Anyone market direct affiliate links from google adwords? Are you allowed to do this? Is it effective?
Google allows you to do this (as long as your display URL is correct) and some merchants do but others do not. Check with your merchants' affiliate managers to see whether it's okay with them. Yes, it can sometimes be effective but sometimes it's not...you have to test it out and see what works.
If your Ad copy/keywords are well-aligned to the merchant's page, there shouldn't be too much of a worry on QS in terms of major cost difference. Otherwise, it can be effective if you calculate your returns correctly and track your results. -T
It can be effective, but you need to track. You must not forget that you could use a landing page and build your list in the same time.
Make sure your landing page is relevent to the keyword your bidding on and monitor your campains very carefully. Also, make sure your ads are actually running and not being hit down by the double serving rule. P.S ghoti your blog is awesome!
Most merchants will yank your commissions if they see you bidding on their URL, since every merchant I've worked with has a policy against using their display URL (it bumps off their own campaigns). Google will kill your campaign if the landing page domain doesn't match the display URL domain, so it's best to create a landing page.
Interesting, I have yet to experience this, though I have yet to run a campaign with a merchant's URL (and destination URL resolving to a part of their site with my aff id) for an extended period of time yet. Clickbank doesn't do this for the most part. And, if Gene Kavner (ex Amazon) can be believed, it's not against Amazon's TOS either. I imagine it would make some merchants unhappy, though - but with the bigger merchants, often times they have so many keywords & products they advertise on that don't very well optimize their ad (ebay, anyone?), so I'm guessing the amount its costing them paying you the commission with your well-targetted ad saves them money vs. how much they pay to consistently run a less-targetted ad and keep the whole sale amount. I'd definitely be open to seeing counter-examples, though. -T
It's always best to check with the merchant before running a search campaign with their URL. Most merchants (at least those on CJ) run their own search campaigns, so you have the possibility of knocking off their own campaigns, especially if you do branded bidding or very targeted fringe keywords - Google doesn't provide display URL protection to merchants. Also, most LinkShare merchants have strict prohibitions on search marketing.