Is it right for a merchant to charge back leads due to bidding on trademarked terms?
- Thread starter John__N
- Start date
Bidding on trademarked keywords is never allowed - some advertisers/merchants are just more (or less) savvy on catching it.
Ask yourself what value you provided with your leads.
If you were bidding on trademarked terms chances are the lead would have become a lead anyway so in reality you just sucked commission out of the deal.
If your not adding value to the advertiser, you will almost always have a problem.
If you were bidding on trademarked terms chances are the lead would have become a lead anyway so in reality you just sucked commission out of the deal.
If your not adding value to the advertiser, you will almost always have a problem.
Not necessarily the case. The prospect can easily "turn the corner" and sign up with a competitor who will be bidding on their trademarked term. It doesn't make sense for merchants to forbid affiliates from doing this. It's the best form of "turf protection" on search.
Now as for scrubbing the leads in the OP's case, it's up to the merchant to lay down their rules, but it's really short-sighted IMHO for reasons described above.
why would the advertiser want to pay for traffic to their trademarked terms? i'm sure the price of acquisition is much more than the price of the clicks. also, bidding on their trademark terms can drive the cost of those terms up for them. some advertisers will allow it as long as you don't outbid them.
The problem is that some merchants are vehemently opposed to trademark bidding and some merchants don't care. An affiliate has no way to know what the merchant thinks unless that information is put in the campaign description.
If the campaign description did not say "no trademark bidding" or if the network doesn't expressly forbid trademark bidding in their general T&C's, then I think they are ethically bound to pay for the leads, regardless of whether or not they're being paid by the merchant.
From my experience, most are okay with you bidding on their competitors trademarks, just not their own.
can you point out any resource to learn something on conversion of generic keywords?
I normally steer clear of TM targeting, but If it wasn't on the terms page, I'd take it up with the network. It is highly doubtful they'd intercede on your part directly, but advertisers have responsibilities in the network-advertiser-publisher relationship just as we the publishers do, and not being arbitrary fuckasses about paying for leads should be high up on that list.
Frank
Frank
the network says they cant help is since its in their tos fineprint. I agree with them. wats pissing me off is that the advertiser didnt put up the trademark terms on the offer details page....lesson learned...now moving on.
btw one question in my mind not specific to this section, wat value do link builders add to the internet/anyone else in competitive niches?
btw one question in my mind not specific to this section, wat value do link builders add to the internet/anyone else in competitive niches?
THIS^^ there are a lot of people that consider themselves "hotshot affiliate marketers" whose entire "business model" is just bidding on the trademark term in order to profit off the company's own brand name. You are adding NOTHING of value to the merchant, even if they don't catch it right away, and should expect them to not payout for this behavior.