It Was Too Good to Be True: A ClickRiver Story
Nov 14th, 2007 by msdanielle
The Scenario
Imagine you’re eight years old, and your parents own a grocery store. They sell fresh goods, produce and beverages, and household items. It’s a hot summer day and you’re bored. Being the natural-born entrepreneur that you are, you ask your parents if you can set up camp in front of their store and sell lemonade. They say, “Sure, why not, it can’t hurt. Let’s try it out for awhile.” Perfect.
You put up your stand near the outskirts of the store entrance, you make a nice sign, have your lemonade all ready, and you open for business. Your parents are sure you’ll fail, especially since they placed you near the trash can, but just to be safe they keep an eye on you. They watch how you work, see how you sell, what tactics you use. Your business grows and is thriving now, taking away their business of selling beverages on those hot summer days. And why wouldn’t you? It’s a free market, and you need a new bike.
Then one day your parents sit you down and say, “Sweetie, we’ve been watching your performance and you’re a great seller. You’re wonderful at what you do. But at the end of summer, we’re going to regulate you because you’re stealing too much of our business. You have until the end of August.”
“Damn. Foiled. They found me out. I knew it was too good. It’s because I was selling it for twenty four cents a cup instead of twenty five. And my sign is too attractive. Well it was good while it lasted.”
The Reality
I’m the little kid selling lemonade and Amazon is no longer allowing me to sell my lemonade without regulation. I’m taking their business.
Stefanie Hutson, Marketing Director of Vat19, gave me a heads-up that ClickRiver will be “segmenting” their PPC advertising program. From the way it sounds, they may be moving away from allowing all product advertisers to market their products side by side with theirs. D’oh! I should’ve gotten the email notice but since I’m using my personal “junk” email to manage my Amazon account, I overlooked it. Here’s the letter (my emphasis in bold):
Dear Clickriver Advertiser,
Thank you for participating in the Clickriver Ads beta test. Based on what we learned during the beta, we will soon be making some changes to the Clickriver program. In 2008, Clickriver Ads will shift away from retail advertising to focus on expanding placements and providing new promotional opportunities for service advertisers. Amazon.com’s recently launched Product Ads will become the primary program retailers use to advertise on the Amazon.com website.
Product Ads is a CPC advertising program that offers retailers an opportunity to advertise their products and prices on the Amazon Network. Product Ads leverages much of the Amazon shopping experience, from search results to full detail pages, and integrates those elements into product advertisements that drive shoppers directly to your website. Product Ads is an invitation only program that is growing category by category. As the program expands into your category you will be contacted by an Account Executive to get started. If you have any questions, please contact the Product Ads team at product-ads-signup [at] amazon.com.
In light of these developments, we will be changing Clickriver’s ad placements on Amazon.com, which will result in a reduction in the available impressions for many retail advertisers. These changes will not take effect until January 2008 to ensure that the volume of impressions you expect during the holiday season will be available to you…
Thank you for participating in the Clickriver beta. We hope that Clickriver Ads, and now Product Ads, will be an important part of your future advertising plans. If you have any questions about the changes to Clickriver, please sign-in to your Clickriver Ads account and click the Help Desk link at the top of the screen to contact Customer Support.
Best regards,
The Clickriver team
I just got spanked. And Dad just moved me to the back of the store behind the dog food and kitty litter. Hope someone will still see my sign.
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That sucks about the new policy. Don’t worry, we always kick it by the kitty litter sipping on lemonade.
if i can find a bunch who will, then i’m golden, baby! can you hold the sign up real high for me??
That’s an incredibly accurate summary of what I thought when I first saw the e-mail. The kitty litter bit almost made me choke on my morning Bawls.
I’m trying to figure out what Bawls are…please don’t choke on them
Great scenario post Ms. D
Interesting approach to what is happening
-Mike
Well it’s definitely not as bad as it sounds! Bawls is a high caffeine/guarana drink, kind of like Red Bull except that the cherry kind is much tastier than Red Bull ( http://www.bawls.com/cherry.html ).
i love guarana!
wow it has caffeine and guarana in it… that’s like caffeine and more caffeine. that’s crazy. i’ve never seen that here in LA. it’s an interesting breakfast 
i always used my junk mail address for most things too, and I usually end up regretting it when something important slips through the cracks. sorry to hear about the predicament. the new policy sucks!
I thought it was a different bawls. Don’t worry Danielle, those bawls are good for you. :mr.green:
hey, anyone have any good ideas on how to milk services through clickriver?
Hmm. Are you sure this means you’re going to get bounced from advertising side by side with their products? It seems like they only intend to do that if there is a service ad that would be a better fit. Such as a professional installer to put in your new car radio…
http://www.amazon.com/MimoUSA-4-TV-DVD/dp/B000ULLL16/ref=pd_bbs_6?ie=UTF8&s=automotive&qid=1195178542&sr=8-6
I’m going to try to get some answers tomorrow. A service company I do work for received an email from a clickriver rep today about joining in on their new service ads.