We’re excited by the recent coverage that we’ve received on the launch of PoachMark. A few of the recent posts include:

• Shawn Collin’s coverage on Affiliatetip
• Evan Weber’s coverage at CostPerNews
• Peter Prestipino’s coverage at Website Magazine

We’ve gotten substantially more interest in our service than we expected from this announcement and we’re excited to help an entirely new set of brands manage compliance of their paid search policies.

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Techcrunch has a good article on the latest conundrum facing affiliate managers: Izea (formerly PayPerPost) has begun introducing affiliate links to its network of sponsored bloggers.

While bloggers inserting affiliate links into their posts is nothing new (and not even necessarily bad), this particular incident is troubling for brand owners. The FTC has become increasingly focused on disclosure requirements for word of mouth and Izea is certainly a lightning rod for the issue.

We couldn’t agree more with David Friend, Carbonite’s CEO (quoted in TechCrunch):

An affiliate program requires constant policing because some of these guys will try almost anything and you just have to monitor it very carefully. We have a full time person on it.

The vast majority of affiliates add value, but unsupervised programs allow the small number of ill-intentioned affiliates to have substantial impact.

Techcrunch originally reported that WOMMA founder Andy Sernovitz discovered this particular scheme. Nice work.

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We’re excited to announce that PoachMark has officially launched. With over 200 affiliate programs monitored, we’re confident that PoachMark meets the robustness standards that we’ve established internally for this milestone.

PoachMark is now monitoring the affiliate programs of top 5 e-commerce merchants and top 5 Internet advertisers along with niche online retailers. We think Stephen Favrot at HP-Snapfish sums it up nicely:

BrandVerity is an excellent tool, a must have for any search or affiliate marketer

While we still feel that PoachMark is far from a complete product, and are focused on increasing the depth and utility of the data we collect. We continue to add affiliate ID detection for affiliate networks, reduce false-positives, grow our monitoring network and add new ways of viewing the data that we collect.

Trialing PoachMark couldn’t get any easier - we offer a free trial that does not require a credit card. Get started now.

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Updated on May 21 to reflect Google’s worldwide trademark policy changes and recent moves in the US.

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Late Thursday, Google announced the largest changes to their US AdWords policy in some time. Previously, trademark owners could prevent anyone from using their trademarks in their ad copy. Now, resellers and information sites may utilize the trademarked terms in their ad copy.

This shift will likely be a boon for shopping comparison sites, review sites, and likely the websites of many affiliates. It will also likely increase the number of ads found on trademarked searches and make policing trademarks that much harder.

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Google announced a change yesterday to its AdWords trademark policy in 190 countries, bringing that policy in line with its policies for the US, CA, UK & IE.

Trademark Bidders (New Countries that Google will now allow TradeMark Bidding in)

The full list of 190 countries affected can be found in Google’s announcement:

Countries like Japan, South Africa, Israel, India and Mexico now have a much different competitive landscape.

Google already had the most permissive trademark policy of the three search engines in the US and Canada and this policy shift marks a radical departure from Google’s prior international trademark policy.  Previously, the countries that Google allowed trademark bidding in were the exception (there were just 4).  Now, the reverse is true:  Google prevents trademark bidding in only a handful of countries.

Countries where trademark bidding is still prohibited

The countries where Google still prevents bidding on trademarked terms include many European countries as well as countries that are probably either too controversial to mention or too small to matter.  A selected list of countries that Google prevents trademark bidding in is below:

This list contains a number of countries that Google is embroiled in trademark lawsuits in (France, etc). I think that Google is taking a cautious approach with these countries, but it is clear in which direction Google would like the policies to move - fewer restrictions. I would expect to see either much smaller individualized policy moves in each of these countries.

In the meantime, this change takes affect on June 9, 2009.

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Amazon sent an email to all its affiliates this morning announcing a change in its paid search policy for affiliates - Affiliates will no longer be allowed to direct link to Amazon.

The issue of whether search affiliates add to the bottom line is a hotly debated one in affiliate marketing. In our opinion, the answer depends on a number of factors which include:

• The sophistication of the merchant’s own search marketers
• The type of activity allowed (Amazon still allows affiliates to purchase search ads, just not direct link to Amazon)
• The degree to which the merchant works with its affiliates

I suspect that Amazon’s own search marketing team is probably one of the best in the industry. Since the search engines only allow one ad per display URL on the search results pages, Amazon was finding its ads replaced by ads purchased by its direct linking affiliates.  I’d also imagine that Amazon’s internal research showed that the search affiliates were not contributing incremental profits above and beyond Amazon’s own paid search campaigns.

Amazon also discusses this on their FAQ page:

Q: If my paid search advertisement directs a user first to an interstitial page, then to www.amazon.com, www.endless.com, or www.amazon.ca, will I earn referral fees?
A: No. However, if you place paid search advertisements to send users to your own website, and then your website displays links to www.amazon.com, www.endless.com, or www.amazon.ca in accordance with the Operating Agreement, you may earn referral fees for qualifying purchases made by users who click on your paid search ad, click through to your site, then click through to an Amazon site.

This use of interstitials (or improper redirects) is one that we’ve frequently seen by affiliates in programs that do not allow affiliate direct linking. Not only do interstitials distort the user experience, they make it impossible for the merchant to know the user came directly from search.

PoachMark, our solution for monitoring affiliate compliance of keyword policies, detects interstitials along with a host of other techniques used by affiliates to hide their activities.

Additional coverage and discussion on TechCrunch.

The changes take effect on May 1 2009.

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Those that have been following the various legal wranglings over search ads and trademarks recognize that a key issue is whether search ads classify as a ‘use in commerce’.  This distinction is important for trademark holders - very few trademark protections apply unless the trademark is ‘used in commerce’.  I’m surprised that there has ever been any doubt about this issue, but it hasn’t necessarily been clear in the past.

TechCrunch points to a recent ruling in the Rescuecom v. Google case that has been bouncing around the courts for a few years.  The court ruled that search ads can represent a ‘use in commerce’ and sent the case back to court for another trial.

The next big legal question is whether competitive search ads on trademarked terms can cause ‘consumer confusion’.  A legal consensus hasn’t formed yet on whether consumer confusion can exist or not.  I’ve been surprised by how little research has been done on this issue and would expect to begin to see some research introduced in the various cases currently in the legal system.

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I spoke on a great panel on brand and reputation management. The bulk of the content was focused on personal reputation management, however it was very high quality.

Lisa Barone, of Outspoken Media, is a *very* quick typist and has great notes on the recently launched Outspoken Media blog.

The slides from my presentation are here.

Update
Ricci Neer also has a good writeup of the session.

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I’ll be speaking on the Brand and Reputation Management Session.

Stop by the session or find me around the show.

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