You think a competitor is abusing your trademark in the copy of their ad. You’re a little rusty on Google Ads Trademark policy. You seem to recall something about how Google doesn’t allow trademarks in the ad text, but they can use them in the display URL. You go to the Google Ads support page that describes what is and what is not allowed, and by the end of reading it, you are more confused than you were before! Don’t worry! You are not alone. Many smart people have read and re-read Google’s policies on trademark and come away with more questions than answers.
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We recently asked six paid search experts what they thought were the most important PPC trends. While there were a variety of answers, the clear winner in terms of impact on SEM for the coming year was automation. Like it or not, automation is unavoidable and search engine marketers need to learn how to thrive in this automated paid search world.
Have you noticed anything fishy in your paid search campaigns lately? Unexplainable metrics? Unusual spikes in cost-per-click (CPC)? Or strange dips in click-through rates (CTRs)? You start going back through your PPC reporting to try to figure out what happened. Did you or someone on your team do something by mistake that could have caused a major change in the health of your account? You can’t put your finger on the problem. Frustration and confusion follow.
Notice anything fishy in your PPC metrics lately? Is your impression share on branded terms lower than normal? Are the conversion rates for one of your affiliates almost identical to your branded paid search campaigns? You may be the target of an affiliate ad hijacker.
While most affiliates don’t engage in ad hijacking, when someone does, the impact can be very damaging to a brand’s ppc programs. Affiliates are supposed to be driving incremental revenue and helping you reach your goals, not stealing clicks and making your paid search programs more expensive!
In this blog, we’ll answer the five most common questions about affiliate ad hijacking and give you the information you need to identify and stop ad hijacking.
Compliance managers at credit card issuers, networks, and publishers have the unenviable task of keeping their affiliate programs compliant in a constantly changing space. Every time a credit card issuer changes a rate, for example, there is a risk that webpages across the ecosystem of content housed on the web, will be out-of-date. The risk for non-compliance is high and the consequences range from frustrated or misinformed customers to fines and legal action taken by regulatory agencies. Every word published—by the issuer, by a partner, by an affiliate, or even by a consumer—creates an opportunity for risk.
The search engines’ rules around trademark use in paid search ads in the United States are nuanced and complicated. Unless you work with them every day, as we do, it can be difficult to know when an ad complies with the rules.
What is crystal clear though is the frustration you have when you see a competitor showing up on the search engine results page (SERP) using your branded keywords. Infuriating? Yes, but is it allowed? It depends.
How different will Q4 be for retail e-commerce this year? All signs point to a record-breaking quarter as digital sales become the new normal after months of lockdowns and quarantines. Experts predict that digital will account for 30% of sales during the upcoming holiday season, up from 14% in 2019.
We hosted a webinar around this topic to help companies strategize on how best to protect their brand for the rest of 2020. In this webinar, Helen Southgate, Managing Director of EMEA and APAC at Acceleration Partners and Van Chappell, General Manager EMEA at BrandVerity, had a lively discussion on what brands should expect to see in Q4 and what this enormous digital spike can mean for online brand protection. The full recording of the webinar is available here.
Here are three key takeaways from the webinar:
Every year, we alert our customers and prospects that Q4 is when we see a significant uptick in non-compliant behavior from affiliates and partners. In some cases affiliates may not be aware of the various program rules of the various brands with which they work. In other cases, bad actors take advantage of the surge in online advertising in preparation for the holidays and the fact that brands are distracted and busy. For would-be fraudsters interested in making some easy commission income, the temptation to divert branded traffic is great.
But not this year!
In July 2019, the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) ruled that Amazon’s advertising on Google using the branded term “Ortlieb” was a trademark infringement because the Google ad led to a list of results on Amazon that included competitors’ products. Some commentators and bloggers erroneously concluded that the German court was in effect banning brand bidding. Others downplayed the impact or didn’t fully understand the nuances of this decision.
