Hello All, I could really do with a second (or third and fourth!) opinion about the performance of my Adwords account that I cannot understand. I have an established account that has been running very stable CTR, QS and conversions for years. Within this account I have a campaign targetted very tightly to my own branded term. As to be expected, bidding on my brand has always been extremely good for me with expectedly stratospheric CTR, conversion rates and massive ROI. This situation changed in May 2012. Click volumes on my branded campaign were almost exactly the same as May 2011, but CPC was slightly lower, overall conversion rate down by around 1.5% and as a result bottom line conversion value reduced by thousands. This has been the case month on month since May. However, for our non-branded campaign statistics, although having dipped slightly, conversion volumes and ROI have remained fairly similar in a year on year comparison. Organic conversion statistics by comparison have grown very healthily throughout this year, on both branded and non branded keywords. The problem area then appears to be affecting branded conversions in Adwords. Some things have changed in the environment since May, such as modifications to Adwords' ad-rotation and enhanced matching of course.... we also started an affiliate programme. My big concern is that affiliate traffic is cannibalizing our branded campaign in Adwords, resulting in a significant increase in costs (PPC + affiliate commisions) and a subsequent overall decrease in both conversions and ROI. Our affiliate campaign explicitly advises that while we allow PPC traffic and DTM we do not accept brand bidding of any kind. My feeling is that someone is not playing fair (surprise surprise that this happens in the online world), but I cannot see anything unnatural. I have spoken to our affiliate network who assure me that the campaign is going really well and that the affiliates are legitimate (of course). I've also carried out lots of research online to explain this scenario. I've also run lots of manual searches at different times of the day through a VPN to spoof my location to various points in the UK etc. but I have never seen anyone doing anything unusual. I was wondering if anyone has had a similar experience from May 2012 onwards and what conclusions you might draw? Has anyone experienced something similar to this at the launch of an affiliate program and if so what steps were taken to resolve it? Of course we are in "interesting times" right now, but my gut feel is that conversion volumes would be down across the board in all channels rather than just branded PPC in Google as a result if this were the case: up to now our business model has been pretty recession proof with good growth in Adwords throughout... until literally overnight in May 2012. Any insights would be greatly appreciated.
It sounds like you had a competitor open up. I can't tell from your description, but just because you have a branded keyword doesn't mean that customers won't consider other brands as well. Do you sell ads on your site that might be sucking traffic away from you? wiz
Hi Wiz. Thanks for your response. I don't believe it's a competitor and I also do not sell ads on the site: it's a straight e-commerce site.
As per the description, what i understand is your campaign performance was good so far and affected once you started an affiliate programme. As per Google norms, Google do not support to websites that are affiliate. Also, Google give less preference to affiliate websites. I think the reason is your affiliate program.
Prob. is the affiliate program. Just having one doesn't hurt you, but affiliates advertising on branded terms could be. A simple search for your brand name (after clearing cache and cookies of course) should show you if anyone else is advertising. Don't do this often as it can hurt your QS, but it's worth checking once. On a diff. note, have any other businesses opened up with similar names?