On August 7th, 2017, Bing Ads updated its Relevancy and Quality Policy, adding a new System Quality Policy to “enhance a positive user experience by delivering improved ad and network quality.”

The policy provides Bing Ads the ability to limit or remove keywords and/or ads from its platform that have not shown any performance over a significant period of time. In addition, advertisers subject to the policy may see additional restrictions within ‘sensitive categories,’ including: weapons, pharmaceuticals, gambling, adult, and trademark.

We were excited by Bing Ads’ announcement, particularly the additional protection it provides brand owners against irrelevant trademark use by third-party search advertisers. So, we decided to take a look to see what, if any, impact the policy change had on trademark bidding using the BrandVerity Paid Search Monitoring tool. We’ll talk about the results of that study later in the post.

Based on BrandVerity’s work with some of the largest U.S. and European brands, we had a suspicion that affiliate bloggers often were not using proper disclosures of endorsements. In the past, this may not have been a big deal i.e. no penalties for brands or bloggers. But in the last two years, the FTC has stepped up its efforts to ensure compliance with the guidelines that have been on the books since 2009.