I received this email from amazon yesterday the trademark bidding wasnt intentional and i had other ppc campaigns i was doing with amazon products and were also converting well and i was wondering if anyone has ever got this email and still gotten paid because normally when amazon bans affiliates they say you will not receive futhur payment but i didnt get that and i have contacted them that the trademark bidding wasnt intentional and the keywords i was using probably triggered the keywords and they also said in the email that they warned me and i failed to comply but i didnt get any email from amazon saying i was trademark bidding so i was wondering if anyone has ever gotten in this situation before and got paid and can you let me know what you think. thanks and would be looking forward to replies.
no amazon closed my affiliate account for trademark bidding and i want to know if i would stil get paid
I feel for you. I have a HUGE question for you How did Amazon pick up the fact that your Keyword Bids had any of their trademarked terms in the bids? You cannot direct link to Amazon, so If you are using your own landing page, then any referrer sent with a click on your link on landing page, should not carry the original searchers keywords and certainly not your BID keywords. So how did they snap to the bid keywords? Best, Jan
I've noticed that certain "banned keywords" that cannot be used in Adwords Ad copy such as pharmacy keywords (antibiotics, penicillin) have been also blocked from being part of a bid keyword prostate infection antibiotics But if you run a Phrase bid on "prostate infection" then you still be impressions and clicks on prostate infection antibiotics Can anybody weigh in on this?
I am not intending to hijack the OP's thread here, its just that this issue of tracking an affiliates keyword bids could use some answers... if it is possible fore someone to track the bidkeywords from your landing page or match it up with your domain. to the OP: It would be tough to do, but I suggest working the Amazon Customer Service dept by phone, and not email with the associates dept. If you can get a number from CS, then you might get somewhere. The Operating Agreement affiliates have with Amazon has you by the gonads legally. Its in there. Same with Ebay where in last 6 months, 1000's of EPN ebay partners have been screwed royally with nothing but the email arriving one day. Chatted with one guy who was owed $15k that month and lost it all. ========================================== I went and searched up 2 services who claim to monitor trademark terms for any business for a monthly fee. Unless they are actually mining all the Google data like SEMrush or other Spy services, I can't see how they are pulling off getting the bid keywords. And that may be what the services or Amazon is actually doing, but that takes a major server farm to collect it all and filter it down. The spy services like PPC bully don't get all the adwords data... its too much, so I would guess amazon is doing it on their own. They can sure afford it Services - The features are vague about actually saying a keyword bid, only saying stop companies bidding on your terms What these tracking services can easily do is find any Ad Copy containing keywords, but how the heck could that get a bid keyword? http://www.adgooroo.com/products/trademark_monitoring.php Code (markup): ----------------------- Edit: I just went thru a video from one these services. They claim the evasion strategies of violators are geo-targeting, where you don't show the search engine ads near the trademark owners corporate HQ The other method is dayparting, only showing ads with your trademark at night. how would that evade anything? This service also claims to check all variations Amizon Amezon video http://www.adgooroo.com/videos/Trademark_Insight_Part_1/AdGooroo_Trademark_Insight_Training_Video_Part_1.html Code (markup): ==================== Bidding on keywords containing Amazon - Anyone can catch a searcher with Adwords ads if searcher is typing in a productname + Amazon. We inadvertently get a click send them on to a merchant by simply using Phrase match bids all the time. Look at the ads on this search below http://www.google.com/sponsoredlinks?q=taylormade+driver+Amazon&btnG=Search+Sponsored+Links Code (markup): Phrase bid: TaylorMade driver will give impression with search containing Amazon Phrase/Exact bid on this won't: TaylorMade driver You can find a few exact match containing Amazon, but not many. I think where this is going is Amazon will want us all to include -Amazon as a Negative keyword. They change the Agreement to say exactly that "we may asks you to refrain from...." And that sounds like the warning email the OP says he did not get. This entire trademark issue gets even screwier with manufacturers saying you cannot use the trademark. Can you imagine TaylorMade Golf clubs denying stores the right to run an Advert with TaylorMade in it. What's the difference between a newspaper ad and Adwords, Obviously TaylorMade doesn't care, but so many others do. You will get flayed it you bid on Proactiv acne treatment and try to send them to the Proactiv offer as an affiliate. They kick you out And of course, you can still bid on "Proactiv acne treatment" and send them to Murad a competitor. Who's winning this war... how does Proactiv benefit from banning affiliates bidding on the trademark?
I tried to contact them by phone but we cant contact them by phone in uk, only U.S has telephone support. I contacted them by email and they replied and said "Our decision in this matter is final and we will be unable to respond to any future enquiries on this matter." I would love to have my account back but i would rather take my earnings...they didnt tell me if they will pay me my earnings or not and the trademark keyword earning is probably not even up to half of what i have made and now i might have lost everything...whats giving me a bit of hope about me getting my payment is from what i have researched so far when they close account they say that the associate will not paid any more earnings but i didnt get that in my email. I have contacted them again to ask if i will be paid for earnings though... i will update the thread when they reply back my email hopefully
Well, it's clearly stated in the TOS and it isn't too much effort to add those keywords on the negative list. Even if it was really unintentional, everybody getting caught says it was unintentional. They have no other option. They can only look at the facts. It's like driving too fast, it can accidentially happen, but you still have to pay the fine. Doesn't matter why. Don't get me wrong, I can understand your frustration, but it was your fault, not theirs. The agreement is pretty clear, if they sent you a warning, if you got the warning, how and why the violation happened, it all doesn't matter.