Picture the scene, New York June 2007, I’m attending the LinkShare Symposium. An advertiser approaches says he has heard good things aboutClicks2Customers. He wants to know whether Clicks2Customers would be interested in working as an affiliate driving paid search traffic to his site; a site that would go on to win a golden link award that night. The advertiser was a large brand and niche with large product set which would provide multiple search permutations – a perfect fit to match Clicks2Customers capabilities.  The only stumbling block would be, could I get…  would he give…  access to the display URL? I answered in the affirmative, but explained that we only ever work if we could drive traffic directly to the display URL. So no jump pages or white labels; direct traffic only. He thought about this for a few seconds and then responded “what a novel approach”; seems no one had asked him for direct access before!!

So why have we as affiliates stopped asking? My belief is that it became too hard. The display URL is the Holy Grail and increasingly agencies and internal teams have made it their sacred domain. The reason given to the business decision maker, to restrict display URL is twofold. By the agency the reason usually provided is “ownership and management of the brand” and by the internal team its “to ensure their business does not pay an affiliate for traffic that they would have captured anyway as all the affiliate isdoing is stealing impressions from the internal team”.

So display URL s became increasingly restricted to the paid search affiliate channels and the agencies and internal teams won the war without a shot being fired! Should we blame the advertisers for making what we deem as rash decisions? No I say blame the affiliate who gave up so surprisingly meekly; surprising when one looks at the profile of the top affiliates – entrepreneurs that had been pioneers in the search industry.

It’s time we stood up and challenged the agency, challenged the internal team. For too long these two parties have managed paid search campaigns with all the protection needed to succeed; yet I can guarantee that 90% of all campaigns run by agencies and internal teams are run poorly. The business has no way of benchmarking whether the current incumbent is as good as the incumbent says he is. I believe the real reason that agencies and internal teams want complete control over the display URL is that they would be found wanting by any decent paid search affiliate.

Let’s challenge the current beliefs. Let’s educate the business owners. Affiliates will drive incremental traffic to a site given the display URL. They say all we will do is take impression away from them. I question what the price is that they are paying for that traffic. Bid on broad keywords at high cost per click and you will get lots of traffic. Does this mean you are running a good campaign? – NO!! It means you know how to waste money. And when ROI is questioned, search gets blamed as being too competitive; Google gets blamed for raising minimum CPCs. I say look at the team running the campaign. My tip to the business owner is look at what percentage of traffic is captured on the broads. If it’s a high percentage than you are paying too much for the cost per click and your conversion rates will be suffer. Should a high percentage of traffic be captured on the exact match then give your team a raise. Let’s challenge the business owner to test the team with the spoils going to the victor.