Google AdWords trademark policy change
Monday 09 August 2010
TAGS: Affiliate marketing | Pay per click
Google has released details of a major change to its trademark policy in UK & Europe, which will come into play from 14th September 2010. Neil M Hancock, Search Marketing Manager at Silverbean explains what the change to the policy is.
UK Policy Change
The UK will now follow the existing policy in the US, whereby other advertisers are permitted to both bid on trademarked keywords and also use these within their ad text in some cases. This is likely to have a large impact on brand cost in some industries in particular, such as finance, travel and electronics.
Under the new AdWords policy, adverts will be allowed to include the trademarked term when:
- The advertiser uses the term in a descriptive or generic way and not in reference to the goods and services offered.
- The advertiser sells the corresponding goods and services.
- The advertiser sells components, replacement parts or compatible products.
- The advertiser is an informational site (they cannot sell the trademark owner or a competitor's product/service).
Aggregator sites, department stores and affiliate sites are likely to welcome the news, which should allow them greater opportunities to show specific adverts, whereas before they needed to remain generic. In turn, this is also likely to mean better CTR (click through rates), which will improve their quality score and make advertising on key terms a lot more affordable.
The results page on a term such as "ipod" is likely to change a great deal with iPod sellers and accessory vendors now being able to advertise more freely.
For more specific details on Google's new UK policy, the help page in the AdWords Help Centre has more details.
European Policy Change
As with the UK, Europe will be changing on the 14th September as well. Europe will now fall in line with the policy that has been seen in the UK, meaning that keywords are no longer protected from others bidding on them.
Advertisers will still be unable to put trademarked terms in the ad copy of their campaigns, however this is likely to have a big impact on brand budgets as we have initially seen in the UK.
Neil M Hancock is the Search Marketing Manager at Silverbean. If you have any questions or would like to discuss how Silverbean can help you achieve your marketing objectives via search engine marketing; please contact our resident PPC management using one of the following.
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