I respect the fact you want to protect your model names from mis-use, but the idea behind a TM is to build a brand behind the name and encourage your affiliates to promote your content so long as its done in a manner that improves your brand.

While I know the idea behind this is to keep your own costs down such that you don't compete with affiliates (hence why you'd allow positions 3-10 to be openly bid on), I think you'll find over time this will encourage webmasters to promote other sites that have your models content licensed (ie: Jesse Jane) on the landing page or members area.

Like others have pointed out in this thread, this isn't anything new but take it from someone who's been buying PPC traffic for over 10 years, you'll find out that affiliates would rather take their business elsewhere than have their hands tied.

WG

Trademark restrictions are a common practice for affiliate marketing and not unique to Digital Playground. Affiliates with unique content who are providing a value by driving traffic to there own unique are welcome. We are just not going to have people hijack our Trademarked terms.

When did you start doing PPC Harvey?

We are not trying to tie anyones hands we are trying to control our brand to the best of our ability. There is nothing preventing Affiliates from promoting any of the other 600+ girls we have on our site. This is simply Trademark issue.

This is what you keep repeating, and honestly, it is what is making me laugh the most

Sorry to break it to you but this is 2010, not adwords year one

There is a whole bunch of adwords metrics an affiliate has zero control over, ads with low bids can be displayed sporadically in position 1, go to 5 for a while, back to 2...it is IMPOSSIBLE to bid for position 3.

Thats why I asked him when he started doing Pay Per Click.

We are not saying that you cannot bid you can but you need to stay below position 3. You can not pose as our brand and take our traffic.

Can't you see why people are upset? You can protect your TM from abuse, no one is complaining. But using your TM to take profits away from the very own people who support and made you successful all these years is like giving your good friend a stab in the back.

I suggest you guys reconsider.

Then you can safely bid from 4-10 and so on. applying pressure to our program, which raises all of our cost per clicks is not beneficial to anyone

Your missing the point Harvey. I can take a nickel bid and go to number 1 in adwords with pornstar terms in google simply by turning it on.

Sara Jay comes to mind just from this week alone.

My personal adwords account is almost 7 years old and loyalty has its rewards.

Did you go to the DirtyD school for adwords?

Will you be buying 1-3? That seems kind of pointless?

If you have a unique site, one that is not re-directing straight to us and are buying ppc traffic on our trademarked terms then you can still do so as long as you stay below position 3

No it isn't possible to bid from 4-10, someone could bid half what you are and still come out on top. If they bid a tenth they could have an ad that displays in position one but only a third of the time, not position 3. You get it?

thats why you are prohibiting mis spells?

have you TM'd all the mis spellings?

give me a break..

pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered...

how long before you start suing torrent seeders?

:321GFY

You can utilize position preferenace or many other tools, but being in positions 1-3 are prohibited

great strategy, except if bids drop, it will become profitable to send traffic to a competitor... as a result you will have pissed off affiliates, traffic will leak off to competitors and so your profits will be about the same or even lower... trying to manipulate markets is futile, but good luck :thumbsup

Exactly. my :2 cents:

I think their lawyers are the one suggesting they do this so they can pocket more out of them for legal fees going after domains and sites that support them to earn some extra buck. No surprise at all.

This negativity IMHO is causing them more harm than good.

Again.....We not saying you can not bid on our trademark, We are saying that you can't bid on our trademark and re-direct straight to our site thereby getting traffic from people who were directly looking for us!

Position preference will try to automatically lower a bid, no guarantee even with a low bid that an affiliate won't outrank you. Outright ban bidding on keywords or don't, this bidding up to position 3 business is ridiculous.

Next will be affiliate sites that have Digital Playground in the title tags, page structure, or domain urls.

Which you CANNOT avoid using most useful CMS's, wordpress, tube scripts etc. So do yourselves a favor and start deleting those posts/updates/galleries/vid posts now before they come after you. And don't let them tell you they won't, that's what ALWAYS comes after these announcements.

I promise anyone doing this is looking for trouble. This isn't the first company who's followed this route and won't be the last.


"Thanks for helping us build a brand, now get fucked".

I wonder though, if google will be happy to hear what they are doing, trying to manipulate the market and maintaining a monopoly for their own benefit. If someone report this to google and google isn't happy about it, their keywords could be blacklist and their program can go into the trash. Next thing you know they will be back begging you to promote their program.

