PPC and trademarks

[marclittlemore]

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I'm a relative newbie at PPC and I just wanted some advice from you guys as to what you can and can't do with PPC campaigns and trademarks.

I've had a good read of this thread about Google's new trademark policies but I'm still a little unclear.

So as an example, let's say I have a site about digital cameras. Can I bid on specific product names, for example "Canon Ixus 80"? Are specific product names trademarked or is it generally just a branding issue (i.e. I couldn't display an ad with just "Canon" in it)?

Having a quick Google for "Canon Ixus 80" there are at least two affiliate sites in the paid search results so I'm guessing it's ok but I just wanted a clarification before I started trying to set up PPC campaigns.

Thanks,
Marc

[Shane]

you can bid on pretty much anything you wish to now but :

A) you may not be able to have a trademark in your advert if the advertiser has a trademark restriction in there, (but you can still bid on the trademark)
and
B) you may not be able to bid high/dumb enough to get your advert to even show.

Google can be greedy on trademarks so before you go off and and spend a week building a site because you only see 2/3 adverts for something like "virgin credit card" don't assume it's because nobody has tried very hard to get on there

The lack of coverage could be that Google want's more money than most can afford and the only ones there are either on a great deal which you couldn't compete with or are making very little if anything.

[marclittlemore]

Thanks for your reply Shane.

So with regards to trademark restrictions, is there any way to know if "Canon Ixus 80" is a trademark or do you just have to try it and see?

Yeah, I've seen a couple of things which I hope might have a decent volume but currently have low competition but I want to start out slowly and not get burnt with high volume but low CTR. And I'm definitely not heading towards the financial sector!

I was going to try my luck with Yahoo to begin with as I set up an account a while back with the free voucher from Kirsty's site (...thanks Kirsty and I hope you got your commision!) I tried a bit of PPC a while ago but I think I didn't fully appreciate how best to create keywords and a good landing page. I probably still don't but I have a lot more knowledge now so fingers crossed!

[Shane]

Two ways to know if a term has a trademark restriction on adwords :

First .. do a search for it and see how many ads contain it, if only the brand/trademark holder says it in their advert then it's probably trademarked, if only one or two ads contain it, still might be trademarked so i'd try the second way to double check ...

compare Canon Ixus 80 - Google Search

to

barclaycard credit card - Google Search

notice how many say "cannon ixus 80" and how few say "barclaycard credit card" (basically non except mr credit card brand bidder himself in position two and barclaycard themselves)

Second .. try creating an advert for it and see if it get's knocked back due to trademark text

[marclittlemore]

Thanks for all of that info. It's now a lot clearer.

I assumed it was probably ok for the Canon search, given the amount of ads that appeared.

[mattb811]

Hi Marc,

Although you can bid on whatever you like, there may be restrictions placed on affiliates of the trademark owner.

For example, anyone can bid on the term [MerchantX] but merchant X may decide not to pay affiliates who have driven traffic this way.

When you sign up to a campaign the Ts and Cs should state clearly what is and isn't acceptable but if in any doubt, contact the relevant agency or network account manager.

Best,

Matt

[marclittlemore]

Ok thanks for the info Matt. I'll have to make sure I read the small print!

[joo1977]

Thanks for all the info, really usefull many thanks

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