Today we’ll discuss a very important topic that is relevant to all Merchant Programs on ShareASale: PPC Violations. Before we get started, let’s first explain what a PPC Violation is for those less familiar with the term.
What is a PPC Violation?
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.
Before a PPC Violation can be submitted, Merchants must have two important pieces of information filled out within their program.
Program Requirements
Have these Requirements? Great – Let’s Continue!
The next steps in submitting a PPC Violation take place within the My Affiliates Tab >> Submit PPC Violation. There are five pieces of information required when submitting a violation – I’ll talk about a few in more detail below.
PPC Report Violation Requirements
*Help: How to determine what Affiliate a link belongs to.
**Help: How to capture the perfect screenshot.
This is one of the most crucial pieces of a violation report, but can certainly be more difficult to capture for first timers. I usually recommend getting a free Add-On such as Live HTTP Headers to help out.
- Find the Ad – Do a search for the keyword in the question on the search engine where it was originally found.
- Find the UserID – Open Live HTTP Headers (or similar add-on) and click the ad you just found. Within Live HTTP Headers you should see a link that looks like: http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=12345&u=61353&m=3635&urllink=&afftrack=
- Capture the UserID & Ad – Now take a screen shot (Print Screen on your keyboard) showing the Ad and the link within Live HTTP Headers that shows UserID.
Screen Shot Example
Another Helpful Tip – Breaking Down An Affiliate Link:
This is a standard ShareASale formatted link:
http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?b=12345&u=61353&m=3635&urllink=&afftrack=
- The b=12345 represents the BannerID used in this Affiliate link
- The u=61353represents the UserID of the Affiliate utilizing this link.
- The m=3635 represents your MerchantID.
Violation Submitted – Now What Happens?
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The ShareASale 3-Strike Policy (After 30 Days)Scroll down to the “After 30 Days” Section…
We will notify an Affiliate upon each strike to let them know that there has been a problem, and to allow for reasonable explanations or corrections to be made. via: blog.shareasale.com
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Phew – We made it! I know that was a lot of detail, so if you have any specific questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us!
devendra says
June 27, 2014 at 2:28 amhello,
I am running a ppc campaign for essioshower.com/ on bingads and since I am a new affiliate who has not earned any coomissions so far my account is /should be of the limited type and I can not participate in ppc programs. am I violating the rules so please let me know that I can stop doing so ?? I have submitted a support ticket as well. this will probably also mean that if I make any sales they will be void/not counted by the system..
please help