Double Standards On The Beach
Just seems a bit cheeky to me. On The Beach (an online travel agency) launched on Affiliate Future today, with the following in their terms & conditions -
PPC Policy: No affiliate may conduct direct PPC to the on the beach website. No affiliate may mention on the beach in any PPC ads for their own site and may not bid on any brand term or variations of the brand
and
PPC Policy: The following is prohibited from On The Beach affiliate programme: Using the On the Beach and otbeach.com brand names, brand misspellings or similar variations in the written copy of adverts on PPC (Pay per Click) search Using the On the Beach and otbeach.com brand name, brand name misspelling or similar va
A quick search on Google for “sunshine holidays” -
and it’s been like that for a few months now. I’m aware it doesn’t break any of Google’s new rules, and some of you won’t see anything wrong with that, but it just sticks in my throat. A lot.
8 Responses to “Double Standards On The Beach”
By Jason on Aug 15, 2008 | Reply
If they’re using the url in the advert as you have posted above, I’d say that was highly questionable in terms of “passing off” – it’s misleading most certainly and any clever legal person might be able to advise you on whether you have cause to kick some butt.
By Happy on Aug 15, 2008 | Reply
Mine too!
By shane on Aug 15, 2008 | Reply
Yikes.. wonder if they could cram your brand name in there any more ? they can’t really say it’s a mistake, that’s blatant attempt to mislead users to click their listing.
1) your.co.uk in title when search term isn’t that
2) subdomain of “sunshine”
3) sunshine.co.uk in adcopy
keywords aren’t there by dynamic insertion so it’s a specific adgroup directed at sunshine.co.uk
word of advice for onthebeach “do unto others as you would have done to you”
and also.. check out how big the guy you could be annoying is !
By Looking for batman insurance on Aug 15, 2008 | Reply
Oh Chris you do whine)
We have the same problem with lots of our partners unfortunately. They bid on our brands and ask us not to bid on theirs. Two months ago we just started bidding on everyones as we got bored of playing the nice guy.
They are all still paying us and oddly they stopped complaining…..strange once we told them we were sick of catching them.
Use brandwatcher and you will see all the dirty stuff going on…….
Doug
By David Fiske on Aug 15, 2008 | Reply
Agree with shane and Jason. Unethical IMO. It would be childish to enter a match of doing to them what they do to you but it’s better than a kick in the teeth.
Any merit in contacting Google?
By Gary on Aug 18, 2008 | Reply
We had a similar problem with this lot recently, but Google came down firmly on their side.
They still run ads with Real Holiday Reports in etc, yet when I started some with ‘On The Beach’ in, Google ruled I’d infringed their copyright.
I argued for a few weeks that ‘On the beach’ was a generic term, but they wouldn’t have it.
We can’t even use the words ‘On the beach’ in the description of any of our ads.
By Chris Clarkson on Aug 19, 2008 | Reply
Gary – I’m guessing you’re going to be rushing to add them to RHR then
Fingers crossed it looks like the ad has disappeared for now.
By Mark on Aug 20, 2008 | Reply
They are still there with an ad on the keyword ’sunshine’ .. with the same sunshine.co.uk stuffed / targeted advert.