Next - do you allow affiliates to brand name bid or not?

As most of you are probably aware today marks the day that Google implements it’s new trademark policy on AdWords. Read all about it here. Having a quick browse around the web today I haven’t really seen any affiliates bidding on previously trademarked terms - the recent glut of emails with revised ppc terms from merchants has seen to that.

There is one exception however and that is every affiliate’s favourite merchant, Next Retail.

Here are the first 3 results that I saw when I searched Google for the term “Next” today May 5th 2008.

As you can see there are now 3 affiliates appearing for the term, all with thin landing pages that have no other purpose than to drop an affiliate cookie and push the visitor to the official Next website.

Now I could be wrong - but I don’t think I am - but before today Next had a pretty tight control of affiliate ads on Google. In other words they didn’t allow anyone to bid on Next trademark terms. Here’s the relevant bit from the affiliate terms and conditions:

Brand and brand generic bidding is not permitted on any search engine. This includes, but not limited to, next, next directory and any related misspellings. To avoid accidental broad matching we recommend you set next brand terms as a negative match in your search campaigns.

Affiliates are not permitted to use next.co.uk or any of its extensions as a display URL in PPC ads. The terms Next and Next Directory may be incorporated within your url, for example, next.sitename.com or sitename.com/next.

Affiliates must also not bid on competitor terms or misspellings.

Affiliates found to be breaking terms and conditions may have all commissions generated from the activity reversed.

This was backed up when iLevel held a teleconference in early April to respond to the heavy criticism the affiliate programme has received. The following is an extract from the minutes that were circulated to the teleconference attendees in late April.

Affiliate brand bidding

• Next do not currently allow affiliate as it is currently not perceived as adding incremental value.

• Next’s affiliate brand bidding strategy is being reviewed given Google’s recent trademark policy changes.

• If, after 5th May it is determined that affiliate brand bidding is necessary a full RFP will be implemented.

The important thing to take from these minutes is the last bullet point where it states that if, after the 5th May, (i.e. today) it is determined that affiliate brand bidding is necessary a full RFP will be implemented.

So it would seem there are 2 scenarios that could be possible here.

1. The 3 affiliates that have put up landing pages and are bidding on the Next terms are all breaking the terms and conditions and will have their commissions reversed. Naughty.

2. iLevel have changed their mind and already determined before 5th May that brand name bidding from affiliates is necessary. However if this is the case then where is the RFP that was promised from the meeting minutes? I haven’t seen one and there wasn’t one published on any of the affiliate forums.