Due to the Google AdWords Trademark changes coming into force on May the 5th 2008 and the way some UK affiliate networks are sweeping merchants towards Brand Bidding Groups I thought now would be an ideal time to help train anyone up to current Brand Bidding Group Pro standard so they are in with just as much of a chance as the “professionals” are (if it were a level, non biased or financially weighted landscape we operated in) of getting to play on the brand groups likely to pop up in May.

Ok let’s begin the standard three step process of how to be like most of the current brand bidding group participants .. firstly create a landing page on your chosen site, ideally something like merchant-name-keyword.co.uk  or merchant-name.superdooperamazingdeals.co.uk  and add content that’s basically a direct clone of the merchant’s site, then for step two create an adgroup and make an advert with the merchants brand in the title, body and url text, step three entails just adding the merchant’s brand as a keyword with square brackets around it like [merchant brand] .. that’s it well done, congratulations, you just attained Brand Bidding Group specialist status !

Now you should bid like this until you get a tug from someone (which may never happen if you are lucky) for not adding enough value, in which case do merchant’s brand with another keyword such as buy, apply, cheap, cheapest, so now you have something like [cheap merchant brand] etc.

Now bid like this for as long as possible, you’ll make a killing on most brands, some of them will cough it tens of thousands of pounds in nice juicy commissions per month with no clue that you are literally just taking cash off punters already heading in through the the door,  but if you are pulled about adding more value with a bit of a wider spread then you’ll have to resort to the dreaded phrase match, the curse of the BBG.

The phrase match is the last option in the BBG keyword matching arsenal (to be really successful in brand bidding you’ll virtually never use broad match), using phrase match means your ROI may suffer as you’ll actually be getting traffic that’s not as targeted as that nice juicy exact match you have been getting .. it’s possible that you may even have to spend ten minutes researching negative keywords to make sure you don’t show for irrelevant terms such as complaint, support, contact, email, vacancy, recruitment, return etc. So for your wider phrase match keyword spread you’ll have to bid on terms like “merchants brand” and “cheap merchants brand” etc.

If tugged again you may have to actually - god forbid - create a generic adgroup where you actually compete with other merchants and affiliates on the traffic for the merchant’s sector!  Very scary I know.. your ROI is going to take a hammering now you’re actually expected to add value to the merchant’s campaign you may even dip below 100% ROI here!

There you go, that about covers 90% of the work that’s being done out there on brand campaigns, some guys are trying hard and do add value but they make up a small minority as far too many don’t try hard and aren’t adding value and the networks seem complicit in this pervasive apathy and that’s actually bordering on exploitation in my view, merchants are being took for a ride in some instances.

Ok maybe the cynic in me shone through the above steps, I wish I was totally joking however I, as well as many other affiliates, see what’s happening on many brand campaigns, some of the brand bidders are literally having a laugh at the merchant’s expense. They are given brand bidding rights as they have “performed on brand campaigns in the past” or “have a proven history with brand campaigns” according to the networks who favor them, which is a bit like the argument for making a serial killer the hangman as he’s got experience, (sure he can do it but he won’t always do it how it should be done).

Performing on a brand campaign is child’s play! it often is as simple as [brand name] at £0.xxp per click and bank the profit, many of the brand bidders are taking advantage of their favoured status by doing this and very little else, I’ve seen many solely brand bidding doing zero generics and active like this on multiple campaigns, some of them are so mercenary and opportunistic that they even brand bid when they shouldn’t be on merchants which don’t allow brand bidding.

With most of the BBG’s affiliates owning one or more Ferrari’s, Porsche’s or Aston Martins etc. now just how much better can one affiliate be at doing [merchant brand] then the next guy ? if the current level of bias continues it’ll be fun to see which brand bidder buys a Learjet first .. no doubt at least one already has a net jet card!

This evident favouritism isn’t healthy at all, it’s not giving merchants full value for money and it’s breeding mistrust and annoying many affiliates who do add value from content and generic PPC activity. There needs to be a wider spread of capable affiliates involved rather than the few BBG cliques … and NO I’m not touting for brand bidding rights! I’ll never kiss ass to get a single one!

With my objective head on for a moment, I can understand why networks wish to work with affiliates who behave and will do as they are told and have enough spending power to go for a full month but why, if taking everything at face value, would they risk alienating other affiliates by letting the BBG’s have far too many brand campaigns and add zero value to them, we all know what the crack is with most of them, they are taking the piss, there’s no other phrase for it that so succinctly rounds it up!, I know of top generic performers having their brand bidding status revoked only for a favoured brand bidder to be given it who then proceeds to bid just on brand terms,  despite that fact the original affiliates were driving generic sales too! now how screwed up is that!?

It leaves many affiliates thinking that there is more than this than meets the eye, too many small cliques in play with who knows what network/affiliate agreements, some even speculate that reduced overrides are in play to lure in bigger brands but then a profit share element agreed between network and brand bidders.

Some networks have tried to put a slim facade on brand bidding more recently, Buy.at for one have made token half hearted gestures of late by throwing a couple of campaigns out to a wider audience but it’s too little, too late to be convincing, however I hope it will escalate in volume and depth over this year and become a serious expansion of the number of affiliates involved.

