Why no other ads? Trademark?

[SpongeBob]

I've just started promoting a product in AdWords and found something strange. After looking around more I've found it happens elsewhere too, so I'll give you an example for a different product.

If you search for 'Star Trek' in Google you get no AdWords ads on the search result page. None. It's too popular a search term for people to be ignoring it - so aren't you allowed to bid on it?

If not, how come a search for 'Star Trek Toys' returns lots of AdWords ads? That still has the trademark in it.

This is also the case for a product I'm trying to promote. But my ad is now showing for (what I assume is) the trademark. There's one other ad too, but it feels lonely there, as if everyone else is avoiding it.

What I don't understand, though, is if we're not allowed to bid on the trademark why Google lets us? Is it up to us to know what we are or aren't allowed to bid on? And what happens if we do naively bid on it?

So I suppose my questions are:

1) Has anyone had experience of something similar? Is it that there's a trademark being enforced?

2) Am I supposed to know what I am and am not allowed to bid on, and are there legal repercussions?

3) How come people are allowed to (or at least do) bid on the trademark plus other words?

[gerry180]

Spongebob

Is it possible the others are bidding on broadmatch terms like trek toys, or star toys so when you search for star trek toys it stills shows the ad?

I noticed something similar after Christmas when it appeared someone was bidding on marks and spencer sale when actually the ad showed for just spencer sale.

Gerry

[SpongeBob]

Originally Posted by gerry180 Spongebob Is it possible the others are bidding on broadmatch terms like trek toys, or star toys so when you search for star trek toys it stills shows the ad? I noticed something similar after Christmas when it appeared someone was bidding on marks and spencer sale when actually the ad showed for just spencer sale. Gerry

Hi Gerry - that's easy to check - just done a quick google for 'star toys' and 'trek toys' and there was only 1 ad shown in total for them. So that doesn't appear to be the case.

Also, if you look at the adverts that appear for 'Star Trek toys' they almost all have 'Star Trek' in their title and adverts, so they're happily referring to it.

One possibility *could* be that the generic term (e.g. 'Star Trek') is too generic and doesn't convert as well as 'Star Trek toys', so people might not be bidding on the generic term rather than not being allowed to. I'm sure it would have a much lower ROI, but I'm still surprised that there (a) aren't people trying anyway on such a big name, and (b) that you couldn't make some return on it with the right advert to filter out people not interested in your product. E.g. if the ad was all about 'Star Trek toys' then even though the search was for the generic 'Star Trek' you should mainly get people interested in your ad clicking through.

So I'd still expect some ads for a search term like 'Star Trek', but as you can see there isn't a single one: star trek - Google Search

[gerry180]

I'm getting different results. PM'd you.

[SpongeBob]

Originally Posted by gerry180 I'm getting different results. PM'd you.

Thanks Gerry - got your PM with the screenshots. That's weird! I've also checked with the AdWords preview tool and get the same: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/...ingPreviewTool

Can some other people check too? Have a look at the following pages:

star trek - Google Search

trek toys - Google Search

What AdWords ads do you see? I get no ads for either of them. Is it just me?!

[SpongeBob]

Actually - it could be Google messing around. I find that if I do the search for 'trek toys' I get no adverts shown, no matter how many times I refresh. If I then search for 'Star Trek toys' I get some adverts. But then - if I do my original search again I now get some adverts!

So I get no ads initially, then Google sees me do another search and so when I redo the original search it must decide to include some adverts based on my 2nd search.

I have been using the Google Ad preview tool too, and that ought (so I believe) to show a truer representation of what ads appear for a search: https://adwords.google.co.uk/select/...ingPreviewTool

If I put 'Star Trek' in there I get no ads, but I do for 'Star Trek Toys'.

[aotagain]

I get nothing as well.

I've been doing PPC for a while and a couple of things spring to mind:

It can often take a long time for trademarked adverts to get suspended by Google - I've had a few fashion ones take a month (don't know who is spotting them, Google or manufacturer) - it was very unclear whether they were trademarks as there were plenty of other adverts as well - I suppose they had authorisation as product resellers.

Also it takes variable time for Google to penalise non-performing campaigns that fall below the %whatever level it requires. I had one adgroup for a single word running for 3 weeks at 0.3% until it dropped down, got less clicks and then rapidly required massive bid jumps from 10p to 50p, just to keep it running.

Also if you're running the term within a campaign that otherwise has a high CTR, the lower one might be 'invisible' to google for a while.

If its not trademarked, I'd guess at the end result being a big hike in required bid level.

Others might be using the term with lots of negative keywords, which might just give sufficient CTR if the ad. text is relevant to filter properly as someone said already.