Bidding on brand terms is usually a grey area for search marketers. They can convert well and usually will have a positve ROI, but bidding on a competitors brand name or displaying their brand on your website can get you keep you from running ads on the engines or into legal trouble with the competitor.
Each search engine has different rules about bidding on trademarks. Google pretty much has the most open policy, however, their quality score alogrithm usually keeps many advertisers off the search results pages. Unless you have a generic brand name, you’ll usually only see between 2-5 competitors staying active for your own brand terms. For full disclosure, that 2-5 number is a very rough estimate, but basically, you won’t see pages and pages of companies on your brand terms like you might for more general terms. Yahoo is more strict with bidding on brand terms and has a policy that specifically covers bidding on or using trademarks in ad copy. In Yahoo, you either need to be a reseller for the company that owns the trademark or be an informative site that does not compete against the company owning the trademark. To be listed for trademarked terms in Yahoo, you will also usually need supportive content on your landing page to show that the page is relevant and you meet the above guidelines. Microsoft changed their trademark policy last year in order to put the responsbility of monitoring trademarks onto the trademark owners. Their policy is similar to Yahoo’s except for the fact that they try to stay out of any trademark disputes.
For each of the engines, either for appeasing an algorithm or abiding policy guidelines, it’s good to have content related to the trademarked brand terms you are bidding on. At the same time, you don’t want to cross any legal lines when adding the content to your site. Sarah Bird, a lawyer now working at SEOmoz has post about how to stay on the right side of the law with regards to using comparitve advertising on your site. She starts off by stating that each company or individual should first evaluate if the content is worth the risk being sued. Since you’ve read up to this point, I’m going to assume you feel the risk is worth it.
To make sure you are following trademark law, Sarah lists a few important points:
- All of your claims about your competitor’s product must be true.
- Comparative advertising must never be deceptive. Do not mislead consumers.
- If you make specific claims about your competitor’s product, be sure and have a third party substantiate those claims in a reasonable and thorough manner prior to running the ad. Don’t wait until you are sued to do the research that proves your claims. Document and substantiate your claims.
- Include a disclaimer indicating that you are not affiliated with your competitor in any way. I realize this is not intuitive. Why would people think you’re affiliated with your competitor when you are criticizing their product? The answer is that some courts have ruled that consumers who take a cursory look at the advertisement may recognize your competitor’s branding and then, without reading more, assume that you’re affiliated. I realize that having a disclaimer doesn’t really solve this quick association problem, but judges seem to think that it does, so follow their rules.
- Don’t manipulate your competitor’s trademark or logo in any way and always use the ® symbol if it is a registered trademark. “Don’t manipulate” means do not alter the shape or color of the logo or create a parody of your competitor’s trademark. Even if your product is bigger, faster, and stronger, you are still violating advertising laws if you alter your competitor’s logo in anyway. Respect the brand while you accurately point out the ways it is deficient to your product.
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