So is there a better way for PPC brand name bidding to be managed by a merchant?

Books Direct using an idea by Paul Wheatley and Fraser Edwards have been trialling an alternative and today have announced it’s official launch over on Affiliates4U.

In brief, Books Direct are funding the brand name bidding PPC which is managed under a unique affiliate account. Accounts generated via this channel earn commission and these commissions (presumably after costs), plus interestingly the network override generated, go into a prize pool. Affiliates generating sales and even clicks then have the chance to win the pool.

The prize pool is around £2600 after a couple of months – and has another 5 months to run! The idea is that “the profits generated through private allowances on brand activity will now be shared back to those affiliates who potentially risk losing commissions from their cookies being overwritten by brand cookies”.

To have a chance to win the overall pool (which on the above could be around £8000) you need to have a golden ticket. Every month 5 golden tickets and cash prizes of £50 will be awarded to 5 lucky winners drawn from everyone who has made sales (1 entry per sale) and 100 clicks (1 entry full stop).

This is quite a neat idea and fair play to Books Direct, Paul, Fraser and Affiliate Window for getting things underway.

Affiliates tend to like big prize incentives. So with the chance of walking away with a prize pool of possibly £8000 or more (or less) come the end of 2008 that’s going to surely make a number of affiliates take a closer look at Books Direct.

It will be interesting to see if other merchants adopt the same kind of model, and what kind of prize pool they generate from brand name bidding activity.