Tradedoubler made a song and dance about opening up brand bidding to a wider group but then proceeded to make the application process for each one about 25 pages long and take around four hours to complete, the resulting information being worth well over £1000 in free consultation! with the usual suspects seeming to be taking most of the slots by default in reality it leaves many affiliates fighting for just a couple of spots on most campaigns.

From talking to other affiliates it would seem that those excluded / not deemed worthy to brand bid have lost faith in some networks integrity and impartiality as a result of seeing some of the chosen few do clearly very little and earn so much from poorly set up campaigns (from a merchant point of view, I’m sure the ROI for the BBG’s is excellent) which often don’t cover even misspellings let alone generics.

Many affiliates feel that networks need to be more accountable for their actions in regard to brand bidding and who gets to participate in bidding groups, i.e cut the cloak and dagger crap and the we use “brand bidding specialists” facade and open brand bidding up to those affiliates already performing on generics in preference to the existing few with a proven history on brand, bearing in mind even a child could perform on brand that’s not exactly a glowing recommendation and reason enough to annoy your generic PPC guys.

I’m sure brand bidding will evolve over this year, hopefully into a more transparent situation where a wider spread of affiliates get to show their worth rather than just being seen as second tier generic ppc idiots whilst the BBG’s just mop up all the nice, easy and highly profitable brand traffic on some networks.

It’d be good to hear networks justify why some brand bidders continue to be given brands to hit when it’s patently evident they are adding little value and the generic PPC guys out there on the campaign are overlooked repeatedly, it’s hard not to draw conclusions that there’s a machiavellian set up going on when it’s all so closely guarded by those few that are involved!

Due to the impending trademark changes on Google coming into play on the 5th May, anyone will be able to bid on any merchant’s trademarked keywords as long as they do not feature the trademarked term in the ad anywhere, and they meet Google’s minimum bid requirements of course.

It would seem the brand bidding train is about to pull into town and some networks are already positioning themselves front and centre ready for a feeding frenzy as Brand Bidding Group (BBG) specialists, they are already hunting and spin doctoring for their 30% override for the half a dozen emails they’ll have to send out to their favoured few BBG affiliates to get the new campaigns set up.

As a result of the AdWords trademark changes affiliates (and competing merchants) will now be bidding on brand where the merchant allows, or cross bidding and sending directly to a competitor where not allowed on the merchant’s own brand, so as a merchant you’ve 6 main choices really :

1) Do it yourself in house
2) Do nothing, let competitors bid away
3) Get a PPC management company to do it
4) Open up your terms for all affiliates to bid on.
5) Let the network set up a Brand bidding group.
6) Do one or more, i.e 1 and 4, or 3 and 4, or even 3
and 5 etc.

Option 1) It would take like at least 2-30 mins to sort out,  drawback being you’d only get one slot on AdWords
Option 2) You’ll loose some traffic for sure, but on the plus side you will be able to bid on competitor trademarks
Option 3) You’ll pay a flat fixed rate fee, or percentage of spend and be able to specify adcopy/CPA targets etc. downside is that you’ll only have one slot on AdWords.
Option 4) Let all affiliates bid on your trademarks, lots of affiliates will bid on brand and many more generic terms too.
Option 5) Let the network set up a brand bidding group, a few chosen affiliates will cover your terms and often not much more, very few people will get far richer by doing not very much in general
Option 6) A wiser choice, combine several traffic drivers who’ll cover more terms and provide a wider spread of traffic.

Now already we’ve seen at least one network (buy.at) licking their lips in anticipation of being able to “strategically support” merchants in their time of need (queue the superman music), Buy.at have practiced years of covert Brand Bidding Groups run by a small pool of a favoured few affiliates, Only recently putting the odd token program out to a wider audience, as a result they now consider that previous experience as the justification to be considered THE brand bidding agency of choice.. although it’s funny how they weren’t proud enough of this strategic support to expand on it when enquiries were fielded their way in the past, they wouldn’t even confirm which closed brand bidding groups even existed! Generic PPC affiliates must surely have felt slightly undervalued as a result.

I’ve also seen an email from another network (OMG) to the same effect .. spot this extract’s oyxmoron : “Due to OMG’s experience in managing closed groups of highly skilled PPC affiliates for some of the UK’s biggest brands”  I’ll basically paraphrase the rest : “open season is just around the corner so pick us to do it quickly before competitors devour you .. we have the experience to provide brand security” AKA : “we’ve got guys lined up who can do [brand], [brand + keyword], [keyword + brand] bidding”

Brand bidding isn’t hard work to do right, despite the fact many don’t, in fact it’s the easiest thing in affiliate marketing once it’s set up it’s only a case of keeping the air-miles card topped up enough to keep paying the bills and earning the worldwide first class return tickets every month as a free bonus.

The only time a closed BBG may be more beneficial for a merchant, as far as many see it, is where adcopy has to be strictly enforced due to say strict FSA regulations or because some affiliates continually misrepresent the offer, however as the networks charge 30% to manage programs merchants should strap on the size 12 boots and nudge them to ensure total compliance from all affiliates or have the network cut them.

