This week has seen the introduction of new rules allowing Google Adwords customers to bid on other peoples trademarks but is anybody doing it?
Initially on Tuesday (the day the policy change was enforced) we saw a large number of adverts for brand name terms but these ads are no longer showing.
We suspect that ads were being triggered by broad match terms and the advertisers didn't intentially target the trademarked terms.
Looking at the search results for brands such as Amazon, BBC, Tesco, Lastminute.com and Asda leaves me puzzled why there are not more competing retailers and affiliates bidding on the terms.
Of course an affiliate of Tesco would not be allowed to bid on "tesco" but they could bid on "asda".
The same applies for "amazon" - why are there no ads for competing book retailers?
Certain payday loan websites seem to be advertising on all the brand name terms but there is a distinct lack of real retailers taking advantage of the new rules.
Recommended reports
Delivering Successful E-commerce Projects
E-commerce project management is complicated at the best of times, given the sheer number of potential challenges involved. This report will help you navigate the challenges, whether you work on the client-side or supply-side.
Checkout Optimization Guide: 70 ways to increase conversion rates
Problems with the checkout process are still the biggest single source of revenue loss for most e-commerce businesses. This report identifies 70 awesome recommendations and includes lots of practical insight to help you reduce your checkout abandonment rates.
1:30PM on 8th May 2008
You've got to look at Quality Score and the issues there to get behind the scenes there. If someone searches [tesco] then that's a pretty clear indicator where they're looking to buy from. So, if you're ASDA and can't mention Tesco in your creative you've got yourself in a relatively high CPC and relatively low conversation rate... It's then easily understandable why retailers aren't rushing to be in that situation.
However, lets look at product trademarks. That's a different situation. At the start of the week only Apple was able to bid on [ipod]. Look at the PPC action on that keyword today; you'll find retailers and affiliates aplenty there.
4:32PM on 13th May 2008
It's also to do with google's double serving policy.
So in your example if Tesco are bidding on Asda and a Tesco affiliate is bidding on Asda, with both ads pointing to the tesco domain, adwords will only show one of the ads - presumably the highest score / bid combo...some affiliates try to get round this by changing the TLA (.co.uk vs .com) but that's usually spotted by competitors who report "double serving".
3:46PM on 19th January 2010
This has been an issue for many years - a frustrating one at that.