time limited offers for example or stock deals.
Regardless of who advertises a product, as long as it's relevant to the user, does it matter if it's me or apple themselves that sell the user a laptop with $200 off this week only?
the user got a deal they may not have been offered in serps, Apple got a deal they didn't have to have any input into and I got a % for my effort.
now that's simple.. everyone's happy ..
[edited by: Shane21 at 4:06 am (utc) on Nov. 11, 2004]
Affiliate marketing is driving huge money to merchants, their affiliates and most importantly Google - and its not going to stop.
I am an affiliate....so i may be a little bias.
However, it seems to me that the only real reason people would want affiliates banned from adwords is that it makes it more difficult to make money using adwords - which is obviously a ridiculas argument.
The fraud argument doesnt really stand up - because having to register your details with both google and a merchant to be an affiliate advertiser is certainly more comprehensive than the details that you need to supply in order to register a domain name.
On the argument about affiliates starting up a new account and then pushing up the costs of others, this is certainly not restricted to affiliates, and I would suggest that direct competitors would benefit more from this sort of practice (I have never heard, or experienced anything like this myself).
I agree that google should improve the user experience, as they have done by improving the serps results. However, the last way to do this would be to restrict competition - it just doesnt make any sense. The essence of the adwords model means that the greater the level of competition the better the user experience will be, as the users detirmine which ads show - and how highly they show. This is especially the case now with the changes of the last couple of weeks.
Real ways to improve the user experience further would be:
to get rid of the dynamic titles and descriptions
significantly increase the min CTR
They are not going to do the first one of these as they get massive income from companies and their affiliates who use these tools on a large scale basis.
I think the new system of punnishing accounts with poor CTR history is a good step though, and should help improve the overall results.
Fact is that affiliates can be good and bad - and they should be treated according to this. The affiliates near the top of the results will be good in all likely hood - so stop complaining and get better.
Sorry if I rambled on.
Rich
On the argument about affiliates starting up a new account and then pushing up the costs of others, this is certainly not restricted to affiliates, and I would suggest that direct competitors would benefit more from this sort of practice (I have never heard, or experienced anything like this myself).
The scenario Multiman outlines is ridiculous anyway. For any term with decent traffic, an ad is going to get a click well before the latter part of the day, no matter how poorly it is written. And if somehow it doesn't, it would fall in rank and/or be disabled very quickly. If someone attempts this 'fraud' with daily budget set to max cpc, it would last 5 minutes or a couple clicks at most, and the ad would probably not survive the night. The effect it would have on the competition would be extremely negligible. Its just that simple.
I already explained how it is useless to "just wait" for a usesless affilate ad to get kicked off for lack of clicks. But some seem to not be reading this thread beore posting.
And it is not about a failure to accept competition. As I have always shown myself to be here, I am a dedicated capitalist.
In my keyword, the issue is a social and academic information matter. It is not a commerce issue. But G$ has destroyed the natural SERPs on purpose in order to force the leading authority site into nowhere land on the SERPs. It's all to make G$ more money by forcing the site to pay AdWords for its non-commerce resource.
Then in comes useless affiliate ads.
Buy KEYWORD.
All about KEYWORD.
www.affiliatyeyouwillneverknow.com
Having been with the longest AdWords ad there in that keyword market of AdWords, I know what searchers are there for and not for. Generally, they are not looking to buy products. (There is a reason why virtually all sites listed in even natural SERPs are not about selling anything --DOH!)
In this keyword market, the affiliate ads never had anything to originally offer, so they created their affiliate accounts to sell "KEYWORD at eBay" or whatever. And always, those ads are generally useless too, because the affiliate has no idea of what the keyword is all about anyway. They only thought they might have a new opportunity to capitalize on something they really know nothing about. Again, even when they do get clicks, they are not helping users get the information they are seeking.
When the useless ad eventually does get kicked off or the affiliate advertiser quits, then another affiliate ad will show up in its place. The same cycle continues again.
The result is that such affiliate ads make the user view the AdWords adspace as useless, so they need not look at that section of the SERP webpages anymore. And the existing real-domain advertisers are either paying more than the keyword is really worth (due to afffilate ad games) or their own CTR is dilluted as their ads get "lost" among a sea of useless affiliate ads as the user "learns" to stop looking at AdWords ads anymore by recognizing that too many of the ads are truly useless.
It destroys the adspace althogether.
I realize that the the self-interest of the affiliates will make their defenses as loud as they can get.
It does not matter. Such arguments are as invalid as a group of at-fault divorced people arguing with an experienced, long-term happily married person on the correct way to become and stay happily married --even ridiculously implying that the happily married person has no experienmce at marriage! It's just silly. Their self-interested opinions simply have no real credibilty or valid authority in the debate.
The only voices which count are those with the real-domain advertisers, because we are the ones who are really all about our keyword, having actuallly put something on the line to provide that resource for users.
Bottom line, affiliate ads have no place in the valid AdWords adspace.
It's just that simple.
The scenario Multiman outlines is ridiculous anyway.
What is actually ridiculous is people asserting things they have no knowledge about. Maybe such fraud has not happened in someone's keyword yet, but there is a world of experience beyond one's own corner of the world.
Instead of allowing oneself to become informed and educated about something they had not seen before, this is an example of instead trying to say that something real is not real when they have no knowledge about it.
"I already explained how it is useless to "just wait" for a usesless affilate ad to get kicked off for lack of clicks. But some seem to not be reading this thread beore posting."
Surely this applies to all advertisers. The new system should prevent this happening as new users will get less impressions to improve themselves.
"Generally, they are not looking to buy products. (There is a reason why virtually all sites listed in even natural SERPs are not about selling anything --DOH!)"
If this is true how do I:
a) get an average of 10-50% of the traffic for the terms I advertise on
b) convert well enough to continue advertising
"The result is that such affiliate ads make the user view the AdWords adspace as useless, so they need not look at that section of the SERP webpages anymore. And the existing real-domain advertisers are either paying more than the keyword is really worth (due to afffilate ad games) or their own CTR is dilluted as their ads get "lost" among a sea of useless affiliate ads as the user "learns" to stop looking at AdWords ads anymore by recognizing that too many of the ads are truly useless."
"It does not matter. Such arguments are as invalid as a group of at-fault divorced people arguing with an experienced, long-term happily married person on the correct way to become and stay happily married --even ridiculously implying that the happily married person has no experienmce at marriage! It's just silly. Their self-interested opinions simply have no real credibilty or valid authority in the debate."
I'm not sure anymore - are you serious, or just messing with us. If its the former I worry about you.
"It's just that simple."
Maybe if you keep saying this we will all start to agree. I doubt it though.
It's a very simple principle. Not one single affiliate URL would be allowed as a listing as a natural SERP. The same should be for AdWords.
Real-domain sites in AdWords should not be "competing" with ghosts whose URLs would never be allowed as a natural SERP listing.
It really is THAT simple.
What is actually ridiculous is people asserting things they have no knowledge about. Maybe such fraud has not happened in someone's keyword yet, but there is a world of experience beyond one's own corner of the world.Instead of allowing oneself to become informed and educated about something they had not seen before, this is an example of instead trying to say that something real is not real when they have no knowledge about it.
Oh really? Ever hear of deducing results based on given criteria?
Criteria 1: User bids higher than you.
Criteria 2: User sets Max Budget equal to Max Bid.
Criteria 3: User has bad ad copy.
Deduction 1: Ad does not affect you after it gets ~1 click per day because it is then over budget.
Deduction 2: If the ad maintains the minimum 0.5% CTR, it will affect you at most 200 impressions per day on average.
Deduction 3: If the ad does not achieve 0.5% CTR it is likely to be disabled after at most ~1000 impressions.
From 1-3, the most sustainable damage you can take is only a few clicks per day, and as you describe this ad as receiving no clicks until afternoon, it would quickly be disabled as stated in 3.
Those are the facts.
Deduction 4: If the ad copy is so horrible and nobody clicks on it, being one slot below this ad may possibly even improve your CTR by making you look better in comparison (for the short time it exists).