In a general “all affiliates welcome” bidding scenario, most affiliates will try to bid on brand as it’s high volume at a good ROI, less time consuming to set up, refine and manage than generic bidding, BUT as it’s so competitive many will expand the number and scope of terms they are bidding on and move outwards to the sweeter long phrase terms which may get less traffic as separate adgroups but convert at a good ROI so overall the merchant gets more value for their money on all affiliates welcome policy, more so than a closed BBG as many excluded affiliates won’t bother pushing closed group PPC merchants as the train of thought is “if I’m not worthy of being in the closed BBG then forget being a generic chump”.

Personally I think that’s an understandable point of view, why should I or any affiliate not be allowed/ deemed worthy to bid on Sky TV for example in a closed group, being able to only do generic PPC if I do want to push them even when one can clearly see that many of the guys in the brand groups literally just doing brand terms alone and a few doing brand plus keyword variations and yet even fewer bothering to cover misspells .. it sucks when BBG’s are full of lazy affs adding zero value and it’s certainly not in the interest of the merchant but many see their networks as being the guiding hand of experience etc. so fall for the line and end up with a BBG consisting of apathetic affiliates with a sprinkling of the very few that do take the time to add value with more wider ranging terms.

Even though we manage PPC for clients I’d personally say that it’s best for most merchants to firstly employ an open affiliate policy approach in their marketing mix in response to the trademark changes ahead as you’ll get more affiliates bidding on a wider range of terms pushing more than just your brand and main products, you’ll not only cover the same first page slots as a closed brand bidding group would but many more generic and hybrid ones that most brand group participants can’t be bothered to chase as they’ve moved on to the next merchant’s 5 - 20 keyword deep brand group or are busy having helicopter lessons/ cleaning the cobwebs off the F430 or planning where the maze and carp ponds are going in their new mansion’s garden.

The only comfort for non BBG PPC affiliates sick of seeing the few get richer by doing minimal work is that those in BBG’s are now going to get their bids squeezed by ads from competitors, so it’ll be interesting to see just how many throw the towel in on campaigns which get difficult to generate the high ROI’s they have been making..  what they’ll get with one hand they’ll be spanked with the other ..  so hopefully they’ll have to actually work harder like everyone else, to make the tens and hundreds of thousands of pounds per month they have been doing for the last few years!

Google say that for trademark complaints after the 4th April 2008 they will no longer review a term corresponding to the trademarked term as a keyword trigger, and from May the 5th 2008 all keywords that were disabled as a result of trademark investigations will no longer be restricted in the UK and Ireland.

It would appear that they are only going to enforce trademark restrictions in relation to the adcopy alone, all keywords will be allowed to run and trigger an ad (subject to the usual Quality Score and minimum bid requirements etc.)  as long as that ad does not contain a trademarked term with a restriction in place on Google.

Their key motivator according to them is “A key to achieving this goal with our ads is providing relevant choices and giving users the opportunity to determine which ads they find most relevant.”  however one can’t help but think that as trademark terms are invariably high traffic brand or product terms that this is solely a revenue based decision as no doubt there will be legal cases popping up challenging this shortly.

This policy revision only applies to the UK and Ireland and is a bit of a surprise, it will mean that previously off limit trademarked terms are now wide open as long as the adcopy doesn’t mention the trademarked term, many affiliates  are going to have unrestricted bidding opportunities on trademarked terms now, Merchants are left holding a double edged sword as they can now bid on competitor trademark terms BUT their competitors can now bid on theirs too.

Interesting days ahead for affiliates, merchants, agencies and networks as the trademark space will now be a bubbling mass of rabid activity from all angles for many brands. 

 The agency update email we received explained Google’s point of view well, below are relevant extracts from it :

 ”I want to make it clear that this is a revision that only affects keyword bidding. Advertisers and Agencies are accustomed to the fact that users typing in their trademarked term as part of a two, three or four word search will have always resulted in competitor ads running.For example, someone typing in ‘x,y,z credit cards’ in the search box will see lots of different, relevant credit card ads because broad matching will bring up ads for those advertisers bidding against the keywords ‘credit card’. So, we hope this will be a familiar step for agencies and advertisers.

However, despite this trademarked keyword change, our strict ads text policy remains unchanged: unauthorised advertisers will not be able to use a monitored trademarked term in their ad text. So, ads of trademark owners are still likely to have the edge over those of non-trademark owners because these ads can use the trademark terms in the ad text: they are likely to have higher click through rates; and therefore more likely to achieve a better position in the sponsored links.

This change brings the UK and Ireland into line with the US and Canada which has been running this policy since 2004. A good proportion of users in the US and Canada have been clicking on competitor ads even when searching against trademarked terms, suggesting that they find the greater number of ads relevant and helpful when researching or making a purchase.”

