Category Affiliate Marketing

SUMMARY: Competition between companies and their affiliates is natural. Affiliates can be very effective at creating revenue-generating traffic through search so there’s an inherent tension in the system. See the main attitudes/policies with which merchants attempt to deal with this issue.

With the advent of search marketing came the problem of competition between companies and the affiliates with whom they have, hopefully, symbiotic relationships. It’s in an affiliate’s best interests to generate search traffic using the most alluring keyword terms, and these are often branded, including the company name itself. Merchants for their part generally want to take full advantage of those same terms and to avoid ‘paying twice’ for affiliate search-driven clicks that they feel would have come to them anyway based on the keyword.

At the same time, affiliates can be very effective at creating revenue-generating traffic through search (some merchants simply cede paid search to their affiliates) so there’s an inherent tension in the system.

Below we see the main attitudes/policies with which merchants attempt to deal with this issue. Interestingly, the number of them who completely reserves brand/trademarked terms has dropped in favor of more nuanced approaches:

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