*Clarity In Marketing

Google has announced a revision to its AdWords Trademark Policy. From 5 May 2008, your competitors will be able to use trademarks registered in the UK and Ireland as keyword triggers for their AdWords campaigns. Also, keywords that were disabled as a result of a trademark complaint and investigation will no longer be restricted in the UK and Ireland.

For example, Tesco Telecoms will be able to use ‘BT’ as a keyword trigger so when someone searches for ‘BT’ in Google an ad for Tesco Telecoms will appear. Hitwise UK report that navigational searching like this (ie. searching for a product or company by name) is on the rise. They report that in 2007, 76.0% of search volume for the top 2,000 terms was navigational in nature, up from 63.6% in 2006 and 58.2% in 2005.

So what does this mean for your business?

Well, it’s a two-edged sword. Your competitors’ offers will now be able to appear next to search results for your products and brands but you’ll also be able to advertise next to theirs. For smaller businesses the opportunity could well out-weigh the threat. You’ll be able to target your AdWord campaigns to appear in highly relevant searches.

5 Tips for AdWords Trademark Advertising

1. Google each of your competitors brand names to see what offers they are making in the search results.
2. Craft an offer that directly relates to your competitors’ brand names and highlights the advantages you offer, eg. cost, speed, quality, etc.
3. Create a specific landing page for each offer, optimised to convert visitors
4. A/B test your offer and landing page to fine tune it
5. Keep on testing and tweaking your campaign to get the best results

Don’t forget your competitors may also be running AdWord campaigns on the same keywords so keep an eye on the offers they are making too.

Protecting Your Trademarks

There’s a number of options you should consider to protect traffic from your brand names but at very least you should regularly Google them to see what your competitors are up to. Other options include paying for sponsored links in Google that appear at the top of the search results and running your own AdWord campaigns for your brand names.

If you believe your trademark is being violated by the text of the ad itself, Google will continue to perform limited courtesy investigations and you may be able to take further action.

If you’d like to know more about running successful AdWord campaigns, protecting your trademarks, or reclaiming domains that use your trademarks from third parties, contact Clarity In Marketing.

Update on May 12, 2008 by Mike Lewis

Well it looks like nobdy wants to start a war with eConsultancy reporting that retailers are not taking advantage of trademark keywords in Google Adwords.

Patrick Altoft on the eConsultancy website says:

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?