Adwords to Ban CPA Affiliate Free Trial/Rebill Offers and Fake Endorsements?

[Catalyst eMarketing]

This is pretty big news if it's true.

Wasn't sure if it belonged in the PPC forum or the CPA forum, so decided to post it here for general information and let a mod move it if they so choose.

Someone posted a letter that looks and sounds official to me. It was received from Adwords saying they soon will not allow CPA free trial/rebill offers and other "Unacceptable Business Practices" including fake celebrity endorsements.

Big Heads Up For Adwords Advertizers

Dear AdWords Advertiser,

We’re writing to let you know about a change to Google’s advertising policies that could affect your AdWords account.

Beginning in the coming weeks, we’ll no longer accept ads that promote Unacceptable Business Practices. This includes, but is not limited to, negative option or unclear billing, the sale of normally free items or services, and false celebrity endorsements.

Negative option billing specifically relates to sites that offer free trials, services, or other offers in conjunction with a subscription service. Sites in violation of this policy automatically enter users into a subscription if they do not cancel within the pre-determined trial period.

In order to comply, these pages must contain an opt-in checkbox that contains the price and billing interval of the subscription service on the page where a user enter their billing information.

When we make this change any URLs in violation of this policy may be submitted for Landing Page Quality disabling. Once this has been completed you will have 10 days to make any necessary changes to your website in order to comply before the disabling will take effect. We ask that you make changes to your ads and/or website to comply, so that your campaigns can continue to run.

As a business, Google must make decisions regarding the advertising we accept. We’ve given much thought to our stance on this content, as well as the potential effect our policy decision could have on AdWords advertisers, and we apologize for any inconvenience it may cause you.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords Team

Note: The part in bold is not up to the affiliates. They are not saying the disclosure needs to be on the affiliate's landing page, it needs to be on the payment page, so affiliates will need to find offers that comply with Google's new rules if they want to continue to run their free trial, rebill offers.

Note 2: The part in RED is good news because for a change they are giving advertisers notice and a chance to correct the problem instead of just banning accounts.

What do you think?

[Scott Ames]

Dang it. Where can I advertise my scams now?

Anyway, what does this mean? "the sale of normally free items or services"

[Multinetting]

I have to say Google is one of the worst converting PPC for CPA anyway. Yahoo and MSN are a lot better. For me anyway. One of the reasons is the cost per click negates the CPA payment in many cases.

[Catalyst eMarketing]

Originally Posted by Scott Ames

Anyway, what does this mean? "the sale of normally free items or services"

Scott, I was a bit confused about that too. I guess if we can't figure it out it probably means it doesn't apply to us.

[Catalyst eMarketing]

No Adwords is not saying no CPA, they are just saying no "negative option or unclear billing, the sale of normally free items or services, and false celebrity endorsements."