Dark PPC Ads - D2C Strategies

Before I explain Dark PPC Ads, we need to address the question of why would you want to use them in the first place.

The answer is simple: easy affiliate commission if you don’t get caught.

Affiliates want to go after keywords that turn into sales on the first click.

They bid on “brand names” + “buyer keywords” because they can have conversions of over 10%.

But here is the problem.

Product owners don’t allow affiliates to bid on brand names because those buyers have already decided to buy.

You can see the problem.

Brands don’t want to pay money for someone who is already coming to buy their product or service.

Affiliates want easy commissions and go after the fast sale.

Affiliates try to get around this by running GEO targeted ads that exclude the home office of the brand.

So if you Google your “brand names” + “buyer keywords” you don’t see any ads.

Which is what they want you to see.

But the affiliates will run ads in the top 100 largest cities or in the 2nd tier which are small cities of 100,000 or more people.

When affiliates do this it makes it really hard to catch. And if they do a double meta refresh you have no clue the traffic is PPC traffic.

That’s why it is called Dark PPC Ads because they are hiding the data.

And yes, this is against the Terms Of Service for a lot of product owners.

So how can product owners police this?

Simple. Use a PPC Search Compliance tool that will stop affiliates from using trademark bidding. For example,

Or one of the alternative tools.

But the key is you need to use PPC Search Compliance if you want to stop affiliates from using your brand name to create easy commissions.

Talk soon,
Charles Kirkland

Additional menu