For the last couple of years, we have used BrandVerity’s Paid Search Monitoring tool to examine brand bidding during the busiest online shopping days of the year – Black Friday through Cyber Monday. We set up monitoring on some of the most anticipated gifts of the holiday season and see how advertisers take advantage of the holiday search volume surge to attract clicks. In many cases, we find ads that mislead customers and win commissions on unearned clicks.

For online retailers, Q4 is undeniably the busiest time of year. Everyone knows that. Less well known, however, is that this quarter is also a boon to third-party trademark infringers and affiliate abusers. For those interested in making some easy commission income, the temptation to divert branded traffic is great.

This is the first in a new series highlighting our employees! We talk a lot about how important and unique our culture is at BrandVerity. But to understand why its special, you need to meet the people that make the magic happen. Emily joined the Engineering team about two years ago, and here's how she answered my questions.

This is the last in our four-part series on protecting your trademark in paid search. The earlier pieces included a deep dive on Google Ads trademark rules, a step-by-step guide to submitting trademark infringements to Google, and a set of commonly asked questions regarding trademark policies. While this series focuses on Google, the techniques and considerations are similar across all search engines.

Keywords are the base variable between all channels, and they are how a user communicates with a search engine. A lot of organizations strive to attain PPC and SEO synergy, but sharing keyword data remains the most important aspect of maximizing the effectiveness of these two strategies. Usually PPC and SEO are handled by two different teams, so it is important to set a regular cadence for collaboration and communication. 

When competitors use your trademark in their Google Ads campaigns, there are many adverse effects including decreased clickthrough rate (CTR) and increased cost-per-click (CPC) for your ads as well as a poor customer experience for your customers. It’s also annoying for any digital marketer to see a competitor in the top spot on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) using your trademark! 

There has been a lot of buzz lately about Google's big changes across all advertising products.

The keynote address at last week’s Google Marketing Live conference was packed with announcements that will impact digital marketers for years to come. The presentation ran for over an hour, so there was a lot to digest. We put together a complete guide to help you quickly navigate all this new material.

Machine learning and assistance continue to be the overarching focus for Google. According to Sridhar Ramaswamy, Senior VP of Ads, Google wants to “be there and be useful” for consumers and advertisers by focusing on being valuable, transparent and trustworthy.

Google’s latest innovations help accomplish three things for advertisers: Better Results, Simpler Experiences, and Deeper Insights.

Google AdWords trademark policies can be confusing – especially if you don’t have prior experience with intellectual property or trademark law. We have been helping big brands, agencies, and networks protect their trademarked terms in paid search for the last 10 years. In that time, we’ve answered countless questions about AdWords trademark policies and brand bidding. I talked with our intrepid Customer Success Team to find out what are the most common questions they get asked and how they answer those questions.

Have you ever been asked by your CMO or a client, “Why are we bidding on our branded terms when we rank Number 1 in organic?” You may find yourself using phrases like “PPC best practice” or “controlling SERP real estate,” as you try to formulate a concise explanation.

Keeping your affiliate channel compliant and free of fraud is a challenge. Success requires persistent vigilance. Akin to weeding a garden, if you stop, the weeds take over.

In a recent webinar, “The Art of Fraud: Keeping Your Affiliate Program Compliant” we asked our panelists, Michael Swensen, Senior Manager, Brand Quality and Regulatory Compliance at Rakuten Marketing and Greg Hoffman, Founder and CEO of Apogee how to set up, scale, and monitor an affiliate program so that it doesn’t get overrun with fraud.

They concluded that there are 5 actions you can take to minimize your fraud risk.