| LED Digest 2617: Spamming by Reputation |
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The LED Digest Moderated Discussion List "Effective Online Advertising, Since 1997" Data > Information > Knowledge > Wisdom http://www.AudetteMedia.com : the LED's Publisher Boutique Internet Marketing: SEO, SEM, Social Media http://www.SEOToolSet.com/training/ : the LED's Premier Sponsor Bruce Clay's Search Engine Optimization Training & Certification ================================================== List Moderator: Published by: Adam Audette LED Digest adam, led-digest.com http://www.led-digest.com .............................................. April 2, 2008 Issue no. 2617 .............................................. .....IN THIS DIGEST..... ==== CONTINUING ================= --== Bidding on Trademarked Terms ==-- ~ Pete Storey "...the affiliate was adding no value at all." ~ Scott Marino "Perhaps Google is growing too big for their own good." --== Anti-Spam Company Spamming ==-- ~ Tom Anson "They aren't spamming you because it works; they're spamming because someone SAID it worked." ~ Tom Aman "Also, all SPAM is *NOT* UCE...but a great deal of it is *UBE*." --== Mailto Links with Web Email ==-- ~ John Barendrecht "...you may want to ask Will Bontrager." ======== CONTINUING =============================== From: Pete Storey Subject: Trademark bids > Just recently in the UK Google banned us > from bidding on, or including the brand > "Nicorette", in our adverts... Why do > brands enforce these bans? Do they not want > to sell product? - Simon Driscoll, LED 2616 - http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2031/190/ Hi, It rather depends on the product in question, and whether it is sold exclusively by resellers or whether the manufacturer sells direct. It also depends on the competition and whether they can use your trademark to their advantage. We (1Cover), for example, sell insurance in Australia. We have an active affiliate programme, and used to allow people to bid on our name. We stopped this however because what it meant was we were spending money marketing our brand, for consumers to come looking for us, only for them to be clicking an affiliate's link and us to have to pay them commission for a customer who wanted us in the first place - the affiliate was adding no value at all. We found our affiliate costs dropped dramatically and our sales not at all by changing this rule. The other issue is of competitors bidding on our trademark. You might have a competitor who bids for "1Cover" with the ad "We're cheaper than 1Cover, come check us out" or words to that effect. Again, if the customer is looking for you, it's because of money you've spent building the brand, and you don't want others benefiting from that. In your specific case I don't know exactly why but it's probably because it doesn't hinder sales (natural search is still powerful) and it prevents use of the trademakr outside the brand guidelines. cheers Pete Storey -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Scott Marino Subject: Trademark bids Perhaps Google is growing too big for their own good. I had recently added some Major League Baseball children's items to our site. When I went to put the ads into Google, it gave me a "You cannot bid on trademarked terms" message. There was a link to request an exception, which I did, explaining that these are officially licensed goods representing the various teams. Five days later I received a notice that they won't grant the exception. They did say that if I removed the offending term "New York Yankees" from the ad, that it would be ok. I'm not sure how they would write an ad to sell New York Yankees merchandise, but I'm pretty sure that it should include New York Yankees. Odd thing is that the ads went right through on Yahoo!, and their search term tool even made a few good suggestions. Companies have various reasons for protecting their images and trademarks. Some are reasonable in their efforts and others are not. Perhaps there are abuses of some search terms that we are not aware of. Rather than deal with the problem, perhaps it is easier to prohibit all use. When dealing with nameless, faceless people making these decisions, they often don't care to understand what it is they are even looking at. Scott Marino www.LittleJammies.com -------- new post - new topic -------- From: Tom Anson Subject: Anti-spam I wish that solving the spam problem was as "simple" as John Smart suggests (LED Digest 2615 http://www.led-digest.com/content/view/2030/190/ ): Just stop buying. From the spam I receive, it seems pretty obvious that most of it comes from people who have bought into a "program" for making money online. That includes emails to send out and lists of those to send them to. As long as there are people out there who have financial stresses who are ignorant (or desperate) enough to buy the sales pitch for automatic riches, we will have spam. Educating people not to respond to spam (even if they sell 2 inch radio-controlled helicopters) might help a little; but, unless those who are "educated" include those who buy into these schemes, the problem isn't going away. They aren't spamming you because spamming works; they're spamming because someone SAID it worked. Tom Anson Anson Aromatic Essentials http://www.therapeutic-grade.com -------- new post - same topic -------- From: Tom Aman Subject: Anti-spam > The fact that what Tom calls SPAM can be > much more objectionable and generally takes > steps to hide the source does not make it > any less annoying than the nice HTML email > sent by a company who is a member of the > BBB. > > All SPAM is UCE. The key here is that the > email is "unsolicited" and except for some > of the stuff I get from China, the ISPs > involved almost without exception have > there own rules about it. CANSPAM does not > require ISPs to allow the sending of UCE as > far as I know, which leads me to why I do > make some distinction between different > types of SPAM. - Chris Nielsen, LED 2616 The problem with regarding all UCE as SPAM is that it makes it impossible for anyone to directly alert anyone else to a product / service that may be of use to them. The problem is that too many (the CAN SPAM writers included), fail to make a distinction between UCE and UBE (unsolicited bulk email) and I feel there is a huge difference. Also, all SPAM is *NOT* UCE (because it is not commercial) but a great deal of it is *UBE*. Most (85%) of the SPAM I get is for scams - some variation of the Nigerian 419 scam or Advance Fee scam or Phishing emails, etc (i.e. some form of scam or attempt at identity theft). These are not commercial emails any more than someone robbing a bank is a banking transaction. Others, like the Genuine Replica Rolex ads, the Viagra ads, the pharmacy pitches, etc., are UCE and they are also UBE. But I do not consider a UCE email directed to some potential specific need that I might have, usually as a result of someone actually viewing my site and seeing the need, to be SPAM. As a concrete example Chris, if I send you an email telling you that, in a sample test of your site (304 links tested), 4 broken links where found and that I have a product to help you find these and also offer a service to do the testing for you, if you prefer, I agree that is UCE, but is it SPAM? (The 4 broken in 304 tested is an actual figure based on an actual test run and if that is representative then, if your site has 5000 links, you can expect about 65 to be broken.) Tom Aman Aman Software http://www.cyberspyder.com Home of CyberSpyder Link Test -------- new post - new topic -------- From: John Barendrecht Subject: Mailto > But the problem is, if you click a mailto: > link, you get a nice error message... - John Smart, LED 2616 John, you may want to ask Will Bontrager. I mentioned to him that his spam-proof email didn't work if you didn't have an email client. As far as I remember, he fixed that and you may be able to use similar code on your website. I had not thought of this before, if you find a solution for a Windows server (not using PHP), I would be interested to hear about it. Best regards, John Barendrecht Centralhome.com Company Inc. http://www.centralhome.com (c) Copyright 1995-2008 Orange Wheel, LLC. All Rights Reserved. ----------------------------------------------------------------- "Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings." - George Will |
