Sam Engel's presentation from ASW 2015

1. Affiliate Summit West 2015

2. Affiliate Legal Issues:
3 Immediate Action
Items
January 19, 2014

3. BRAND PROTECTION
What We do at BrandVerity:
 Provide brand protection and
compliance solutions
 Goal: more transparency in
affiliate
marketing (elevate the industry)
 Monitor and protect hundreds
of brands across the web
THE TM
SPECIALIST
Sam Engel
Marketing Manager
BrandVerity

4. BRAND PROTECTION
AFFILIATES SHOULD ENHANCE YOUR
BRAND
 Add value
 Support your brand message
 Comply with regulations and limit your risk

5. BRAND PROTECTION
ENSURING THAT AFFILIATES LIMIT YOUR REGULATORY
RISKS
 Industry-specific regulations
 Disclosure
 What are the risks?
 Who’s responsible?

6. BRAND PROTECTION
ENSURING THAT AFFILIATES STRENGTHEN YOUR BRAND
MESSAGE
 How do affiliates promote your
brand?
 Is their message consistent with
yours?
 How do you keep track of this at
scale?

7. BRAND PROTECTION
ENSURING THAT AFFILIATES ADD VALUE
 Carefully evaluate affiliates who
apply to your program
 Have a trademark bidding policy –
and enforce it
 Focus on incremental sales

8. BRAND PROTECTION
TAKING ACTION
STEP 1: APPROVAL PROCESS
 Avoid auto-approval at (nearly) any cost
 Ask tough questions
 Understand how each affiliate will:
 Drive traffic
 Represent your brand

9. BRAND PROTECTION
BRAND PROTECTION
TAKING ACTION
STEP 2: ONGOING PROCESS
1. Develop regulatory and brand guidelines for affiliates
2. Create a reasonable process to support guidelines
-Monitor for changes after affiliate is approved
-Review brand placement on affiliate websites
3. Follow process and enforce compliance

10. BRAND PROTECTION
WHAT’S A REASONABLE PROCESS? —
SMALL/MEDIUM BUSINESS
 Review websites of top-producing affs at
regular intervals (quarterly, annually)
 Quarterly searches for brand name
variations
 Check on suspicious conversion rates
 Quarterly review of Twitter activity
 Random audits

11. BRAND PROTECTION
WHAT’S A REASONABLE PROCESS? —
HIGHLY REGULATED INDUSTRY
 Review all affiliate websites weekly
 Review every time an offer changes
 Monthly searches for brand name
variations
 Monthly examinations of social media
activity (Twitter, Facebook, etc.)

12. BRAND PROTECTION
HOW DO I ENFORCE COMPLIANCE?
 Affiliate Hijacking: immediate removal from program
 Other Paid Search Violations: 3 strike system
 Inappropriate or Off-Brand Content: depends on severity
 Regulatory Issue: propose a fix, disable aff link