Overall Analysis: The scenario described has negligible effect on you as an advertiser.
Now... even if somebody out there still agrees with your argument, it is irrelevant as a reason to ban affiliate ads. Any advertiser could attempt the same tactic, affiliate or not.
The only real way people can cheat you out of clicks is if they are willing to burn through a stack of their own money, but in the end they would lose far more than you. Unless somebody has very deep pockets and/or is extremely spiteful or intent on putting you out for a price, this will not happen. Generally, affiliate advertisers are not interested in such games. The large companies with $ flowing out their ears are the ones more likely to turn devilish with adwords.
Here's a bonus deduction made from MultiMan's posts: Stating "It's just that simple" does not make your arguments any stronger. It's a filler statement designed to make you believe in a post that has no real substance.
The scenario described has negligible effect on you as an advertiser.
If only that were true. Contrary to that theory, the facts are, the effects of such fraud have cost us double.
Now... even if somebody out there still agrees with your argument, it is irrelevant as a reason to ban affiliate ads. Any advertiser could attempt the same tactic, affiliate or not.
But a real-domain site is more accountable by the fact of having done what it takes to be a real site, not a ghost (as an affiliate is) which appears in the night and disappears without a proof of existence. Having non-real-domain site ads in AdWords allows "drive-by-affiliate bid attacks" as they hide behind the anonymity of being an affiliate. And they can come and go as they please without costing themselves much at all -- unlike a real-domain site which has paid for the domain registration, site development, and hosting.
The only real way people can cheat you out of clicks is if they are willing to burn through a stack of their own money, but in the end they would lose far more than you. Unless somebody has very deep pockets and/or is extremely spiteful or intent on putting you out for a price, this will not happen.
The repeated fact and experience is that that is exactly what happens in controversial topics.
So, again, despite efforts and theories to try to complicate the issues, it is crystal clear and obvious that affiliates simply have no place in the AdWords adspace.
It's NOT complicated. It really is that simple.
You Say :
"Having non-real-domain site ads in AdWords allows "drive-by-affiliate bid attacks" as they hide behind the anonymity of being an affiliate. And they can come and go as they please without costing themselves much at all -- unlike a real-domain site which has paid for the domain registration, site development, and hosting
The above statement shows you really have no concept of what real (professional) affiliate PPC bidding is about,
ok let's do it your way... real-domain site costs... $5 reg fee, $30 a year hosting, $200 for a coder to develop... as an affiliate I have these too, all work in a way the merchant would be happy with and
I spend tens of thousands of pounds a month on adwords as an affiliate and there is no way I am going to risk any relationship with a merchant by doing something they don't want me too
I agree with you there is some element of less than above board affiliates doing less than good quality work, but they do get weeded out by most merchants that understand the dynamics of affiliate marketing in the PPC arena.
" it is crystal clear and obvious that affiliates simply have no place in the AdWords adspace"
buy a new ball as your crystal one is cloudy
It's anything but simple! and to keep saying it's simple only shows a tangible lack of understanding of the dynamics of the industry and the professionalism of 99% of most full time affiliates.
Becoming an affiliate can cost a person nothing and they can hide behind that anonymity without having spent anything
Wow – I really need to check this forum more often. I didn’t realise Google was handing out free clicks for Christmas. I spend over £1K a day of my personal money on affiliate ads, please can you tell my bank manager that I haven’t spent anything.
Even when they do get clicks, they are not helping users get the information they are seeking. Generally, they are not looking to buy products. There is a reason why virtually all sites listed in even natural SERPs are not about selling anything.
Simply not true. I send about 5000 clicks a day to merchants and my conversion rate hovers around 2%. That’s 100 people who weren’t looking to buy products but were forced to by my nasty affiliate ads. I’m destined to burn in hell, oh well.
In controversial topics, someone can create a new affiliate account, create a new AdWords account, and then create a useless AdWords ad. They bid just high to come just under some existing advertiser so as to force the "targeted" advertiser they are attacking to pay its actual Max CPC. The frauder sets their Daily Budget to something below their own Max CPC bid so that once they do get one click that day, their ad is removed for the rest of that day. By having their ad so obviously useless, it does not get clicked until later in the day. That's what they want. But during the time when their ad is displayed, they cost the advertiser above them to pay more than they should have paid. Yet the frauder only pays for one click per day.