Read more about how you may be affected by the AdWords Trademark Policy Revision

When you think about how hard life is for many people on AdWords there’s never been a better time of late for the cheaper Pay Per Click search engines to seize the oppotuinity and soak up the adspend that used to be all going via Google and invest in their systems etc. Yet in reality two of the superstars of yesteryear are still snoozing in the sun like fat lazy labradors, seemingly taking anyone as a publisher and looking the other way until an advertiser complains, then only usually blocking the offending publisher for that one advertiser.

I took a look at one of our last running Miva campaigns yesterday and found we’d had 1,300 clicks over a 7 day period on a keyword which isn’t even the main term for the sector, it exceeded the main term by a factor of three and was at a far higher cost per click than all others in the campaign, so it appears it has been targeted by one or more sites (probably just one by the looks of it) based on it’s higher CPC, of those extra 1,300 clicks over normal we had around 25 extra on site clicks so made a loss on the traffic received so it seems the traffic isn’t so squeaky clean and all that interested in what they supposedly clicked on.

It would be nice to know in our admin panel exactly which keywords had converted to an action for us but seeing as Miva think conversion tracking isn’t worth offering we can’t see that information in Miva, it’s the same with Mirago too, zero conversion tracking options, and this is from two of the longest established players in the PPC game.

Miva’s advert on AdWords says “Compare MIVA’s Bid Prices To Other Networks Here & Get a £25 Ad Credit” it made me laugh, the bid prices are so low because traffic quality is mostly dire, a 20p click on Miva yields a one in five to ten on site action in our experience when compared to Yahoo or Google so actually costs more like £1.00 to £2.00 per genuinely interested user click.

Calculating the real click value got me thinking back to the heady days when getting a PPC feed was a ticket to print money (legitimately), an Overture (now Yahoo) feed was the fabled land of the £15+ Loan and £20+ Mortgage traffic clicks so getting one wasn’t easy as they understood that quality was key to keeping bids high, so it was Espotting (now Miva) that was the choice of many as it had less stringent acceptance criteria, after that it was Mirago as that was the least choosy of all, it seems they decided  that short term gain rather than a long term viable business plan was the way forward, hence the steady decline of bid prices to bargain basement levels.

In the space of a couple of short years both Miva and Mirago have seriously dropped the ball, and it didn’t even bounce, (Yahoo to a degree too but they at least, are working very hard to rectify matters) it just made a phhhrrrrt sound as it deflated!, Now don’t get me wrong, both Miva & Mirago have some great staff, very polite, nice people who are a pleasure to deal with but their product quality and functionality just isn’t that good anymore from what I’ve seen of it and now they appear to be the playground of the click pimp and it seems the share price would reflect this quality trend too : 

We don’t run much with either Miva or Mirago anymore as a result of the traffic quality so that which we do is only incidental traffic of little consequence in the grand scheme of things, having had a fair few refunds for very poor traffic on an ongoing basis it’s a case of picking the right keywords and the right positions (usually not 1,2 or sometimes even 3) and regularly review traffic and exclude irrelevant and incentivised sources by asking them to block sites with little relevancy or high traffic and low on site action etc.

Virtually everything you can advertise on lately has conversion tracking, it’s a no brainer that if you spend your cash you want to see what happens with it and as some of you will no doubt have seen tracking the pixels flying by you’ll know that even the dirtiest hobbit of them all, AdWare, sometimes offers conversion tracking, Yet here’s Miva and Mirago still featureless on that score so I’d love to hear even just one valid reason why Miva & Mirago do not have conversion tracking available, and whilst we are on about essential features that are missing Miva doesn’t even have daily budget control never mind conversion tracking, now how dire is that for an 8 year old Pay per click platform!? it’s evolved very little in the 3,000 or so days since it was born !

Bearing in mind every other serious player in the PPC industry offers conversion tracking, just how long can Miva and Mirago carry on shovelling advertisers ad spend down their black hole without showing conversion data, in fact even AdBrite (I wouldn’t recommend them either though unless you are prepared to spend lots of time blocking sites) has conversion tracking AND on top of that they even shows you the source sites where your ads appear yet neither Miva or Mirago daren’t even show the keyword conversion data, it seems they are totally unwilling to provide this supremely important metric so I guess it (and the image below) illustrates in glorious technicolor just what faith they have in their traffic quality :

They both need to up their game and actively try to weed out the click pimps, yet Miva’s click fraud prevention is simply an IP block list provided by Quova and double ad click discounting and their traffic team relies on nothing more sophisticated than excel for analysing traffic !  Our in house developer could create a robust tracking system for a platform like these in no time yet here we are 8 years along for Miva and 9 years for Mirago and still no conversion tracking,  no doubt they are both just holding on with their well bitten nails for someone to come and buy them up before they are advertiserless.

Well at least their bid prices do look great but there’s a reason for how low they are, basically a click on either isn’t worth the same as a click on any other serious PPC engine that’s why the keyword : ”mortgage” is only £0.21p a click for position one today whilst on Yahoo it’s probably £5-7 a click and even more on Google.

Maybe I’ve just been unlucky in the sectors I’ve worked in with Miva and Mirago although to be fair they have been the main ones, One PPC client we took over was blowing £100 per sale on Miva, in the end it was so much hassle to chase it so we binned Miva as it just wasn’t worth it, especially as we took his CPA on google down from £7.50 to below £5 and trebbled the adspend!

