I think by now all advertisers, merchant and affiliates alike had been affected by recent changes at Google AdWords. Inconsistency of their policies will eventually bite them back, but it may be to late. My personal opinion is that it is Google desire to introduce CPA advertisement model, drives them to go after affiliate site’s. But if they were smart they would turn to affiliates for recommendations instead of driving them away. Who knows better about CPA model than affiliates themselves? But you can not operate CPA on a robot, human-kind businesses relationship is needed for CPA to be a success. It cannot simply be run on a robot, and once in a while be corrected (as Google is doing recently) by hand. The funny part is that when you stop/pause your campaigns, big message runs across your screen saying that your adds are not running (well, duh! I just turned the off) and if they can help me. I other words Google is telling me, we do not want your pages on AdWords but if you insist and give us $10 a click we may allow you back. Now if they have done in across AdWords, they can get away with not disclosing the details. But I personally have two different campaigns running on AdWords, both use same keywords, both use same ad copies, both direct to the same page. One campaign runs just fine at .05-.50 per click, the other one is stopped by Google and the asking $5-10 a click to reactivate my words. I think this is not the way to go about it. Unfortunately it will take few moths for them to realize the stupidity of the changes they are trying to introduce. By that time it may be just simply too late. They will loose most of the advertisers at least those in affiliate businesses to Yahoo and MSN.
But maybe it is good. Remember, if not for Pepsi-Cola Coca Cola will never be on the top of soft drinks in America and otherwise. Maybe all will learn from mistakes and do the right by costomer