Complete and utter rubbish for two reasons:
• Even if the ad was rubbish it’d get clicked if it was near the top, there are plenty of trigger happy surfers out there who click without reading properly.
• If it was a popular keyword impressions would run into thousands very shortly and the ad would get dropped by Google.
I agree that affiliate bidding on Google needs to be reviewed. Banning it however would be a pretty stupid way of dealing with some of the valid issues people have pointed out and I have confidence Google will reach an intelligent solution. A few reasons why I think Google won’t/shouldn’t ban affiliate ads in the near future:
• Money
A pretty reliable source said 12% of their revenue was from affiliate bids. That was a while back, I expect it’s higher now. Ditching that much revenue just after the IPO would hardly go down well on Wall Street
• Relevance
I think there’s a huge amount of awful affiliate ads out there. But the bottom line is an affiliate has a very tight margins, much tighter than a merchant/distributor. We’re hardly philanthropists – if we weren’t making money from the ads we’d move on. And if we can make money from the ads then clearly we are providing surfers with what they want to a certain degree; we wouldn’t make money if they weren’t buying after clicking on our ads.
I think something like bidding on a product code, or something very specific and sending the user direct to that specific page on a merchant’s site adds to the user’s experience – they don’t have to trawl through dozens of review pages to get to the product they wanted.
Also, I think it’s been forgotten that Google manually reviews ads fairly soon after they have been launched. If the affiliate ads was a case of misrepresentation it’d go down pretty quickly.
So, what should Google do?
Stopping dynamic keyword insertion sounds like a pretty good idea to me. Apart from that I’m not sure, I can’t see how the AdWords system can possibly survive anyway if Froogle becomes a success. Separating information search from product search is in principle a great idea but I’m not really sure how Google are going to maintain their revenue stream if they head in that direction.
Neil
A friend of mine attended a Google University seminar at Earls Court (London, UK) on Thursday last week. Apparently one of the guys from Google said that they were planning to phase out affiliate bidding on AdWords 'very soon'. The reason - showing several ads for the same merchant reflects badly on the user's experience.
First thank you migriffin, Shane21, PPCBidder and others whose usernames I neglected to note for your eloquent arguments in favor of the humble affiliate.
Affiliates don't ask for pity, but many are here because of the dearth of real jobs available for even highly technical people in the US and other countries. We eke out a living, not stealing any money from those who paid their $20.00USD for a domain name, but acting as the bottom feeders of a highly competitive market in which we somehow manage to survive. At least in the US, job creation has been greatly bolstered by folks who go into business for themselves, many as affiliate marketers.
If affiliate advertising is banned on AdWords, then those coveted positions can go directly to the merchant partners, many of them huge corporations who of late have found the best way to increase profit margin is to eliminate jobs and opportunities rather than devote the financial resources to true product innovation and improvement. I feel for these CEOS, I've noticed many wearing shabby suits of late and fear they may not have sufficient resources to perform needed renovations on their 3rd yacht or private jet if the current economic slump continues. The poor are used to being poor and have learned to hold low expectations for the future and still have a laugh on Friday night. Those accustomed to having it all are likely to be driven to destructive habits and suicide if even a perceived threat to their insatiable greed is a possibility.
It's irrational to argue that those staking their remaining live savings on PPC are somehow outbidding "real sites", many of which have large budgets for SEO consultants to manage their advertising campaigns.
Many neophyte affiliates spend 12+ hours a day attempting to find a "niche" where their humble bids may prove fruitful. I don't mind my ads ranking fourth because they usually follow larger companies with sneaky ad techniques, offering the item for "free" or near-free (as long as you sign up for a monthly service or book club) or a wildcard ad which does not bring the user to the product in the search query. At least some of them, enough to put food on the table, appear to be happy to encounter my straightforward affiliate ad with a stated price that provides the convenience of taking them to the correct page in order to purchase the product originally searched on. Prominent ads matching search queries are also helpful in guiding the less web-proficient who couldn't manage to type in the URL for their desired site correctly and who would prefer to type "Where can I find widgets?" rather a boolean query or something more targeted that may guide them to their desired choice.