Has anyone had success of any decent size with Miva and or Mirago of late ? surely some advertisers must do, if only away from the main sectors, although many merchants just throw it into the general mix and take a  ”cash in against overall profit out” of all PPC I guess so may be sat there totally unaware of just how poor it may be performing for them.

I did a search for Marks and Spencer’s this morning and noticed that there was a new google  “search Marksandspencer.com” button there so I popped “Flowers” in there and clicked search.

The results were displayed on Google as usual but it had done a site search on Marks and Spencers for me, which is fine from a user point of view, it saved me having to to to Marks and Spencers and then search for flowers.

From a webmaster point of view this is bad news though and will result in traffic loss in my opinion as the user hits Google with your brand / site in mind and is then given another chance to click a competing advert or brand and go elsewhere although on the plus side perhaps conversion will be increased as users may find what they seek on your site more easily (if Google has been able to index it properly), I guess only time will tell for sure.

Normally after doing a search for M&S I’d have clicked the link for their site and gone there when the results were presented, and being exposed to their site and offers etc. and M&S would have every opportunity to market their wares to me but with this embedded site search I didn’t, I entered Flowers and clicked search, I was then exposed to three headline AdWords ads and the full right hand side for other sites selling flowers.

All those nice ads are being displayed when the user would most likely be on the Marks and Spencer site itself if the embedded site search option wasn’t there to use, so Google  are benefiting from brand traffic by showing ads, nice step for them, I can imagine there being millions of extra page views each month if this becomes a permanent feature.

If you look at AdWords listing number 3 you’ll see it’s Marks and Spencer flowers, I wonder how many people would click that listing, even if only 10% then Google has just monetised traffic that would have been free for M&S if the search box wasn’t there.

It’s a positive step for other advertisers as there will be more traffic looking for specific products, albeit on someone else’s site initially, but it’s at a cost to the site owner who’s had the embedded search button used on them, in lost traffic and sales on their organic brand and URL traffic.

I can’t say as I’m a fan of this new feature, AdWords is turning into a very brand sensitive arena and here are Google opening up sites brand and URL traffic so they can monetise it and others can benefit in traffic and sales whilst the inital brand searched can lose out.

I wouldn’t object if there were no AdWords and it was purely a site search service but due to Ads being shown on the results this isn’t a win-win situation for those “lucky” enough to get a listing with a site search box under it.

In relation to PPC Search Engines the word “incentivised” is about on par with a class one expletive and in most scenarios in the pay per click arena getting someone to do something by incentivising them to act is generally seen as bad practice so I was a little surprised when MSN launched BigSnapSearch.com as an eight week promotion where you are incentivised to search and could win prizes as a result.

The BigSnapSearch.com site is basically MSN Live Search with Dick and Dom pointing out you could win one of many prizes by searching, From a user point of view I must say it’s a good visual concept, you perform a search as normal and if two cards that appear in the header match you win that prize, simple and fast But I’m not convinced it’s helping anyone achieve anything except brand recognition for the prize sponsors who seem to be Virgin as the daily prizes are 23 Virgin Experience Days from £49 to £500 value , 1 £500 Virgin Voucher and from March the 3rd one player will win a Necker Island trip for two, as of today at 1600 there are 1189 prizes left.

Now personally I’m no fan of incentivised search if I’m paying the bills or managing PPC on behalf of a client as traffic tends to be of a lower standard than that of uninfluenced origin however I think this is one of the most visually engaging versions of as site incentivising traffic to carry out a search that I’ve seen, and by the looks of it the main aim of MSN with this promotion is to get people to Add Live Search to their machines.

I guess the plus point is that this may help MSN acquire a slice more market share but the downside could be at the experience of existing PPC advertisers who’s click through ratios may slide as a result of millions of untargeted, incentivised searches where the user is simply entering any random search term to see if they can get two matching cards.

The promotion’s result may be that more people try Live Search which can only be a good thing for those sick at being at the mercy of AdWords so ultimately anything that makes any headway into loosening Google’s stranglehold on the paid search front is most welcome but existing MSN advertisers may be wondering what’s going for a couple of months if this BigSnapSearch promotion generates high volume searches with low click through ratios or worse such as untargeted traffic clicking on ads out of vague curiosity after typing in a random search phrase to try to win something rather than clicking on a search result after performing a search due to a genuine need as would be the normal paid search scenario.

Good luck to MSN but I hope it’s not at the expense of existing advertisers.

Over the last couple of days a few AdWords advertisers woke from their dream filled slumber to find an email informing them about a new feature beta trial they’ve been selected to be included in called “Automatic Matching” aka “Ultra Broad Match” and whilst I hope it isn’t going to be as bad as Ants being matched to Elephants it doesn’t read too well so who knows what will happen bearing in mind just how “broad” broad match can be.

Extract from the email Google sent  :

“I’m excited to tell you that you have been selected to participate in a beta for our new Automatic matching feature which will be starting on February 28th.

