Google introduces a new trademark policy on 5 May. The IAB’s Programmes Manager, Jack Wallington, discusses how this will affect advertisers.

Sunday, 6 April 2008

Up until now Google has restricted advertisers from bidding on their competitor’s trademarked terms in the UK. On the 5th of May this will change as Google introduces a new trademark policy.

Google’s new trademark policy is quite clear, allowing you to bid on competitor trademarks but still won’t allow you to include the trademark within the advert text without permission. This has obvious repercussions for advertisers because it suddenly means you could have competition on your trademarked terms when you haven’t before, potentially causing inflation in the cost of your trademarks as keywords.

In line with the US

For the rest of the world this policy is nothing new; the US and Canada have been using it for years. UK trademark law and the internet has historically been a fairly grey area however, preventing the policy being brought across the Atlantic until now.

What’s changed?

Yahoo! UK has always had a fairly similar policy to Google’s new policy, allowing advertisers to bid on trademarks as long as the landing page includes content about that trademark. Recently a company tried to sue Yahoo for allowing competitor advertisers to bid on their trademark. This case was taken to the English High Court and won by Yahoo! – essentially setting the precedent and possibly leading to Google’s new position.

Relevancy

It’s not all doom, gloom and increased competition for you. Google’s pay per click business model isn’t just about being the highest bidder. Like natural search, paid search now also incorporates relevancy in its results.

The most relevant website to a person’s search term will be placed higher up the paid results as well as natural. This could mean that even when you are paying less than other companies for your own trademark brand, your website will still take the number one slot because you will always own the most relevant destination.

Ad copy

As mentioned above, the new policy still prevents other advertisers from including trademarks in ad copy without permission. Even if other companies can bid on your trademark, unless you’ve given permission your ad will still be the only one with the trademark in it. People searching for a brand are most likely to be looking for the brand website, so the majority of traffic is still likely to flow to the ad containing the trademark they searched for.

Better for the consumer

Search engines are built on the service they provide to consumers. While trademark owners may be feeling a sense of unease, Google’s new trademark policy is undeniably a positive step for the consumer and a flag in the sand for consumer choice.

Trademark best practice

If you want to know more about trademarks in search marketing, the IAB will be publishing a best practice resource for advertisers around this subject in June. The resource is created by the IAB Search Council.