Affiliate Marketing Blog: Dodgy Affiliates Out There: PPC On Iwoot

Sunday, 30 December 2007

Dodgy Affiliates Out There: PPC On Iwoot

There are some fecking dodgy affiliates out there.

One thing that annoys me is that affiliates bid on keywords with merchants but know they're not good enough to write compelling adcopy to beat the merchant or other affiliates so they have to resort to buying a domain name for the display url and then linking straight to the merchant with the affili link - they don't even use a tracker on the domain to source keywords to filter or refine their campaign!

Google implemented this "one advert" per site for a reason - to allow there to be choice for consumers - not to be tricked into clicking on an advert because they thought it was a different site, only to be sent to the wrong one!

Case in point:

The link actually goes to:

http://www.awin1.com/awclick.php%3Fawinmid%3D1202%26
awinaffid%3D75157%26clickref%3Dpleo5%26p%3Dhttp://www
.iwantoneofthose.com/pleo/index.html

So Sam Applegate could you please sort your AdWords out please - and that goes for anyone else.

7 Comments:

At 31 December 2007 at 14:17 , Anonymous said...: Hi Lee

Thanks for pointing this out - I've brought it to the attention of IWOOT and their account manager here at Affiliate Window. Everyone is back in the office on Wednesday when this will be addressed.

If ever anything like this comes to light for an Affiliate Window merchant please let me know. You can reach me on julia.stent@affiliatewindow.com or MSN: jrstent@hotmail.com.

Thanks again - and happy New Year

Julia
At 31 December 2007 at 16:08 , Paul Smith said...: Hi Lee

Thanks for raising this, i'll see its sorted A.S.A.P.

I'm not keen on tactics like this as I really don't want people landing on the IWOOT website if thats not where they thought they were going to end up. As a merchant this puts us in quite a bad light to the average consumer.

Hope you had a good Christmas and Happy New Year.

Best Regards

Paul Smith
At 1 January 2008 at 21:11 , Anonymous said...: I thought this was allowed, it is well known that by showing a different display URL would stop the one ad per website rule. I have seen this LOADS over Christmas and mainly with Woolworths, Firebox and IWOOT. I suppose it means you can create whole ad campiagns with 30 minutes or so. How does direct linking work any other way when the merchant is running?

Does the display and destination have to match for affiliates to validate a sale???

Chris B
At 1 January 2008 at 22:04 , getvisible said...: "How does direct linking work any other way when the merchant is running?"

By creating more compeling adtext and more appropriate bidding.

You wouldn't bid on every keyword that the merchant is. You'd cherry pick the ones that will give you a greatest return - and that goes beyond just picking the products with the highest retail value.

It's against Google's T&C's that'w why I notified them. After that it is up to the network and merchant themselves to establish a set of rules as to how they want to be promoted via ppc.
At 1 January 2008 at 23:20 , Anonymous said...: I cant imagine many affiliates or merchants would feel as strongly as you do.

Just to clarify, I dont use this method

The merchant is intrested in the sale and for some reason the user seems to be more attracted to the ad with the wrong url display. That is an extra sale for the merchant, that they would have lost.
Googles one ad only, encourages this sort of practise.

I am not sure why paul smith said As a merchant this puts us in quite a bad light to the average consumer. the consumer would not click the ad and say oh! wrong url in ad, I am not going to buy this product.
At 2 January 2008 at 09:24 , getvisible said...: Nathan - I completely disagree.

"The merchant is intrested in the sale and for some reason the user seems to be more attracted to the ad with the wrong url display. That is an extra sale for the merchant, that they would have lost."

This extra sale would only occur if the user was TOTALLY uninterested in the merchant's ad (maybe they've had a bad experience with them before) and then suddenly became interested after they were tricked into visiting that merchant - somehow I doubt this.

"the consumer would not click the ad and say oh! wrong url in ad, I am not going to buy this product."

I think its very dangerous to say "would" when we're talking about amorphous users.

What you may be missing is that merchants should be removing as many barriers to sales as they can. Part of this process is brand management, allowing their brand to be attached to process of "tricking users" is part of this. Some consumers may think it is a mistake and still buy, some may not.

There is also another issue in the nature of the product being promoted. If the product is a general purchase, say a washing machine, then it wouldn't be uncommon for the user to click several adverts, may be the tricking affiliate first and then the merchant direct later. The affiliate would get the sale still - did they deserve it when they added nothing to the process?

A second possibility would be the "pre-order" or "in high demand" products where a user generally buys at the first merchant they see with the product in stock (given attractive prices and delivery options) - if the affiliate break's Google's T&C's then I think networks and merchants should support them in it.
At 8 January 2008 at 14:47 , Anonymous said...: hi Lee,

Well, just had a look and it appears that the same affiliate is still doing this....so once again, nothing seems to happen to stop these rogue affiliates.