I've harbored the awkward feeling for some time that the old adage that the Internet "offers a level playing field for the individual entrepreneur to compete with gigantic corporate entities" would eventually be threatened by the greed of established businesses. Most affiliates cannot afford to place ads scattershot, unlike big businesses, who can afford to experiment and lose money some of the time. My ads and most affiliates ads, with the possible exception of abusers of the wildcard? character - You can buy color cancer on eBay!, are considerable researched. We can't afford the eventual tax write-off on a misguided campaign when there is only $600.00USD left in the bank account.
Fortunately, my own personal situation is not so dire, but I know that I speak for a huge percentage of affiliates who participate in an informal network of similar forums and who cheerfully give advice (but not coveted keywords) to newcomers whom they see a bit of themselves in.
Also, a great many affiliates are not anonymous ghosts who hide behind their affiliate id. First if they are truly running misleading ads, they can easily be linked back to Google as well as their affiliate merchant.
We also often have a more significant Internet presence than some of the less informed posters have intimated. Oftentimes, before starting a website for a promising product, we'll do test campaigns on PPC to see if it is worth the hours required to create an optimized website for which we could rely upon SERPs. Ultimately, we'd prefer this "free" exposure as opposed to having to share most of our revenue with the Google millionaires and billionaires.
If Google were to eliminate ads by affiliates, there would be a nasty backlash. Many affiliates are not SEO or marketing ignorant. If Google advertising becomes as inaccessible to the individual entrepreneur as say, TV ads, a well supported, concerted effort by ex-advertisers could turn the organic listings topsy-turvy. Google may have to contend with a targeted linking campaign directed against them a la the "stupid fool" or whatever that mean spirited campaign against the US President was that caused his works to show up under offensive queries. I'm not saying that would happen, but surely Google would be ruined in the court of popular opinion if they cut off perhaps 1,000,000 hard-working individuals from their livelihoods in order to gain more allegiance from mid and large companies and corporate presences.
It is also dispiriting that we've not heard back from the AWA "spokesperson" who seems privy to so little considering their ostensibly official position with Google. It's also curious that Google would insinuate that affiliate ads detract from the "user experience" when my complaints about the recent proliferation of "twink" sites (look it up) that appear to have bid on massive amounts of non-relevant keywords have not resulted in any action by Google.
If Google goes through with such an action, they'll have gone from being the most respected search engine to just another advertising portal skewed toward the promotion of big business. They'll probably still wonder where they went wrong too as their stock plummets to AOL levels.
patient2all
Shorebreak
they'll have gone from being the most respected search engine to just another advertising portal
G$ already did that long ago when they deliberately destroyed the natural SERPs in order to force authority sites into AdWords.
And then for G$ to allow the ghosts of affiliates to further destroy even the AdWords adspace is only more proof of further declining into irrelvance.
I used to be very pro-G$ (when they presented themselves as only G without the $) before they betrayed the users and webmasters with such dshonest SERPs.
I offer my insights with the intent that it mght educute G$ to one day smarten up and correct iots problems before its name becomes "Netscape" forever.
If all these affiliate advertisers are spending as much as they say that they are spending, then they can spend the costs of creating a real-site domain, to leanr the information of the keywords they sell, and show that they ARE genuinely committed to serving the user that keyword information.
Otherwise, affiliate ads clutter the AdWords adspace to destroy the user experience and the real-domain site advertiser's value as an advertiser.
Plus, as I have said already, if affiliate ads must be allowed in SERPs, their only possible value might be in placement at the bottom footers of the SERP pages. That way, the user who WANTS to click affiliate ads can both discern between a real site offering real information (as located in the real AdWords adspace) and an affiliate ad (as located in the bottom footers) and they can choose to click such affiliate ads IF THEY STILL CHOOSE.
If G$ would do that, it will help the user to know the REAL-domain advertisers who are committed to the real information versus the affiliate advertisers who are only out to sell information while not having any direct knowledge or commitment to the keyword.
