PartnerPerform Blog

There is no right answer when it comes to PPC trademark bidding by affiliates. In this controversial environment, every merchant must analyze its search engine presence on such terms and determine how to set its own policy.

Bear in mind that there are many positives to an open policy on trademark bidding. Allowing affiliates to bid on trademarks in pay-per-click search engines can be an effective way of keeping your competitors off the search engine results pages. In addition, the commissions earned from such PPC ads can be given to select super affiliates as a bonus to valued paid search performance. However- what if affiliate trademark bidding is not for you? How do you begin to police such activity by affiliates?

Unless you have a skilled outsourced program manager with experience in trademark monitoring, you may consider hiring the services of a specialized trademark monitor. But do they exist? They do now.

Marketers using the Web are concerned with the way their trademarks are used by their own Web marketing partners and affiliates according to Molander & Associates Inc. (www.molanderassoc.com), a company launching a service to help find, correct and monitor for such behavior. The new service, dubbed ProtectMyMark (www.protectmymark.com), helps marketers recover and collect un-due fees by auditing and monitoring partnership-focused Web programs such as affiliate and shopping comparison.

Jeff Molander is one sharp guy, and continues to release valuable, relevant products and services to empower the affiliate and multi-channel online marketing industries. ProtectMyMark can be expected to be a deadly accurate, vital service for any merchant or advertiser that needs to keep control of their trademarked brand.

Its been a busy week for affiliate marketers in Chicago. The week of August 21st hosted Andy Rodriguez’ Affiliate Manager Certification Seminar, the Performics Client Summit, and one heck of a Cubs game attended by all (yes, the Cubs lost…). While the Performics Summit crowd watched the game from a private rooftop deck, the ARC crowd of affiliates and AMs were right in the trenches– or the Cubs bleachers, whichever way you look at it. PartnerPerform was in attendance with the ARC and ShareASale crowd, representing zZounds.com and SameDayMusic.com.

The big news of the week? Brian Littleton, CEO/Founder of ShareASale, was awarded the Affiliate Fair Practice Award by Kellie Stevens of AffiliateFairPlay. As AffiliateFairPlay explains:

AffiliateFairPlay.com will periodically be awarding the AFP Fair Practice Award to individuals and entities who have demonstrated activities which embody the principles of fair competition within the Affiliate Marketing Industry. AFP strongly believes that it is past time for those persons who engage in fair practices which improve the Industry and show that fair practices can lead to profitability be recognized and rewarded.

A special thanks to Debbie Carney for the photo above. Debbie recently accepted an AM position at Rextopia– here’s to a pleasant move to Las Vegas for Debbie, and best wishes for her and the team at Rextopia.