Automatic matching automatically extends your campaign’s reach by using surplus budget to serve your ads on relevant search queries that are not already triggered by your keyword lists. By analyzing the structure and content of your website and AdWords campaigns, we deliver more impressions and clicks while maintaining your current CTRs and CPCs.

For example, If you sold Adidas shoes on your website, Automatic matching would automatically crawl your landing page and target your campaigns to queries such as: “shoes” “Adidas” “athletic”, etc., and less obvious ones such as “slippers” that our system has determined will benefit you and likely lead to a conversion on your site.

Be assured that automatic matching will try to never exceed your budget. If you’re already meeting your daily budgets, automatic matching will have a minimal effect on your account.”

Now call me a cynic when it comes to Google these days but it does appear to be a thinly veiled excuse to suck the bones clean of any campaign with spare budget towards the end of the day, and I’m afraid that after seeing campaigns that have been”optimised” by Google’s own AdWords optimisation staff I have little faith in any system they may have developed that will benefit me and likely lead to a conversion on my site after spidering my landing page and then going broader on the traffic terms, I just don’t see it adding value personally unless your keyword selection is dire in the first place.

All you hear from Google are words like relevant and targeted and how having super targeted adgroups on relevant adcopy to relevant targeted landing pages is rewarded with a better Quality Score and now they are saying they are going to crawl your landing pages to “target” your campaigns yet the example they give is like a sniper swapping his specialist rifle and scope for a shotgun and sunglasses i.e from “Adidas shoes” to just “shoes ” or “slippers” or the even more scary “athletic” !!

I like the phrasing of the email, for one thing when Google gets “excited” you know someone somewhere is going to be paying more, secondly they are extending your campaigns reach by using “surplus” budget, now excuse me but surplus budget is there as a result of people having budgets set far higher than the level of traffic they can find but being prepared to spend that much IF Google could supply traffic that converts the same as the existing traffic does, some people have campaigns set at thousands of dollars per day when they only manage to get a few hundred dollars worth of targeted traffic so now Google is looking to fill that “surplus” inventory with automatic matching or ultra broad match traffic, which may well be far less targeted than the keywords that are already in the adgroup, i.e from “Adidas shoes” to just “shoes” or “slippers” ! In my opinion this is a step away from targeted, it’s going backwards and will result in more irrelevant traffic and whilst I’m sure there will be the odd winning keyword found by it I think this move smacks of desperation to milk more revenue out of those who aren’t quite on the ball.

To my mind this could be classed almost on par with click fraud as you THINK you are bidding on RELEVANT terms yet you could be showing for terms that will not convert even though Google consider that they are technically relevant as a result of being related to the root term, Sure if you sell Adidas shoes then it is classed as a shoe but that may well be way too broad to be paying for traffic on for you and don’t even get me started on “slipper” or worse still “athletic” .. this is just crazy and that’s the BEST example they could think of giving !?, Oh and whilst we are on the subject of crazy, according to webmaster world’s resident Google representitive the automatic matching is going to be opt out.. not opt in.. so there are going to be some very loud screams from people with huge budgets set and miss the email telling them it’s going live or fail to understand the implications of it.

On a plus note they say that the automatic matching terms you are getting clicks on will be visible if you run a search query report and this will help in adding extra keywords to bid on and negatives to exclude traffic but unless the search query report is upgraded to include all the terms traffic has been sent on then it’s still going to be like fumbling in the dark at times as you’ll get a report with lots of keywords then a cell saying “382 other unique phrases” which is just plain annoying, that could be 382 prospective negatives I need to add.

Expanded broad match was bad, i.e showing for “vibrating tooth brush” and “vibrating alarm clock” when bidding on the term vibrator on broad match, OK yes technically they all vibrate but how different and irrelevant to each other from a sales point of view could they be !? there is no way anyone searching for any one of the three would end up buying one of the others so it’s a three way triangle of irrelevant relevancy so Ultra broad match will be something even “better” than expanded broad match no doubt.

It’s early days and much is still speculation so it could turn out to be a valid and welcome addition to the AdWords armoury but on first impression after donning my special agent cereal pack freebie Google email decryption glasses I’d say you better be ready to opt out of it when it goes live for the masses, or at the very least bring those daily budgets right down to more realistic levels so as not to get caught out.

One thing I find interesting is merchant keyword and brand bidding megalomania but then that merchant goes on to bid on other merchants brand keywords and URL assets in their own pay per click activity, it’s a bit like having your cake and eating someone else’s too !

Take Next.co.uk for instance, the a4uforum.com Best New Merchant of 2007no less, they have a strong brand and are uber retentive about their brand assets and keywords being bid upon in any PPC listings yet imagine my surprise (hmm OK.. I didn’t quite stare open mouthed, it was more of a “ha ha ha the cheeky chimps”) when I found them showing on Marks and Spencer Keywords and sending that traffic directly to their own Next.co.uk index page.

