Google Adwords Trademarks – The Unlevel Playing Field

May 22, 2009 Google Adwords 2 Comments

Although Google have relaxed the rules on Adwords advertisers being able (or not) to use trademarked phrases in Adwords adverts, there is still an unlevel playing field in some situations.

For those that don’t know, it used to be possible to register a company trademark with Google and although that wouldn’t stop people having adverts appear when that trademark phrase was typed, it would at least stop the advertiser from using that trademark phrase in the Google search results.   For example, if you type a phrase such as ‘Toyota Hilux’ you may see adverts appear in the Sponsored Listings but it would be rare to see the word ‘Toyota’ in those adverts because it’s been registered as a trademark with Google.

Where it becomes more complicated is when phrases are deemed (by Google) to be linked to medical issues and Google are pretty hot on stopping advertisers from using such phrases in their adverts.   Here’s a story about Botox …

A couple of years ago, as an advertiser, if someone typed a phrase such as ‘botox courses’ you could have an advert appear in Google Sponsored Listings that had the word ‘Botox’ in it as much as you wanted it to be.  Then (I suspect through a combination of the Botox trademark owner and Google also seeing Botox as being a medical-related word), Google stopped advertisers from doing this.   If you type a phrase such as ‘botox training’ into Google (UK) you’ll see adverts appearing for advertisers that aren’t allowed to use the word ‘Botox’ in their adverts, but have found creative ways around the problem.   For example, look at the screenshot below to see how two advertisers have used ‘BTX’ instead of ‘Botox’ to get round the challenge:

 

It’s not ideal, but using BTX does at least give those advertisers some options.

However, there’s an unlevel playing field because one of the other companies that displays in the Sponsored Links is displaying with the word ‘Botox’ very much prominent in their adverts, as you can see below:

So it begs the question of why it’s possible for one company, offering the same type of service as the other advertisers that appear when the phrase ‘botox training’ is typed, to be allowed to use the word ‘Botox’ in their advert text?

On behalf of our client who also offers Botox training courses we contacted Google by email and phone.  Four times in total over a period of months.   Each time we were told that Google couldn’t comment on the adverts of other advertisers but that yes, Botox was a phrase that shouldn’t be allowed in adverts and that they’d get it rectified.  As can clearly be seen here, it hasn’t been rectified and, understandably, the other advertisers are losing out because of the unlevel playing field that penalises them as follows …

1. Someone types the phrase ‘botox training’ (or variations of).
2. They see several adverts appear but only one has the actual word ‘Botox’ in it.
3. They click on that advert as a preference because it’s clearly what they were looking for, whereas the ‘BTX’ type variations don’t have that same ‘feel good’ factor.
4. By clicking on that advert more than the other adverts, that advertiser gets not only more clicks to their website, but their click-through-rate (CTR) becomes stronger, which means that the competitors end up spending more budget to try and keep their advert positioning high.

Yes, we’re looking at yet another example of Google failing advertisers and in this case it’s all about them having poor processes to deal with advertiser concerns.   The situation is simple:

1. One advertiser is being given priority treatment over other advertisers.
2. Complaints have been raised and supposedly the situation is being reviewed.
3. Several months later, nothing has changed.

And Google wonder why their advertising revenues are down!  Yes, it’s got something to do with recession but much of it is down to the fact that they are clueless about understanding what their advertisers concerns are, and then acting upon them.  This leads advertisers to look at alternative ways in which to promote their businesses, which leads to decreased revenues for Google. 

This is just one example of advertiser disatisfaction, solely related to the unlevel playing field in the Sponsored Results, but add this to the issues that many advertisers have and the fact that those advertisers will find other ways to promote their businesses, and you will see the gradual decline of Google due to the fact that it just doesn’t understand that its real future success comes not from the big boy advertisers but from the millions of small companies worldwide.

And if Google don’t listen to those ’small’ advertisers now then by the time the Google heads are out of the sand, those small advertisers won’t be interested in what Google are offering because they’ll have found other ways to generate business growth.