iMedia: Are You Getting What You Pay For?

NetPlusMarketing's Michael Comins points out that a great deal of search marketing winds up attracting the people who would have wound up on the marketer's site in the first place. That, plus affiliate issues and search marketing (SEM) firms that employ "branded" keywords, means that many marketers are effectively paying twice for transactions. He suggests prohibiting affiliate partners from using branded names, insisting that SEM firms break out their work by keyword so that marketers can see what they're really paying for and keeping tabs on the performance of brand names as keywords.