Apr 16 2007
Why PPC restrictions don’t always make sense
The Safe Shop recently sent out an email about new PPC restrictions introducing the follow restrictions
Affiliates using Pay Per Click such as Google Adwords are requested not to bid or cancel existing bids on brand name terms or derivations or misspellings including but not isolated to:
the safe shop
thesafeshop
the safeshop
safe shop
safeshopAffiliates are not allowed to have adverts appear for searches on these or similar terms. To avoid broad match issues please include restricted terms as negative keywords in all your PPC campaigns for The Safe Shop.
As of the 1st April 2007 affiliates found bidding on restricted terms may have pending transactions cancelled or face temporary suspension from our programme.
I’ll always defend the merchants right to control their brand if they want to but I think sometimes restrictions are put in place without a full understanding of the issues. I just picked this one as a random example and I didn’t even know I was actually signed up to the program until I got this email.
Firstly does The Safe Shop have a recognised brand to protect? Are people searching for this company by typing “Safe Shop” into Google? If they are then here’s what they might find
The first two results, including the fairly dominant quick links are for a website called Shopsafe.co.uk followed by The Safe Shop which is closely followed by a site called SafeShop.co.uk so it looks to me like The Safe Shop isn’t a clear leader in the natural results.
Looking across at adwords I can see 5 different competitors who are all actually selling safes and the last result is an affiliate who I expect the network won’t allow to remain there for long.
So in the end what have The Safe Shop achieved by restricting PPC? To me it looks like they have just made it easier for competitors by removing any affiliates that were supporting them. Their competitors will have an easier time of it in terms of paid search and a top adwords result would have compensated for not holding the number 1 position in the natural results.
I think the issue is different for every merchant but I think smaller merchants with fairly generic business names need to take care with the restrictions they put in place as often actively working with your affiliates will be a lot more beneficial.
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Apr 16th, 2007 at 7:55 pm | #
Fraser,
I think the restrictions genrally associated with some affiliates who tend to “missrepresent” products or services. If you have good relationship with the affiliate manager you may be able to get on ok to continue biddiing for on the restricted terms, with “Safe Shop” permission. Sometimes it is worth to go through the trboule of letting Google know you are allowed to bid on those terms by merchant. I would try that, if of course “Safe Shop” is worth it.
Apr 16th, 2007 at 8:50 pm | #
I am the affiliate manager at ZIRH and we only really allow affiliates that communicate with use to use our traded brand term. For 2 reasons first the misrepresenting issue, next would be just the average Joe could just buy our branded key term and grab revenue for advertising he had nothing to do with. I also prefer that the affiliate makes it land on his page and then he tries to sell it from there.
Apr 16th, 2007 at 9:22 pm | #
@James
It is reallygood to hear on the issue from an affiliate manager. I hope you still follow this post. I am jsut wondering to what extent do you go iforcing your policy on “restricted terms”? Do you submit the terms to Google? If so I find that the process of convincing Google that I have permission to bid on those terms is not always easy. I do not necesserily mean ZIRH, but I did have experience with other advertisers regarding this.
Apr 17th, 2007 at 2:10 pm | #
Well actually what we did is submit stuff to google including affiliates and other companies that have the rights to sell zirh on a white list. To do that the affiliate has to send me there google ad#. Then I send it to google, that takes up to 5 days.
Apr 17th, 2007 at 2:38 pm | #
@James
“To do that the affiliate has to send me there google ad#. Then I send it to google, that takes up to 5 days.”
Well at least this is one way to go aboout it. Unfortunately not many affiliates will be willing to do that. Specially those of us who do split testing and modify ads frequently. 5 days seems to be a long time to wait- this is only my opinion.
Apr 17th, 2007 at 2:42 pm | #
@vlad
Actually I have 19 Affiliates that did it and 4 doing well with the campaigns.
When I told them what they needed they sent it to me in 10 minutes, sometimes less.
Apr 17th, 2007 at 3:11 pm | #
Fraser,
Having read your blog I have to say we may have been somewhat short-sighted with regards to the term “safe shop” and “safeshop”.
This course of action was my initiative and was originally based on the term “The Safe Shop”. When we first launched 3 years ago our name had little relevance within our industry but over time we have gradually seen this change where we are now searched for on a name basis.
Our company name is first in the Google organic listings and as a result anyone searching for our name will automatically find us. We cannot allow someone to bid on our name and by being directly above (via PPC) possibly receive more clicks/sales than our organic listing. This does not make economic sense.
However as you mention “safe shop” and “safeshop” are entirely different and far more generic. If I had thought more about this before placing the block I would like to think I would have come to the same conclusion. We are removing any block preventing affiliates bidding on these more generic terms with immediate effect.
Regards,
Anthony
http://www.thesafeshop.co.uk
Apr 17th, 2007 at 3:36 pm | #
10minutes+5days? Would that be the time of getting your ad OKed by Google?
In either event, I think it is good you take care of your affiliates. I think there is a bigger issue with online retailers who sell products (clothing, shoes and other items) and they do not hold the trademark themselves (exampple: addidas sportwear, micheal kors bedding- and so on). I acutally had an affiliate manager sending be what supposed to be a list of “best performing keywords/keyphrases majority of those keywords I could not use in my campaigns due to “trademark” issues and the affiliate manager could not do much about it.
Apr 18th, 2007 at 1:47 pm | #
Hi - sorry for the delay in getting involved with the comments!
Anthony, thanks for posting and for being willing to change your terms. I hope people will sign up with The Safe Shop and you can benefit from your willingness to communicate with affiliates. I didn’t want to be pick on The Safe Shop particularly but just to show that at the moment a lot of PPC guidelines are being thrown into place on all networks that may not benefit the merchant in the long term.
Thanks for your point of view James & Vlad - you both make good points and it’s great to have your experience here.
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