AdViking

As posted early last month Google finally opened it’s barriers and let advertisers ‘back in’ to bid against brand names. Whether it really was to do with the ‘Mr Spicy‘ ruling in the States or, as we suggested at the time, more to do with the bottom line, advertisers have flooded back to take advantage of the levelled playing field… Or have they… ?

One thing that Google have made clear is that, unlike Yahoo! and MSN, they will not allow brand names to be used in the written ads. So this causes one obvious and one not-so-obvious problem.

The obvious first: you can’t use the brand name! So, for example, if Peugeot have protected Peugeot then you can’t advertise ‘Peugeot’ in the advert unless authorised. Therefore you have to use tautology… “Brand New Pug” or “NewPeugeots” or “The Entire Range of the car you want”.

The not-so-obvious is more interesting… As you probably know - Google measures adverts by a Quality Score, this score has affects both the Minimum Bid as well as the Ad Position, meaning a poor performing ad must bid higher to achieve the same position.

Whilst this makes sense, one of the key variables to decide the quality score is … ad relevance… And the main defining factor is using keywords in ads.

Therefore, say you’re bidding on ‘Peugeot’, or phrases including ‘Peugeot’, and cannot use the word ‘Peugeot’ then relevance will drop, thereby increasing minimum bid and lowering position.

So the real test of where Google sits will be how (or whether) it adjusts Quality Score in light of it’s own policies.

Check AdViking for the latest on episode two of the trademark wars… ‘The Brands Strikes Back”!

AdViking notes that Google has just backed down on it’s full ‘Trademark Protection’ policy in the UK. It had previously allowed brand owners to block anyone advertising on their keywords or using their brand names in their adverts. Google claims that because this change of policy only affects keywords and not advert copy, it will stop passing off… but that depends on how clever the ad copy is!

The reality of the situation is that Google are opening the marketplace back up on these terms and, lets face it, once the competition starts up, then the brand owners are only one position of many.

However, AdViking believes that the takeup of such trademark protection was snowballing as increasing brand owners were taking advantage of it. Reports in the news that AdWords revenues were stalling was affecting share price and, hey, who are Google not to listen to their poor, starved, shareholders?

We also welcome the opening up because Trademark Protection policy was actually being used for price fixing… or at least attempts at price fixing. A few months ago you’d have loads of adverts on ‘cheap peugeot’ on Google UK, now there is only one.

So, bring on May 5th, when the market hots up again! Should be interesting…