Affiliates, merchants and even some networks are pretty vocal about being anti-spyware, anti-parasite, anti-BHO scum, etc, but another parasite has quietly slipped onto the scene and has actually been hailed, defended and cheered by members of the industry.

Never by merchants though, surprise surprise…

I’m talking about trademark poachers, a breed of scum sucking bottom feeders that need to be drummed out of the industry. Today I’m a little pissed off. Can you tell? Time to rant…

I logged into our affiliate account at Shareasale today and started looking over the new merchant list. First, somebody needs to buy the entire list a cup of coffee and scream “wake the f*ck up!”, because 95% of them had no PPC policy whatsoever - even those repped by respected OPM firms, but my real rant is not about a lack of policy, but about the industry’s collective blind eye to poaching.

Every merchant I checked (about a dozen) had an affiliate bidding on the merchant’s domain name via Google AdWords. All of the ads used the merchant name and domain as the ad title and display URL.

Brand new merchants were showing sky-high EPC numbers (nothing converts like traffic searching for a merchant domain). Scratch that - those without PPC policies were showing sky-high numbers. Those with PPC policies were another story entirely. Their EPCs were in the negative and their reversal rates went as high as 87%!

Having a PPC policy is obviously no buffer. Just the opposite really, because enforcing the policy kills the program’s numbers. Having been a victim of this myself, I can say it sucks.

I mentioned Shareasale, but the same happens on all of the major networks. AvantLink seems to be the only one with a blanket policy against TM bidding.

TM poachers habitually ignore merchant policies in an effort to skim commissions off traffic already on its way to buy, including traffic that learned about the merchant from other affiliates. They undermine merchant trust in affiliate marketing as a viable channel, create a giant pain in the ass for program managers forced to police incoming traffic and hurt the affiliate marketing industry as a whole, but nobody seems to care.

Call me crazy, but shouldn’t something be done? Shouldn’t networks take action for habitual offenders, shouldn’t OPM firms educate their clients and suggest they put a PPC policy in place, shouldn’t legitimate marketers get annoyed that these folks are posing as merchants and potentially overwriting their hard won cookies? Instead we have what amounts to network, OPM and affiliate collusion to take advantage of unwary merchants.

At some point this thing is going to bite us all on the ass.