OK stepping back for a moment before sharpening the knife, Next could be unaware this is happening, after all I’m sure their agency will be managing paid search for them so their involvement will be less than an in house managed account would be however I really can’t believe that the subject of competitor brand terms and their URLs would not have been covered in great detail and specific permission obtained for this activity  before bidding on them started, it would be highly unprofessional and totally irresponsible for an agency to bid like this for a client without going over it in detail first and getting the client’s clearly worded permission to bid on competitor brand terms and URLs.

You may be thinking that all is fair in love, war and PPC but can restrictive merchants like Next genuinely be doing this and expect to maintain integrity in the eyes of affiliates ? OK being objective for a moment .. let’s be realistic about it, This is not the same as bidding on a merchant’s terms and sending direct to that merchant and reaping the benefits of easy brand money like a rogue PPC affiliate, it’s worse than that in affiliate eyes !

It’s seen as worse because it’s a merchant doing another merchant whilst making it clear they don’t even want to pay affiliates for their own brand traffic and by restricting activity on their own brand and related keywords they have visibly demonstrated that they know the value of their own brand and assets and in view of that they shouldn’t be actively bidding on other merchant’s brand assets especially if they strive to project the very professional squeaky clean corporate image that Next try to, as one can reasonably expect the brand keywords and URLs etc. to matter as much to their respective owners as Next’s own do to them !  

The terms I spotted Next showing on are very tightly targeted terms and not some accidental broad or phrase match incident :

The active destination URL was http://clickserve.uk.dartsearch.net/link/click?lid=43000000024046628 

Now of course we know many merchants bid on other merchant’s and website owners traffic terms, cross bidding is rife in many sectors but you’d think that the adage of people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones would spring to mind but for Next.co.uk it clearly hasn’t, they appear happy to not only brand bid but to specifcally target Marks and Spencer’s URL traffic.

On a separate “ways others exploit your brand” point you’ll notice the Ask.com advert showing on M&S terms too, I did blog about them a while back, they seem to be hitting the low hanging fruit and bidding on brands and URLs where they can and send traffic back to their page of Google listings where they hit a keyword at a higher cost than the keyword they just bought in, it’s just basic search arbitrage, and that’s to be expected of them, after all Ask.com is nothing more than an MFA (Made For Adsense) site now from what I can see of it. But you’d think a brand as restrictive as Next wouldn’t be doing cross brand bidding but then again it’s 2008, traffic isn’t easy to get as cheaply and some merchants are becoming less fussy than any rogue affiliate in an effort to get and/or keep traffic and sales so maybe we’ll see more of this merchant cross brand bidding ahead.

Can those restrictive merchants who are cross brand bidding on other merchant’s restricted brand terms really wave the big stick to affiliates and keep a straight face whilst telling them it’s unacceptable to bid on restricted brand terms and expect affiliates to respect this request ?

A few religious quotes seem appropriate for those that dwell in a house of glass :

Christian “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7.12)
Hindu : “Do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you.” (Mahabharata 5.1517)
Jewish : “What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor.” (Talmud, Shabbat 31a; Tobit 4:15)

Do you think it’s acceptable for a restrictive merchant to bid on other merchant’s brands and URLs ? in fact is any cross brand bidding acceptable and just where would you draw the line at ?

Pay Per Click sometimes feels like one of those Sunday afternoon war films where the enemy has moved troops up in the night and pushed through, inflicting massive casualties and the good guys retreat to regroup and plan the next attack to take back lost ground.

The Quality Score Offensive was AdWords Latest push and take note that it won’t be the last, if you haven’t figured it out yet it’s time to get used to the fact that things are going to change on a regular basis and affiliates are going to be getting continually squeezed harder and harder so they need to continually evolve and diversify their traffic acquisition strategy.

The Quality Score (QS) is one of those situations what Google say publicly isn’t quite what happens in practice most of the time to many of the affiliates I’ve spoken too, let’s look at their official line here :

The components of Quality Score vary depending on whether it’s calculating minimum bid or ad position:

“Quality Score for minimum bid is determined by a keyword’s clickthrough rate (CTR) on Google, the relevance of the keyword to its ad group, your landing page quality, your account’s historical performance, and other relevance factors.”

Sounds easy enough to follow, the minimum bid QS (i.e what AdWords wants minimum to show your ad on the keyword) is based on CTR, keyword to adgroup relevance (to make you do small and tightly targeted campaigns), landing page quality, historical performance and other mysterious factors (Google’s share price or price earnings ratio perhaps ?)

Snapshot butchered from one of my affected campaigns :

Now I’m a natural born cynic and I view every “it’s for the benefit of our users” claim with a healthy dose of scepticism so bearing in mind the landing page for this campaign is on a site with everything that complies with what Google seems to want i.e a site-map, privacy policy, about us, many specific product pages, T&C’s, and plenty of content directly related to the main keywords above so it leaves little reasoning for the minimum bid demands on the keywords above, which have increased between around 5 to 10 times their current bids.

I find it hard to see a genuine case as to why the keywords above with 21% to 29% CTR’s and 30% to 59.54% Conversion ratios (you tell me if the traffic is relevant enough at that !?!) are now £5.00 per click whilst it’s left untouched many other less relevant keywords with far lower CTR and Conversion figures, which aren’t as targeted to the landing page content as the ones above which are all variations of a three word phrase.

