Garbitrage is a new phrase coined by Kris Jones at the SES “Dealing with Affiliates” panel. Shoemoney just blogged about it.

Search Engine Roundtable has the blow-by-blow details and outline of the info each panelist shared. Anton Konikoff from Acronym Media was up first, then Mark J Rosenberg from Sills Cummis Epstein & Gross P.C., followed by Kristopher Jones from Pepperjam then Chris Henger from Performics wraps things up. Anton states:

“Affiliate marketing obviously has its challenges. Affiliates can drive up bid prices, affiliates can effectively block your ads from showing up in Google AdWords, they can cause a lower volume of traffic, higher cost per acquisition. The bad thing is that clients are not able or unwilling to control their affiliates use of paid search. He shows an example for one of his clients get bidded up, 7 out of 10 links are from affiliates. Google favors affiliates in some cases, he says, because amount of historical data, higher CTR and better quality score matters. Google is making a little easier for search marketers by requiring things like unique domain names and a landing page quality factor. A case study with Sirius radio, with Google’s changes, increased volume by 15% and drove higher CTRs and lower bid prices, since Google’s changes went into affect. As an affiliate, you can always be harsh and say no bidding on brand terms, limit the search engines and channels, unique offers only for affiliates, no brand name in copy and don’t let affiliates bid higher than the search vendors. He advocates against such tight restrictions, the 7 deadly sins of affiliate marketing book, he came up with his own. 7 Brilliant Ideas on Dealing with Affiliates Intelligently:”

Read the rest of Dealing With Affiliates (Pepperjam & Performics) over at Search Engine Roundtable.

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