Adwords - direct to affiliate account

is this allowed?

[globay]

I have seen recently, that for some of my keywords (widget name), competitors claim to be amazon.com and have used their amazon.com affiliate url.

Is this legal?

Can I report him?

Thanks-
globay

[Shak]

globay,

does it say "affiliate" in the adwords creative your competitor is using?

a quick search on keyword "ebay" brought up lots of adwords advertisers, all with the word "affiliate" in the creative!

Shak

[edited by: Shak at 10:14 pm (utc) on May 17, 2003]

[globay]

Yes it does.

What are the terms of use?

[Shak]

Who do you want to report him to:

Google , Amazon, Trading Standards?

Shak

<added>

[adwords.google.co.uk...]

If you are an affiliate paid to send traffic to another site, you must identify yourself as an affiliate.

[globay]

I don't know. Just thought that it would be easier for me if I had less competitors. ;-)

But if it is legal, then I can't do anything.

[webdiversity]

If they are claiming to be Amazon, then that is one scenario, if they claim to be an Amazon affiliate, then they are probably mad to be advertising on Adwords on that basis. PPC will be good for many advertising campaigns, but the margins on books etc.. are so low for affiliates that even putting the kidnappers to one side, at 1 or 2% conversion for typical e-commerce sites and the average order value on Amazon being around $25, at 10% commission, that's $2.50 a sale, even 2% conversion on minimum CPC you are looking at 2 sales for 100 visitors, so you make 5 bucks, 100 clicks at 5 cents and you spent...... 5 bucks, you break even, and Amazon makes plenty.

My advice, don't get into PPC on affiliate deals where the margins don't stack up.

[skibum]

Yea, you can turn a profit (often not huge) with AdWords affiliate placements on services with higher margins and higher payouts but trying to do it with the Amazon affiliate program seems futile unless its really high ticket items.

[ukstages]

i agree with all the advice about buying broad-based ads for amazon.

with regard to what adwords allows... they do indeed allow an affiliate link provided the landing page URL is shown in the ad. so, the ad not only has to disclose affiliate status, but also show the destination URL of "amazon.com." if it shows another site or if the "landing page" site is a different URL that then redirects to amazon, or if it's the affiliate site itself... it's my understanding that this is not allowed.

keywords for which i advertise regularly are chock full of affiliate advertisers. but i see a lot of ads that don't mention their affiliation and a lot that redirect in violation of adwords guidelines. i'm also starting to see a lot of "aff" and "affil," which - i was told - is also not allowed.

i've reported these to google over the better part of a year, yet few of the advertiserss have corrected their ads. since google's reps miss a lot of this and it's not their main priority... after a while, you learn to focus on making your ads work better and smarter than your competitors and finding under-utilized keywords where you can shine.

[theanswer]

"aff" and "affil" are actually allowed. You must have got some faulty information (the staff is not always on the same page when it comes to their own policy!). Other words such as "distributor" or "representative" (or rep) are acceptable to use to identify affiliate status.

[oLeon]

the craziest thing I saw was that the original advertiser and an affiliate both has been on the sponsored link above the listings. within the text of the affi was written 'affi', but the domain didn't fit, was just an affi-domain. I was wondering for a long time that Google allowed this.

[ I am interested if the orginial on the 1st position has had a better CTR than the affi on the 2nd... ]