Working With Trademarks in PPC
Trademark issues can often be a source of great frustration for those managing PPC accounts. Many advertisers have witnessed competitors using their trademarks in ad copy, or have had ads disapproved for a legitimate use of a brand name that they sell, repair, or provide support for.
When I first started out in digital marketing, my first job was on Google AdWords’ UK and Ireland customer support team. Given that a significant proportion of queries received by this team via email and phone concerned advertiser issues with AdWords policies, it has always been essential for team members to have a thorough knowledge of such policies.
Dealing with trademark policy issues were a daily feature of working in this team, and in this post I hope to provide greater clarity on some of Google AdWords’ policies and procedures in this area, drawing from my extensive experience at Google, Bing and latterly in agency-land over the past 8.5 years.
Do note than trademark policies vary by country, and I’m speaking here primarily about Google AdWords search campaigns from a UK and Irish perspective. EU/EFTA countries are covered by a single Google AdWords trademark policy, which simplifies things in the majority of European markets.
Protecting Trademark Owners
First up, regardless of what trademark issues you have experienced or your feelings on the subject, it has to be stated that the fundamental reason such policies exist is to protect the intellectual property of the trademark owner. Everything else flows from this, and platform providers like Google and Bing strive to balance protection for trademark owners with offering end customers a choice when such terms are searched for, and of course to make sure they benefit from advertiser revenue from the same.
On Google AdWords, it is completely legal for advertisers to bid on trademarked or brand terms as keywords in all markets and I’ve touched on this area in a somewhat related post on competitor bidding. So, if you are annoyed at competitors coming up for searches on your terms, sorry, but that matter should be taken up directly with the other advertiser — Google typically cannot help you out here.
However, if you spot another advertiser using your brand term in ad copy then you can take action!
First up, you need to check if your brand term being used is actually registered as a legal trademark in the market you are advertising in. If it’s not, then you’ll need to complete this process with the relevant authorities before you can go further.
Assuming that your brand terms are trademarked, you can use this form to advise Google to register your trademarks with them for protection on AdWords. For smaller advertisers, the business owner or someone senior can generally complete this form, but in larger entities this is best handled by the legal department. The information requested by the form is straightforward, but since it is a legal document, it needs to be filled out thoroughly and correctly with appropriate contact details for verification.
The form allows you the opportunity to “whitelist” any of your own AdWords accounts, as well as any third party account you wish to authorise for use of your trademark terms. It also allows you the ability to report current violations of your soon to be protected brand terms. Generally, this process can take a couple of weeks. Those using your trademarks should have their ads disapproved during this process, and won’t be able to recreate them with the trademark term in place.
For more information, see here
But I Should Be Able to Use This Term…….
The previous section dealt with issues trademark owners may experience on AdWords, but what if you have “real world” rights to sell or promote a particular product or service that is subject to trademark protection or restriction on Google AdWords? Not being able to reference such brand names in ad copy may put you at a disadvantage in your search campaigns. Google will not accept your word, nor any documents, that may confirm your relationship with the trademark owner.
Instead, you must ask your contact at the trademark owner side for authorisation to use their trademarks in your ad copy via this form. Often you may have to ask your contact to refer this to their legal team or head office, and the onus is on you to get their side to complete the form and submit it to Google in a timely fashion. This can be particularly frustrating for smaller advertisers seeking permissions to use big brand names in their ads.
Naturally, there are times when the trademark term has another more generic meaning or applies in a different context. For example, “Apple” is rigorously protected as a trademark on Google, but if you were advertising products or services related to the fruit, you would be able to request an exception from Google.
On a side note, don’t be tempted to use a misspelling or variation of the trademarked term to get around such restrictions. Google generally have such cases covered, and I’ve seen ad copy with “1phone” “ifone” “|phone” all disapproved! Keyword insertion also won’t work for trademarked terms.
For more information, see here
Resellers & Informational Sites
For advertisers based in the US, the UK, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand and Australia the restrictions around trademark use are less onerous. If your landing page is dedicated to selling the brand name product or service, or providing components, peripherals or repairs of the product, or if the page is dedicated to providing information about goods and services related to the trademark, you can use the trademark term without needing to get approval from the trademark owner directly.
So if you are a sportswear retailer selling branded products such as runners from Nike, Adidas, etc. on your website, you should not need to get prior approval from the trademark owner to reference such terms in your products. Similarly, if you are a hotel owner or similar, sites such as booking.com or expedia.com would be able to use your trademarked terms in ad copy under this policy.
If you continually run into trademark issues with Google under this policy, it may be best to get authorisation from the trademark owner via the form in order to minimise stress and downtime in terms of setting up ads.
See here for more information on this aspect of Google trademark policy
Bing Ads
All of the information in this post so far has concerned itself with AdWords trademark policies, as the dominant search ad provider. However, Bing Ads has its own trademark policies, which again vary by country. Broadly speaking, Bing’s trademark policy is very similar to AdWords. Microsoft state they allow fair use of trademarks in ad copy in the following cases:
· Use of a trademarks by a reseller
· Informational sites, e.g. product reviews
· Ordinary dictionary use of the term
· Comparative advertising supported by independent research
One key difference in trademark policy between the ad platforms is that in certain countries, Microsoft will go one step further and restrict keyword use of trademarked terms if requested to do so by the trademark owner.
If you are a trademark owner using Bing Ads, you can register your trademark with Microsoft and/or report trademark misuse by others using this form.
Full details of Bing Ads trademark policies are available here
Looking Ahead
As with all advertising policies, those in the trademarks sphere are subject to updates and changes. In general, there has been a trend over the past few years to “liberalise” policies in this area. This is naturally in Google and Bing’s interest in terms of advertiser revenue. However, this area is influenced heavily by the intellectual property laws of each country, and there will continue to be court cases that seek to challenge aspects of this policy, often with Google and Bing being the subjects of litigation.
The AdWords reseller policy is the crux of the matter in the current case of Ryanair’s recent litigation proceedings against eDreams and Google in Ireland’s High Court. In the below example, eDreams, as a travel aggregator site, can freely bid on Ryanair as a keyword and also use this brand name in the ad copy and display URL in an attempt to poach valuable traffic on the Ryanair brand keyword. Clicking on this ad will take you to a landing page that is skinned similarly to the ryanair.com website. Thus, you may begin to see the logic in Ryanair’s central argument in their litigation, in that customers are being misled into thinking they are booking flights directly with Ryanair.
Basically, eDreams are virtually forcing Ryanair to engage in brand bidding if they wish to gain first place position on the search results for their own brand term, something cost-conscious Ryanair are probably loathe to do. You don’t have to be cynical to see that Google benefit by doing nothing or even fighting this in court, as they naturally stand to make a lot of money if Ryanair engage in brand bidding. Equally, Google stand to lose money if they clamp down on eDreams, who are, after all, adhering to Google policies in terms of trademarks and ad copy as a reseller. How they skin their website is up to them.
It will be interesting to see how far this case as any ruling in the Irish or European courts may have implications for Google trademark policy across Europe, and possibly beyond, since previous European Court of Justice (ECJ) rulings have set the precedent for the current trademark policies on AdWords.
Richard Talbot is Head of Paid Search & Display Advertising at Tinderpoint, a full-service digital marketing agency based in Dublin, Ireland. With almost a decade of PPC account management experience gained at Google, Bing and latterly in agency-land, Richard has helped hundreds of clients squeeze the value from each paid click. He regularly trains, lectures and speaks at Irish digital marketing events.
Tinderpoint is both a Google AdWords Premier Partner and Bing Ads Partner
