PPC Violations

There are Merchants who run in-house Pay-Per-Click Advertising Campaigns on search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, or Bing. There are also Affiliates who specialize in PPC Advertising. To avoid unnecessary competition, these Merchants might restrict their Affiliates from running similar keyword or phrase campaigns.

Merchants who have such restrictions list the phrases and keywords in their ShareASale Program under the Program Agreement and PPC Bidding Rules Section.

When an Affiliate of a Merchant’s ShareASale Program bids on these already restricted keywords or phrases in order to display advertisements, drive traffic and earn commissions from said Merchant, that action is referred to as a PPC Violation.

Requirements:

There are two requirements that must be met in order for a PPC violation to be submitted:

1. The program must have an Affiliate Agreement in place and should clearly outline any program restrictions, including a PPC policy.

2. The PPC Bidding Rules tool must also be utilized to spell out specific keyword and phrase restrictions.

How to Submit a PPC Violation:

PPC violations can be submitted under Affiliates >> Report PPC Violation, in which 5 pieces of information will be needed:

1. Affiliate ID

2. A screenshot displaying the ad, search term, and affiliate ID

3. Search engine used

4. Search term used

5. Description of violation

Helpful Tips:

How do I determine what affiliate a link belongs to?

You can use the Affiliate Link Tool (https://www.shareasale.com/m-afffind.cfm) to determine what Affiliate a link belongs to. This is particularly useful for determining who is bidding on pay per click (PPC) search terms.