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!