And it will help the real-domain sites to not be advertising in the clutter of so many useless affiliate ads.
It is just so simple.
Even when they do get clicks, they are not helping users get the information they are seeking. Generally, they are not looking to buy products. There is a reason why virtually all sites listed in even natural SERPs are not about selling anything.Simply not true. I send about 5000 clicks a day to merchants and my conversion rate hovers around 2%. That’s 100 people who weren’t looking to buy products but were forced to by my nasty affiliate ads. I’m destined to burn in hell, oh well
Way too often are my points are being taken out of context.
I made it clear that THAT point was made in the context of MY keyword. I know MY keyword and in MY keyword, the user is NOT out to buy something.
So, anyone disagreeing on the basis of their own keyword is completely off-topic regarding the point I made.
So, anyone disagreeing on the basis of their own keyword is completely off-topic regarding the point I made.
But the point you made encompasses all KWs, not just your own, so therefore it is open to critic from all sides.
You generalize banning all affiliates based on your personal experience, so you are doing no different than they.
I will weigh in on both sides. I am both a marchant that has an affiliate program and uses CPC advertising and an affiliate who sucessfully uses PPC to make money.
As a merchant
I welcome my affiliates advertising on KWs. They don't push my bids up that much and even if they did, that means they are doing it better than I am. Since what I pay affiliate is less than what I pay for adwords advertising, I would be more than happy to step aside and let my affiliate have the show if they are better at it than I am. Who am I to let my ego get in the way of sales?
Secondly, competition is getting fiercer, even for my own company name. The more affiliates I have working for me, the better. If you don't have affiliates working for you, you really need to get some.
If my competitions affiliates are pushing me out, then I need to track down those affiliates and lure them to my program.
How is this any different than me listing my products of a dozen different shopping SEs who all also advertise on adwords?
As an affiliate
Fact of the matter is that those ebay affiliate will be gone in 6 months, tops. I tested ebay's program in the CPC and I can tell you the life cycle. You put up the ads and initially, the returns look pretty good. But then you get hit with the reversals a month or two later. No so good, as in you lose money, time to move on.
As far as the bad ads from affiliates, well, the fact of the matter is, these days everybody is putting up bad ads. I expect that some of your better ads come from affiliates simply because they have to write better ads in order to make money.
Also, as an affiliate, I don't target KWs that have alot of affiliates on them. It's just not profitable. Too much competition. I target merchants who have relativly little CPC affiliates and either have no program or a weak CPC program.
As a searcher
This is an area that I don't feel as qualified to speak up on, simply because my other two positions bias me. But, I do feel that if the ad takes me to where I would like to go, I don't care who put it up.
Affiliate ads are no worse than the shopping search engine ads, though I personally feel the affiliate ads are more relevant. Should G ban everybody that doesn't directly sell something? They would loes alot of money that way.
Conclusion
I think that the problem that most people see here is poor ads, not affiliates. Poor affiliate write poor ads and have poor landing pages. But I have seen just as many "real" site make the same mistakes and all of it hurts the program. (I know, I am harping on that one in another thread)
As a merchant, I don't want affiliates to go away. As an affiliate, I will tell you if we don't make money, we will go away (either because we are smart and focus on something else or we are dumb and max out our credit cards). As a user, I am not sure it really matters. As long as you get me to where I want to go, I don't care.
That means that suggesting that one turn such a non-commece site into a site with affiliates is MEANINGLESS.
It is bad enough that G$ deliberately destroyed the natural SERPs to force an information site in MY non-commerce keyword to pay the blackmail of AdWords, but it is even more horrendous to also allow irrelevant affilates to clutter and diminish even that adspace.
It is obvious that anyone who wants to be an affilate advertiser is only going to make posts here trying to protect their self-interest. But no matter, affiliate ads are not real content, especially in non-commerce keywords.
As I have said, affiliate ads can be moved to the bottom footers of the SERP pages, if at all. But they have no place among the keyword-committed real-sites genuinely trying to serve the user.
NOT EVERY KEYWORD IS A COMMERCE KEYWORD.