It appears to be a case of the most relevant keywords to the adcopy (hence 21%+ CTR) and relevant to the landing page (hence 30%+ conversion ratio) have been penalised as having the lowest overall QS yet the keywords that have been left untouched don’t feature even on the landing page in full in many cases as they are wider variations of the main phrases above.

One could construe that AdWords has, on this occasion, hit the highest performing keywords which convert the best of all in an effort to force more money per click out of us, whilst leaving the lower yielding keywords alone as there’s no money in it for them compared to the main ones.

I know how to sort this out and get it back on track but this instance really annoyed me as all the boxes are ticked if normal rules apply and it’s adding value in that it’s obviously filling the need of the user or it wouldn’t be converting so well, so I find how Google are doing this random, arbitrary QS trawl so very annoying and I genuinely can’t see how they can keep this thinly veiled bid jacking operation as a “QUALITY” score excuse for much longer when they are hitting sites that are converting seriously well and are built with their landing page and site quality guidelines in mind.

Anyone else had similar experiences where the highest performing keywords with quality CTR and conversion ratios like above have been slapped yet the less relevant lower performing ones are left to run ?

Though I’ve been a way on a new year business opportunities tour of the far east I have been keeping my stubby yet well manicured fingers on the pulse of the affiliate marketing scene and it would appear there are some merchants who think affiliate marketing should be more of a charity act than a mutually beneficial business relationship, hence my pet name “Chaffiliate Marketing” for the new wave of “we don’t want to pay you to push some of the products in our data feed” school of charity affiliate marketing.

It’s bad enough that some commissions have been reduced to figures that bear more resemblance to ideal blood sugar levels than they do to payment for work done but now we have merchants trying to get away with paying nothing for sales and I’m afraid that I for one do not believe in pushing a product where we earn nothing yet the merchant earns a profit from our traffic, now before a few of you big content or comparison guys chime up and argue with me yes I can see a scenario where you have a user base you value highly that you will show them what they seek even if it earns you nothing, in the hope that they will in turn value your site enough to return and at some future date do an action which does earn you some money, so yes there can be a very, very small valid argument for showing everything you can even if it earns you nothing sometimes.

BUT.. and it’s a bigger BUT than Eddie Murphy’s was as Rasputia in Norbit !! This still doesn’t excuse these merchants from making out they can’t afford to pay a commission on a product where other merchants can and expecting us to like it and push it happily.

Are we really expected to believe that a company turning over as much as Dixons can’t pay even a few percent commission on a product where a smaller merchant with much less buying power still can ? Also if sold via the web and there is zero commission paid, how the hell can there be any profit for them in store on the same item with heating, higher staff ratio’s and rent, compared to a warehouse stock item sale via the web ?

It simply doesn’t add up, it’s not like the parent group DSG had a bad year in the UK compared to the one before (source) :

 “The electronics group turned in full year revenues of £7.9bn for the year to 28 April, up 14 per cent on the year. Pre-tax profits were £114.1m, down on the previous year’s £295.9m. The profit figure was dented by a series of costs, particularly a write down on its Unieuro operation in Italy and the costs of overhauling its PC City operation in France.

The UK computing operation - ie PC World - turned over £1.9bn, up six per cent on the year, and turned in underlying profits of £124.8m, down slightly on the previous year’s £129.4m.

Seems that whilst the 07-08 year isn’t going so well (Source) “This weaker trading, together with a more cautious outlook for the balance of the year, means that we now expect full year profits before tax to be some £40m to £50m lower than current expectations.”

It’s not all bad news of course, unsurprisingly : “Online sales through Dixons.co.uk and FotoVista did much better - up 31 per cent.”

It doesn’t take a MENSA member to make a swift guess as to where it looks like they are looking to recoup some of that £5.4 million UK turnover lost on the year before to make up the overall DSG profit, Some marketing graduate must chimed up and said “why are we paying affiliates for all the sales they make when our trade is 31% up, were are obviously a megabrand so lets only pay them as little as we can where we make 10% profit or more margin. Dixons made £114 million in the last full business year yet are expecting affiliates to send traffic and make zero on some items.

I wonder how many of Dixons suppliers sell them stock for zero profit, how many of the component suppliers sell their wares to those Dixons suppliers for zero profit, how many commodities suppliers sell the steel, plastics, glass, wire, rubber, chemicals etc. to those component suppliers and how many transport companies that ship items through each part of the supply chain do it for free.

I’m guessing not one of them at any step of the way, anyone with a IQ above 75 would agree that business has to be mutually beneficial to be a longterm relationship but it seems in all this it’s only the affiliate that’s expected to make zero profit for his part … which leaves the question to be answered :

Are you dumb enough to sell products for merchants like Dixons for free ?

I sincerely hope not, as once it this Chaffiliate Marketing attitude gains momentum it’ll be a hard job to stop it and you can bet the ones that were dumb enough will be the ones screaming loudest so it’s up to us to put our feet down firm and direct traffic away from merchants even dipping the toe in the 0% commission pool.