Adwords Marketing Blog - Amazon Stops Paying Associates for Adwords Traffic

Monday, April 06, 2009

Amazon Stops Paying Associates for Adwords Traffic

This morning I got an email from Amazon. They are no longer going to pay associates for paid search engine traffic, like Adwords or Yahoo Search Marketing.

Dear Amazon Associate:
We’re writing to let you know about a change to the Amazon Associates Program. After careful review of how we are investing our advertising resources, we have made the decision to no longer pay referral fees to Associates who send users to www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, or www.endless.com through keyword bidding and other paid search on Google, Yahoo, MSN, and other search engines, and their extended search networks. If you're not sure if this change affects you, please visit this page for FAQs. As of May 1, 2009, Associates will not be paid referral fees for paid search traffic. Also, in connection with this change, as of May 1, 2009, Amazon will no longer make data feeds available to Associates for the purpose of sending users to the Amazon websites in the US or Canada via paid search. This change applies only to the Associates programs in North America. If you are conducting paid search activities in connection with one of Amazon’s Associates Programs outside of the US and Canada, please refer to the applicable country’s Associates Program Operating Agreement for relevant terms and conditions. We appreciate your continued support and participation in this advertising Program. If you have questions or concerns, please write to us by using the Contact Us form available on Associates Central.

Sincerely,
The Amazon Associates Program

This may be of particular concern to Howie Schwartz and his "Black Hat is Back" products. Howie recommends finding niche markets on Amazon. Amazon lets you see what are hot products, and then gives you an affiliate program to promote them. Fortunately Howie and his "Conversation Domination" product talks about driving traffic through the use of social media websites, and does not promote Adwords. Still one has to wonder if users of Howies program made the step to advertise on Adwords. Perhaps the popularity of these program influenced Amazons decision.

Comments [1] - Trackback
Amazon

Thursday, July 09, 2009 2:44:59 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)

It's more likely Amazon was influenced by affiliates popping up with lame non converting sites which try to make a dent in PPC selling Amazon products, cutting into their in house PPC, due to cannibalization. Plus when you consider the fact that if Amazon does have a in house team, they won't need to pay that team a 20% fee on top of the sale price of the product, so it's pretty much clear as day why any company who's out to maximize their profit will avoid PPC like the plague. I've been on both sides of this, and seen this decision come down from the top time and time again. It boils down to the sensitivity of affiliates, their importance and role within the organization, and longevity. On another note, when you consider that many AFF's haven't moved past page redirects, landing pages with the same branding as "A" and more, you have to consider Google's position too, which over the past 4 years has pretty much edged out affiliates in many cases from many markets. If you look through Google's AdWords help center they actually mention that some forms of affiliate marketing are not 'approved' marketing methods.

Nothing against what you were suggesting, but Google is a billion dollar company, while Howie whoever is someone I've never heard of in my over 10+ years in IM. Just some food for thought.

H.W.

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