Comments on: ShareASale’s PPC Policy

By: Brad Waller

Brad Waller — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 18:53:28 +0000

Can there be more than one Mark Welch!?!

By: Mark Welch

Mark Welch — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:20:09 +0000

I see a “comment” above (June 23rd, 2008 at 5:05 pm), which lists my name as the author, but I did not write it, and would not have written something like this in June 2008.

By: Angel Djambazov

Angel Djambazov — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 18:40:06 +0000

SAS large brands include:

CSN Stores

Jones Soda

Washington Redskins

Chinese Laundry

Land of Nod

Life Lock

among many others. I just think the perception that they don't have big brands is false and partially based on Brian's unassuming manner.

By: A Borg

A Borg — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 00:24:24 +0000

I think assigning a fixed 3 strikes you're out rule is a bad idea. Every affiliate is different. Some manage many many advertisers and a huge number of keywords. The number of strikes allowed should be in proportion to that. If you have 10 advertisers you work for and you commit 3 strikes it's probably malice. It you have 1000 advertisers and manage thousands of keywords for each, 3 strikes probably is an innocent oversight. I think the net effect is that this will scare away the big search affiliates and leave just the small fry. You don't want to invest time and effort only to see your account closed for a few honest mistakes which represent 0.001% of your efforts.

By: Evan W.

Evan W. — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:09:01 +0000

Mark, thats not entirely true. SAS does have some large brands…

By: Mark Welch

Mark Welch — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:05:16 +0000

Great move by SAS – the only problem is that they do not represent mainstream advertisers – their advertisers are the small guys with less established brands (aka, minimal trademark volume) so this policy is great but doesn't really shake anything up.

The truth is that TM bidders that do so without regard to advertiser services agreements should get $0, not some portion.

Also, if they continue to breach the contract they should be kicked off the network.

Mark

By: Pat Grady

Pat Grady — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 08:51:51 +0000

SAS is leading the industry again!

Trademark poaching cockroaches, your days are numbered, SAS is making some bug spray available to their merchants.

The power a network has, in aggregate policing, has largely gone to waste in most networks where they lack the ethics and willpower to do the right thing for their partners, both merchants and affiliates.

I'm so very thrilled that SAS is different than most.

By: Evan W.

Evan W. — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:55:45 +0000

Very forward thinking and proactive policy to establish. Affiliates need to be clear from the start of working with a new merchant on the rules of PPC bidding on trademark terms. Some merchants allow this and don't have an issue with it. Personally I think more merchants should allow more leeway to give affiliates a greater chance to succeed with PPC. Although their own PPC efforts might suffer a bit, PPC ROI shouldn’t be affect too much if they know what they're doing. But as always its a corporate decision. I think CJ and Linkshare should seriously look at this move and do something similar.