“UK policy reflects US AdWords rules.”
The latest controversial amendments made to Google’s search advertising system could see Scottish companies facing significantly higher marketing costs. The UK PPC Blog reports that Google AdWords UK has modified its trademark guidelines for the UK and Ireland bringing it to be more aligned with the US policy.
Under the present system, only the proprietor of a trademarked word can buy the attached sponsored links, and they are able to do so at a relatively low rate. For example, if a person types in Bank of Scotland, then only the bank’s official sites appear on the right-hand side of the search engine page.
Now Google intends to do apply the same it did in the US four years ago and open up the auction method for the sponsored links space, meaning the highest-ranking, and therefore most commercially valuable spot, will go to the highest bidder, not necessarily the company that owns the trademarked name.
Google’s move to open trademarks to challenging bidder in the UK and Ireland should bring about a nice boost to the search ad company’s revenue stream. Prior to the decision, trademark holders could appeal to Google about ads driven by their brand names to have them removed.
“The good news for gamey affiliates and dreadful for real brands,” UK-based PPC Blog said.
For the past few years, Google has had a Europe-wide rule which allowed trademark owners to restrict the use of their trademark by others in the Adwords program. However, Google has persistently avoided implementing this in the US and where any case has been brought against them – they have generally settled out of court.
Now basically put, this means that the search giant has put an end to its previous system in which a registered trademark could not be bid on by competitors. Previously, rival companies could only show ads for trademarked terms by “broad matching” against other words in the search query — for example, a search for “bigmouthmedia search agency” could also show ads for competitors using the broad match keyword “search agency”.
Doubts have been brought up over the legitimacy of the move, with some branding experts claiming the change is likely to spark a major challenge in the courts. Google contests this, claiming it has carried out an extensive legal review and is satisfied that the planned changes meet with UK trademark law.
Nevertheless, spokeswoman for the Advertising Standards Agency stated it had received industry complaints that the move went against rules, and was looking into them.
Andrew Girdwood, head of search at Bigmouthmedia — the UK’s largest digital marketing company — said Google’s move was “massive” and would immediately change the relationship his company had with all its major clients.
He said some of BigMouth’s bigger clients were paying as little as 1p a click for the Google-sponsored link space. He said: “That will change and could go up to as much as £5 as people starts to bid more and more.”
As such this furthermore means is that if I bid on my own trademark — the price I have to pay per click will be raised by anyone being allowed to compete to appear on the screen. So as the trademark owner — I will have to pay MORE to bid on my own trademark.
At the back of the decision is the aim is that Google cannot be held responsible for policing other people’s trademarks. In their statement, they say “Our trademark complaint investigations will no longer result in Google monitoring or restricting keywords for ads served to users in the UK and
Ireland.” Google is trying to say, “We would not investigate this any more — it is not our fault.”
The Google Announcement That Reads As Follows:
Hello,
We’re writing to inform you that we’re changing our trademark complaint
procedure in the UK and Ireland. This change may affect how we handle the
trademark complaint you currently have on file with Google.
If you’ve submitted a complaint letter requesting that we prevent
advertisers from using certain trademark terms anywhere in their ad text, we
will continue our efforts to support your request. However, from May 5,
2008, our trademark complaint investigations will no longer result in Google
monitoring or restricting keywords for ads served to users in the UK and
Ireland. This will bring our procedure in line with the approach taken in
the US and Canada. Complaints received on or after today will be processed
under our revised procedure.
You do not need to file your trademark complaint with us again unless you
would like to amend it based on the new guidelines. For more detailed
information regarding our trademark complaint procedure, we invite you to
review our revised complaint procedure, posted online at
http://www.google.co.uk/tm_complaint.html.
To learn more about this trademark policy revision, please visit
http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=92877&hl=en_US.
Sincerely,
Advertising Legal Support Team
In addition, the change in policy is likely to be a remarkable game changer for affiliate marketing campaigns. Conventionally, affiliates are engaged to work inside a strongly restrictive brand bidding controls agreed with their clients. Google’s alteration means that companies will need to think about removing the restrictions on brand bidding so that a competitor’s adverts can be displaced by affiliates.
Initiating open keyword bidding in the UK and Ireland is sure to be a huge money generator for Google and would seem to be a quick antidote to Google’s flattened share value after reports of ad click growth leveling off.