The rumor of Google making some sort of change to AdWords policy regarding affiliates has proved true. A new policy limits displays of AdWords ads run by affiliates, and leading to the same landing page to a single ad per search results page. This will largely solve the affiliate glut that pushes non-affiliate ads off the page. Several results that change the nature of affiliate marketing on Google should follow:
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First, competition for that single affiliate slot wi increase, and the per-click cost of advertising in this manner will go up.
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Alternative landing pages will be developed. This means that affiliates will have to do more work, which is NOT a bad thing. New conversion metrics will have to be developed that take into account intermediary landing pages between the ad and the e-commerce product.
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E-commerce sites that run affiliate programs might rise to the challenge on behalf of their affiliates and create multitudes of landing pages. A key point in Google's new policy is whether the URL examined for the landing page is the full URL, or just the domain. If just the domain, then e-commerce sites cannot assist their affiliates by creating 200 landing pages in that domain. If the full URL is examined by Google, they can.
What Google undoubtedly hopes is that affiliates will get off their butts (no offense—I have done this sort of aff. advertising in AdWords) and create content, then market that content, not somebody else's. But, naturally, many affiliates will simply fade away in the face of that much entrepreneurism. It's a risk Google must take, though, because the affiliate problem was getting out of hand, and doubtless infuriating advertisers shoved below tenth position by hordes of AFF ads..
1. Yeah, was a problem that had to be dealt with at some point. Glad to see Google take action to improve their services.
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Jasper