It came to my attention today that Amazon Associates were recently sent notification of a very major change (at least for some affiliates) in their Amazon Associate Program as of May 1, 2009.
In a nutshell, Amazon will no longer pay commissions to associates who refer traffic via “keyword bidding” ads such as Google Adwords, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines.Â
So, the tactic of targeting traffic by directly sending traffic from Google Adwords ad (as one example) to either an Amazon associate link or via a redirect link that then immediately redirects to an Amazon Associate link will be denied commissions on any sales made from that referral and will breach their Associate Programs terms and conditions as of May 1 of this year.
They do go on to say that it IS ok to use paid keywords to generate traffic to a webpage (landing page) that contains some content and from which you refer to Amazon products or services.Â
Here is the FAQ page that explains further:
What is a little odd about this statement is WHY they are making this change.Â
The reason stated is… “This decision is based on our review of how we invest our advertising resources. “Â
I’m not quite sure what that means since the advertising resources in question are those of the associates NOT Amazon, so that statement seems a little strange. (If I’ve missed something obvious, please leave a comment to the blog on what this rather cryptic statement may really mean)
My guess is there is one of two things going on here…
1. They are tired of bumping up the profits of Google, MSN, etc… (albeit indirectly) by incenting advertisers to buy “keyword bidding” ads by paying them commissions on Amazon products and services. By taking away the incentive, they are hoping to have a direct impact on these other businesses.
2. Amazon has its sights set on the “keyword bidding” marketplace – I find this one less likely, but you never know! It seems like a rather drastic action to be done on a whim – surely there is a much bigger business objective upcoming.
What do you think?
Jeff
