As I see it (as a merchant so I'm quite obviously biased here) I'm new to the game, and new here - but in my short time using adwords (as a merchant) I've had to wade through and attempt to compete against countless garbage ads fronting affiliate sites linking to competitive merchants under the masquerade of 'breaking news!'(not news, nor breaking), 'must read this health report!(bogus opinion piece under the guise of actual news)', 'free trials! (just give us your CC and ignore the fine print)', '#1 best rated!'(by no one's standards) which are all either complete misinformation or scam laden, not to mention generally baseless and fraudulent claims. I went so far as to review some of these ad slingers and with very little digging uncovered hundreds of complaints about negative billing, inflated shipping timelines to activate the auto-pay periods, no response to customer service.. the list goes on. Which leads me to believe that it seems that the shady merchants employ the shady affiliate marketers, at least in the examples I found. The best part? All that crap reflects poorly on me, as a merchant in the same vertical. So I guess that brings me to my first question: How does a merchant distinguish themselves from the slime when they're forced to wade around in the same muck? Has anyone ever considered the concept of separating the merchants from the affiliate marketers? A less appealing colorized background to the ad perhaps? An automatic -1 to the QS? An automatic cap on 8th-11th place only? I simply don't get it. Without the merchants, the affiliates wouldn't exist, and the affiliates seem to only damage the merchant's reputations (as a whole, across the vertical) and inflate the CPCs. Specifically (again, this is only my experience with them so far) they only seem to serve the purpose of adding a layer of noise and confusion for the consumer, and they have *nothing* to offer in comparison to a merchant outside of traps, tricks and gimmicks. Pardon the frustration, but shady parasitic behavior causing wide cast negative impact irks me - and I have to believe that I'm alone in this frustration. If nothing else, take from this that as a merchant who wants to use adwords - watch out for affiliate density in your keyword selections and be prepared to compete against false claims and top sitting affiliate ads that have oozed their way into top spots with all the tricks you may find here, but have nothing of value to offer your shared customer base.