“Prohibited Paid Search Placement” means an advertisement
that you purchased through bidding on keywords, search
terms, or other identifiers (including Proprietary Terms)
or other participation in keyword auctions. “Proprietary
Term” means keywords, search terms, or other identifiers
that include the word “amazon,” “endless,” “Kindle,”
“smallparts,” “myhabit,” or “Javari,” or any other
trademark of Amazon or its affiliates ( see a non-
exhaustive list of our trademarks), or variations or
misspellings of any of those words (e.g., “ammazon,”
“amaozn,” “endlss,” “enldess,” “smalparts,” “kindel,” and
“javary”). “Redirecting Link” means a link that sends
users indirectly to the Amazon Site via an intermediate
site or webpage and without requiring the user to click on
a link or take some other affirmative action on that
intermediate site or webpage. “Search Engine” means Google,
Yahoo, Bing, or any other search engine, portal, sponsored
advertising service, or other search or referral service,
or any site that participates in any of their respective
networks.
Pinterest falls under both "Redirecting Link" and "Search Engine" parts of this clause.
In addition:
Section 10 requires affiliates sites to state they are an affilliate:
You must, however, clearly state the following on your
site: “[Insert your name] is a participant in the Amazon
Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising
program designed to provide a means for sites to earn
advertising fees by advertising and linking to [insert the
applicable site name (amazon.com, endless.com,
smallparts.com or myhabit.com)].”
1) Prohibited paid search placement: This only applies to bidding on placement on search engines. Pinterest has not bid on terms on their own site, so that section has no relevance even if Pinterest itself could be considered a search engine.
2) Redirecting links: This prohibits placing links that point to an intermediate page that then redirects to Amazon. Pinterest is linking directly to Amazon (with affiliate identifiers in the query string), not to an intermediate page that performs any redirection.
I think it has to be taken in the context of paid search placement. You can't arbitrage/hide the traffic source(and the keyword for paid search) from amazon through redirection.
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/gp/associates/agreement...
Specifically:
Pinterest falls under both "Redirecting Link" and "Search Engine" parts of this clause.In addition:
Section 10 requires affiliates sites to state they are an affilliate: