This is pretty big news if it's true. Has anyone heard about this??? Someone posted a letter over at another forum that looks and sounds official to me. It was received from Adwords saying they soon will not allow CPA free trial/rebill offers and other "Unacceptable Business Practices" including fake celebrity endorsements. Note: The part in bold is not up to the affiliates. They are not saying the disclosure needs to be on the affiliate's landing page, it needs to be on the payment page, so affiliates will need to find offers that comply with Google's new rules if they want to continue to run their free trial, rebill offers. Note 2: The part in RED is good news because for a change they are giving advertisers notice and a chance to correct the problem instead of just banning accounts. What do you think?
My understanding is that G has been cracking down on rebills for a few months now. I've heard of more than one affilitat that's already had their Adwords acct banned for running Acai and the Google bizzops... My opinion? Good riddance. We all knew those forced continuity offers were shady. I for one won't feel bad if they disappear of G.
I'm neutral on the situation if you ask me. Everything seems to be a rebill now-a-days. I partly blame the consumers for not paying attention to the disclosures. One thing I do agree on is that advertisers should be held responsible for making it known that an offer is a trial. Maybe its just me but the world revolves around rebill. Brandon from AdHustler.com made a good point about the government "Cash-for-Clunkers" program being a huge rebill. Shoot over there and read up on it. None-the-less, although Google is banning it (and I'm not completely sure how the other PPC engines work it) but you still have YSM and Bing as well.
Doesn't sound like they are banning rebills all together from my understanding. In your post: Just making sure advertisers are more upfront and clear about what someone is agreeing to when starting a trial/free offer.
Sorry I wasn't clear. They are banning rebills that aren't spelled out. So IMO most affiliates today could not get by with running rebill campaigns as they stand today, because I don't think most merchants/advertisers include "an opt-in checkbox that contains the price and billing interval of the subscription service" on the purchase page. So affiliates can't run rebills with Adwords unless they get merchants to change their purchase pages to offer complete disclosure in the exact way Google wants it to be disclosed.
Wow ! Looks like someone hears me This is possibly the best change for me by G .. I always hated those "negative option" things, and would be glad to see that business model banned at all (not only from adwords) Am absolutely agree that it's a Dishonest business model .. as well as all the mail-in rebates .. Dear G, ban the mail-in rebates as well, please .. !!!! all of those are based on the same logic of ppl forgetting to cancel their subscription or forgetting to send their rebate thing or forgetting to followup with their rebate (you know, they usually "get lost" for some "unknown" reasons unless you followup).. So, basically, all this scam-tactics are based on billing ppl for something they forget ! , and in my honest oppinion i'ts nothing else but robbery in a lawful (as of yet) way
I don't know guys... ... FreeCreditReport(dot)com promo's there commercials all day long on television doing the exact same schtick - sign up for a free report - next thing you know you forgot to cancel before they stat billing you and before you know it, it's four months later and you see the $15 on your credit card bill... yeah, sure - they leave a disclosure on screen for commercials - but it's for a total of two to three seconds and in the smallest print possible - so why is that not being taken off the airwaves?... how about car sale promotions in paper and television?... what's so different about what they do? ... or how about the hundreds of FREE CD'S we used to all take advantage of through the mail through bmg (?) before mp3's only to get billed later ... absolutely no different.... this is marketing people!!! .. this is how it all works.. always has - always will. As an affiliate marketer, and one promoting an acai product as well (sorry John), i think the the people who decide to take advantage of the free trials (whatever free trials they may be) should be a little more responsible about what they are doing - as should ALL OF us with all the advertising we see today. It's really that simple... i don't know why Google decided they should all of a sudden play 'policeman' instead of search engine experts. But i guess the thing that puzzles me the most is this... and maybe somebody can steer me in a direction here because it truly is mystifying to me... ... this move is surely to cost google hundreds of millions of dollars (if not BILLIONS) in revenue ... if this is true (which it is), how do they plan to recoup that money? Is there a new system in waiting that anybody knows about? I just don't see - from a business perspective - how this move makes ANY SENSE with the amount of money they are about to lose Anybody have any insight or opinions on this? Thnx
I don't think it's gonna cost them that much of money .. i doubt that many (if any) of those advertisers will quit .. they'll simply adjust their pages and continue doing what they do they'll probably get some less revenue because of that adjustment because when they disclose - more dumbs will start understanding that it's a mouse trap and their signups will lower a bit (i don't think that's gonna big loose though). As a result, they'll probably start spending a bit less on adwords (temporarely). G pumps the money out of electric cables, and they for sure can afford this kind of experiments P.S. I soooo agree with you that G should NOT play a role of policemen .. they're just a search engine .. and i'd be much more glad to see this move coming from government, but since the government sits quiet - well.. it's better someone than noone
There are quite a few advertisers who have already started going this route. I don't think this is bad news in anyway. Just shinning the light on some of the more shady practices to get them to be more transparent. If you're an affiliate and want to run rebills on adwords just make sure the offer you're running is compliant and everyone wins.
This is good news. I've been covering this issue on my blog. First, Microsoft announces they will use their ad space to warn people about misleading internet scams and sued malvertisers. FTC revised their rules to crack down on fake blogs / ads / testimonials and requires bloggers to fully disclose. And now, Google tries to clean up their ad space. I think it's about time big businesses help to clean up the internet.