PPC-Advice.com

Whoa, didn’t see this one coming.  In a surprising move yesterday, Google announced that advertisers would be allowed to use trademarked terms in their search ads, making for quite the conversation piece admidst legal uncertainty surrounding rights-holders.  The older rule allowed advertisers to request Google remove trademark and brand names from ad text, thereby providing some protection for owners.  Is this good or bad?  Depends which side of the fence you’re sitting on.

This policy is good for…

• Large retailers that are certified resellers or distributors of brand name merchandise for which they are legally licensed to advertise in other media.  They’ll likely be the first to be approved to use brand names and trademarked terms.
• Affiliate marketers.  Never fear in-house affiliate managers, you’ll still have the power to manage affiliates through your own program terms, and possibly enforce your own brand/trademark protection rules independently.
• Generically-named brand/trademark holders.  Should generic terms like “American Airline(s)” should be restricted in ad text?  What if an advertiser wanted to bid on and rank well (good Quality Score) but not be allowed to use ad text like “The Friendly American Airline, Southwest” or something…
• The economy.  With advertising dollars shrinking, some advertisers may not want to pay for low ranking ads that follow the rules of brand/trademark protection but rank low due to poor quality score.

This policy is bad for…

• Google.  Surprisingly, Google put themselves in an awkward position by saying they would allow their own brand name to be used in ads, if the ad abided by other policies in place.
• Affiliate managers.  Keeping a tight grip on your affiliate policies just got harder to enforce.  Sorry to say, I’d hate to still be in the affiliate management game right now.
• Management efforts of Google’s “Anti-policy” which dictates acceptable use of terms used in ad text so as not to defraud, demean companies or people, etc.

We’ll have to see what shakes out of this over the next few weeks, but expect a legal show like no other, surely!  Sweeping legal decisions made at Google such as these have a history of going over poorly with large advertisers, so it will be interesting to see what happens.  Most large advertisers and brands have aired their dirty laundry with the older rule, which they already considered “lax”.