It is always a pleasure to see affiliate networks adding new tools and functions for merchants to use. A month ago I blogged about a new technology by buy.at to help prevent the stealing of exclusive affiliate coupons [more here]. Today I’d like to draw merchants’ and affiliate networks’ attention to AvanLink.
For as long as I remember AvantLink, they have been advising merchants against affiliates’ paid search bidding on trademarks and domain name(s) which naturally belong to the merchant. They have been monitoring such affiliate behavior, and even prohibiting it in the network’s TOS. The affiliate network’s CEO and Founder, Scott Kalbach, writes:
From our perspective, this form of advertising provides little to no value to the merchant. Many merchants don’t understand that if they don’t specifically prohibit this activity in their affiliate program terms and conditions, some affiliates will take that as a green light to trademark bid until they are told otherwise. This is the reason that AvantLink.com decided to prohibit this activity by default in our network level terms and conditions. We’re the only affiliate network that has this default policy [underlining mine].
In addition to the above policy, AvantLink has recently announced the launch of an additional tool for its merchants to use. In addition to the “default configuration” which “helps merchants, as well as AvantLink staff, maintain compliance with” the above-mentioned affiliate network’s TOS, the tool also allows AvantLink-based merchants to “monitor whatever additional keywords/phrases they want” [more here].
Kudos to AvanLink, and let’s hope more affiliate networks will borrow this idea.