When you play with keywords like these you are putting yourself at risk.

The Digital Playground "Brand" has been around for 18 Years. Long before an Affiliate Program was even thought of. We have spent Millions of dollars on PR, Advertising, Marketing and Promotions to build what we now have. Sure Affiliate marketing has played a role in our success but by no means the only reason for it.


Again.....We not saying you can not bid on our trademark, We are saying that you can't bid on our trademark and re-direct straight to our site thereby getting traffic from people who were directly looking for us!

I don't think people are scare really. They are more pissed than scare. There have been a thread on another program trying to close down a huge site they claim to infringe on their trademark and have been very unsuccessful.

Im not promoting Digital Playground.
Im talking about adwords. But your not listening.
Im trying to help you out.

Wow. Shouting while being totally uninformed is bad.
I give up.

So I can bid on top 3 as long as I'm not sending you the traffic.

Got it!

who the fuck are they anyway? so 90s shit?

Harv... you may have made this decision based on what you thought was the right thing and overall more profitable venture... but in the long run youre actually decreasing your income.

Its not protecting your brand at all... youre simply trying to eliminate top spot PPC competition. Your company dosnt want to fight for those spots nor pay more for them.

Having wiredguy pull out (assuming he pushed DP) is a big blow.... just imagine how many other silent PPC affiliates you might deter.

overall... bad decision :2 cents:

So we could just send it to another program...

See a problem?

Harvey you're losin' me man.

So I can bid on "Digital Playground." I can send that traffic to my AEBN theater. All is good. Just so long as I don't send that "Digital Playground" traffic to the actual "Digital Playground" site because then I would be stealing your theoretical traffic?

What?

i think the thread about milk in bags was better.

Theres this problem with people that really dont know surfers or SEO or surfing tactics that think just because a person clicks a link to DP from a ppc ad that they were looking for DP in the first place...

Dont you think if they wer ein search for DP specifically that they would be type in traffic and not google?

Anything from Google ads should be considered a paid for bonus. The only entity that owns google traffic is google. The only traffic from google thats yours more than others is organic SEO traffic. THats something your company has worked for. If someone is outbidding you, thats is your problem and you have to weigh ROI and make a decision.

Making this decision only pissed people off and just might cause more bullshit than you anticipated. There are people here that will pay for ads and send them to other programs just to fuck with you and prove a point.

Though I do have to commend you on notifying people of this rather than just letting them continue sending sales and denying their payments... Weve seen that in the past...

Lol, i work in this biz for many years and i know one fact , 90 % moneys are in 1st position, 9 % in second , and 1 percent in 3-10 positions :-) , so its really great idea spend money for 3 positions clicks.

Doing a search for Jesse Jane and Digital Playground on Google, there's only 1 paid result (from Canada). So there is no way to bid in position 3+ or higher. Its a ridiculous change to the ToS to force webmasters to not bid in the top 3 spots, especially when there aren't 3 spots worth of placements.

With a restriction like this, there's only 2 things a webmaster can do: 1) Stop bidding on your TM terms and pick other terms or 2) Bid on them and send the traffic to a different affiliate program that has the models in their tours/members areas. Guess which one webmasters would rather do...

You're a smart guy Harvey, especially in the mobile space, and I know you have to maintain this position for your employer, but really, this move is going to make your PPC webmasters leave DP. Take it from someone who knows the PPC/SEO market inside and out, this move will see a drop in your PPC traffic and not just on your TM'd terms but all pornstar traffic in general that WM's are buying on behalf of your brand.

WG

PS: If you want a better way to enforce this, I'd suggest you contact Google and show them your trademarks. They can remove all advertisers for your TM'd terms and make anyone wanting to bid on these keywords request permission from you prior to bidding. This will accomplish the same goal and won't piss off your webmasters and more importantly, avoid the bad press...
WG

It's not that you can't send traffic to digitalplayground.com it's that you can't re-direct straight do digitalplayground.com because google's policy is that a site can only have one ppc listing. google deams a url based on where you land after a re-direct so if you're re-directing straight to digitalplayground then you will black us out.

We have filed trademark policies with google. It was also important to do right by the Affiliates and notify them directly instead of just denying payouts.

but organic listings still ok on those terms?

hypothetically speaking top 10 for Jesse Jane and sending traffic to DP.... that still ok?

Hypothetically speaking for that term and others

If they are 'enforcing' their mark, they need to take those down as well.