And ultimately that’s better for Google anyway… advertisers pay more for the traffic, and the users have a better experience. Everyone wins, except the advertisers.

I still think that in the long run, Google just plain doesn’t like affiliates as they believe that they just plain don’t add any value to the process. And I think in the majority of cases, they’re right. We don’t primarily want to “add value” we want to make money. It’s all about priorities.

Jonathan

I am not sure that is the correct title or if it should be affiliate marketing, all l know is that google have ensured that you really have to be on your game these days and seem to have different rules for different parts of their programes.

All l can say is that you can still make a lot of money if you use placement website position marketing but as per usual google like to hide that part of adwords so they can take money off the newbies. regards nicho

Google knows where their money comes from, and in actuality it’s NOT from advertisers. We’d all like to think so, but iit actually comes from their VISITORS. Since PPC only pays when someone clicks, without visitors Google makes no money.

Now if the average user experience for someone clicking on an Adwords ad becomes one of being scammed, aggressively advertised to, or otherwise something unpleasant, then users will learn to never click on those ads, and to inherently distrust them (which many already do).

If this becomes too widespread of a phenomenon, then Google will make no money no matter how many advertisers they have willing to pay them.

So Google knows what hands feeds it, no doubt about it.

The problem is that Google’s desire for a great user experience is directly opposed to what most marketers (ESPECIALLY AFFILIATES!) need to do. We optimize for conversion, NOT experience. If something ugly is what works, we do ugly. If something awkward is what works, we do awkward. Affiliates are more direct about this than anyone because we aren’t just siting with our company’s ad budget and spending it. We have to make money immediately from our clicks or we can’t keep paying for them.

It’s my opinion that what Google really wants in a perfect world, is tons of high-paying image advertisers who care about branding and eyeballs but not immediate conversion revenue. This way all adwords ads can be a great experience, informative, educational, entertaining, etc. and never leave anyone with a bad taste in their mouth. Everyone is happy, and Google makes tons of money without the FTC breathing down their neck.

This is why I believe that ideally Google would like to see affiliate marketing go away. We affiliates are inherently positioned in contrast to their goals for their users, and so will always be at odds with one another.

Now this doesn’t mean that I think Google will ever succeed at killing affiliate marketing completely, short of an outright ban on the practice. But they can certainly make it so painful that affiliates just say “to hell with it” and go elsewhere. Many of us have already done so and many more are starting to. But affiliates must put a lot of cash in Google’s pockets ultimately, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they see a dip in revenue and decide to swing back the other direction in the future, and encourage affiliates again.

That’s the thing about public companies, at the end of it all they MUST honor the bottom line, or the shareholders will speak by dumping the stock and the company gets crushed - even one as big as Google.

Jonathan

Then again I’m guilty of it as well… I have plenty of ebooks and DVDs that I bought that have excellent info on them, that I haven’t implemented. Sometimes it’s out of laziness, sometimes the information is too convoluted, and sometimes it’s just that “it can’t be that easy!” I’m sure all of us could benefit from more execution in general.

Jonathan