Google will only display one ad per search query for advertisers sharing the same top-level domain in the display URL. This means that if you're an affiliate advertiser, your ad may not show for a query because another affiliate or the website that runs the affiliate program also has ads using the same (or a similar) domain in the display URL. Also, your site should not mirror (be similar or nearly identical in appearance to) your parent company's or another advertiser's site.
@arthro - yes you can use the affiliate link @vstar - the workaround for this is to buy a domain name and use that in the display URL and set the destination at the keyword level. On the index.html page of the domain, set a redirect to the affiliates home page. It will pass review and you don't have to worry about the 1 ad per domain rule.
Yup, right you are. Affiliate marketers use Adwords all the time...but you have to be careful. You might get slapped around by Google. Geez...Google takes itself too seriously.
to get around the google slap you can always buy some random domain and make subdomains for every affiliate campaign you setup.
to survive with adwords, you must buy your own domain name (i heard adwords doesn;t allow you to use affiliate link as landing page anymore, not sure how far it is tru). since a good QS is mandatory for low CPC, unless you buy your own doamin name and optimize for your keywords, you are not getting a good QS. it is very unlike that a marchant site will be proerply optimized for adwords which will give you higher QS. and since you are gonna be buying your own domain to optimize for higher QS, yo can for sure use affiliate links. affiliates are a big source of revenue for adwords and google realizes that
sultanofseo You CAN use affiliate links as a destination url, but you can get higher QS using your own landing pages.
it really depends on the affiliate site you are marketing. If you are affiliate marketing for amazon, their QS will be greater than any new domain you buy. At least for the 1st 3 months until your account and domain build up QS over time. The main problem with amazon marketing is that other affilaites are bidding for the KW which causes a bidding war to display the amazon.com in the display URL, inflating the cost of the bid. If you want to use the affiliate link here are the steps 1. buy a domain 2. use the domain as the display url for the text ad 3. use the affiliate link as the destination URL at the keyword level. 4. set the domain 401 redirect to the affiliates home page 5. bid appropriately
robertpriolo I am talking about Affiliate networks, like Clickbank & CJ. For products from there, you should have your own landing page. That's a way to pre-sell the product, and also there won't be any display url competition in Adwords. Products from Amazon & Ebay, that's a different story...