Intellectual property rights for search marketers tackled for the first time
For the first time the Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) Search Council has brought together Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! to collaborate on help and guidance aimed at increasing transparency around search engines’ sales practices and policies.
This is a world first. To see major players in the industry collaborating like this has empowered the IAB to produce an invaluable help centre for advertisers. It is a giant leap forward in the education process to help marketers make informed decisions about a relatively new form of marketing which places so much responsibility on the advertisers themselves.
- Guy Phillipson, IAB’s Chief ExecutiveThe Search Help Centre, a response to industry feedback on previous initiatives, is an essential online destination for regularly updated information and solutions to common search marketing issues such as intellectual property rights, trademarks and privacy.
Protecting intellectual property is a growing area of concern as all search engines and agencies have different policies, therefore marketers need to understand what campaign intellectual property they own if they wish to swap agency, for example.
Campaign keyword lists, campaign history (web stats), and click costs are valuable properties and the IAB believes its new recommendations will help advertisers make more informed decisions when signing contracts.
All new and updated topics are explained including the differences between search engines’ policies in a jargon-free way. These include:
The new, free, resource also offers practical advice to help advertisers hire a search agency. A checklist ensures nothing is missed during the agency presentation and selection process. It covers every step from inviting agencies to pitch, listing the materials to ask for, the materials to make available and finally, the steps to hiring an agency.
The new IAB Search Help Centre can be found here, which aims to be the UK’s number one destination for search engine marketing materials for advertisers. The IAB search section is already home to the Search Handbook which was also produced by the council. Content came from a collaboration of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo!, plus a select panel of agencies and advertisers, all of which are recognised experts on paid-for and natural search engine marketing, or emerging tools such as behavioural and geo targeting.
The IAB will be receiving industry feedback about the resource until 31 July 2008. If you have any comments please email Jack.
