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AdWords Trademarks

If you use Google AdWords then you have probably run into this problem. A perceived trademark infringement keeps you from completing your ad. Sometimes you can ask for an exception and sometimes you will still not be able to use a term.

I can understand possibly this situation in some cases in the ad text, but having the word Hot or Home Equity being trademarked terms??? Come on! I ran into both just recently setting up an account. In the home equity situation we were promoting reverse mortgages for a client and so that ad text mentioned use your home equity for cash. No matter what I did, Google would not release those words and so they could not be used in ad text. Here is another situation, a store which stocks and sells Under Armour clothing could not use Under Armour in their ads or any possible misspellings of the words.

So far Google’s rule is restrained to the use of keywords in the ad text in the US but in other countries, you can not even have those words considered infringing in your keyword list. But really consider the word hot. How can this be trademarked?

If you’ve run into something ridiculous in the trademark infringement arena, click comments and let me know, maybe we can all get a chuckle for the day over what Google considers a trademarked term.

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Big New Changes For Google AdWords and MSN

Wow this has been a big day for announcements, Google first then MSN.

First Google has announced a new bidding strategy that you can now use instead of max CPC, it is called Preferred Cost per Click. With this new bidding strategy instead of telling Google AdWords what is the maximum you would be willing to pay, now you tell them the average price that you would like to pay or your preferred cost per click. Over the next week or so, this option will be turned on in Google AdWords accounts. I am not sure as to how this will impact performance, but I will certainly be testing it out.

Preferred cost per click bidding will be set at the campaign level so just be aware of that.

Second, Microsoft adCenter has just announced that it is spidering landing pages and assigning a quality score to programs much in the same manner that Google AdWords and Yahoo Sponsored Search Marketing already do. This will help to increase profits for them and improve the ad quality for readers.

So two big changes in the pay for performance arena have happened today!

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MSN adCenter Beta Invitation

Ready to try out MSN adCenter beta? Here’s the invitation form to get in the queue. I was invited about 7 days after I completed the form and then had account set up about two weeks after receiving the invitation.

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Important MSN adCenter Beta Advice

If your account is being migrated to the new MSN adCenter beta program so that you can take advantage of content here are some important tips.

  1. Make sure to log in right after your migration. I have found with two different clients that some of the geotargeting for specific city regions was dropped. This was not across the board, but in several ad groups. So be careful to check them all.
  2. Now you can finally see and easily delete your problem keywords that MSN has been pestering you about every time you have made a change in your ad. Review your keywords by page and delete (finally!) the rejected keywords.
  3. Make sure to ad separate bids for content. This is done on the keyword bid page and you must click advanced options. Update your search clicks by clicking the button to bring all of them into line and solve the problem of some defaulting back to ridiculously low figures that will garner no traffic, and then change the figure to about one half of your search cost and click the content bid button. I am recommending at this time to pay more than I would typically recommend in the content network as Microsoft does not have a developed content network yet with independent publishers and so the content ads will be showing on high value Microsoft property sites.

Overall the beta interface is a huge improvement over the previous one. Make sure to check out the easy drop down navigation on the bread crumb trail at the top to go to different ad groups and campaigns very easily Yahoo and Google should do this too.