If someone is advertsing on it, it has just become a commerce KW, whether you use it that way or not. You personal opinion plays not one whit into the equation. Google did not monitize the KW, but if someone has figured out how, that's their benifit and, unfortunatly, your loss. That's the way the game is played.
You sound like you are suffereing more from SEO envy than anything else. If an affiiate beat you out, it won't be long before a so-called "real" site will being doing it as well. Should we ban them too, simply because you didn't win?
MY non-commerce keyword
IMHO this thread is generating rather more heat than light.
I don't much like the crappy eBay aff ads either (I just reported to G an incitement in an ad on my site to buy and sell elephants; irritating, crass and probably illegal under CITES-related treaties!) and have filtered out netmeans and mediaplex for the time being to get rid of many of them.
Take a few breaths and remember that the world isn't perfect, etc!
Rgds
Damon
hannamyluv, don't you know the answer yourself?
I myself always thought that we were just privledged guests whose sites resided on a KW and that the home owner had the option of asking us to leave at any time. Of course, we could always not stay there if we do not like the offer. ;)
"As I have said, affiliate ads can be moved to the bottom footers of the SERP pages, if at all. But they have no place among the keyword-committed real-sites genuinely trying to serve the user"
yup I've seen those kinds of sites in serps.. the ones where you click the page and end up on a highly optimised page with something on it they didn't exactly want or with a link to the "main site" where sales occur....
Now condiser that along side the highly targeted affiliate adword that directs the user to the end site for the exact keyword they typed in
who's offers the direct route? affiliate ads are just as valid a route..
we are talking about the USER here and the user got exactly what they wanted by the shortest route.. now that's user service!
we don't look at serps and think. grrr spammers.. they do what ever it takes to get to the top even if what they offer is not relevant for the traffic they seek, WE look and think .. Nice one.. well done.. wish it was me ..
MultiMan you need to take a better look at how the business world works and de-focus the hate you have for affiliates mate...it's not healthy at all ..Take up tai chi and chill out
To completely write off all affiliates as talentless no name no value hacks shows a complete lack of understanding of what it takes to be a successfull affiliate (emphasis on the successful part).
If Google banned all affiliate ads it would not eliminate all affiliate activity. It would wipe out those who see affiliate marketing as a game or hobby or a supposedly quick and easy way to make money (it's not). Those of us who see it as a business will simply regroup and press on and make even more money in the long term thanks to Google wiping out the clueless affiliate competition.
We no talent "ghosts" sure have a way of beating out "real" domains time after time. Year after year. Doubtful this trend will disappear. Put another way. Why would a "real" business take this long to adopt an obvious, powerful and profitable marketing channel? It's so typical for businesses to adopt a wait and see approach on anything new. Then when they see people making tons of profits it's not fair and the playing field must be leveled because they want to start competing but without the learning curve and time committments.
I've been using ppc for years and now we must move aside because the "real" guys want their slice? Fine. Perform better keyword research, write better ads and use superior profit margins against me. If you don't know how learn or hire someone but don't complain.
Affiliate marketing is a billion dollar industry. According to some reports "ghosts" account for up to 20% of all online sales and revenue.
Yep, we bring nothing to the table. Offer no real value and are really just con artists hatching devious fraudulent schemes to ruin "real" businesses with "real domains".
I can't wait to start my next campaign with the sole purpose of pushing everyone else's max CPC through the roof. It's fun and exciting. Hopefully I will ruin someone's livlihood before dinner.
The best part is that thanks to Google's budgeting feature I can set my budget so low that my ad will only get one click but harm everyone else even though your budget dictates how often your ad will be shown so an extremely low budget would almost guarantee that my ad will never be shown thus never receive that evil profit destroying click but what do I kow about how adwords works I'm just a ghost floating around the internet <----extreme sarcasm
I know I'm missing the simple point and once again have only reinforced other's arguments. I'm just another pitiful affililate desparately attempting to defend my undeserved and unworthy income. It's just that simple.
Maybe this post will force moderators to shut down this thread like the other one on this topic. My post is about as useless as bidding on non commerce words.
