Knowledge is the Foundation To Success  

Google recently made a significant change in how they treat using trademarked terms in Google AdWords pay-per-click (PPC) advertising ad copy. Prior to this change, unless you had direct written approval from a trademark holder, you were pretty much out of luck when it came to using a trademarked term in your PPC ad copy. Even if you were an authorized reseller of a specific brand, you still could not use the brand name in your Google AdWords ad copy unless Google had express written permission from the trademark holder on file.

That has all changed. And that is great news for many e-commerce sites that sell branded items. If you are a reseller of goods that have a trademarked brand and if your landing pages give significant focus to the trademarked term, then most Google AdWords ads within the United States will now be approved to run on Google. Also, make sure the trademarked term is used in a text format on your website, as opposed to only flash, so Google can recognize the use of the trademarked term on your page.

The approval process for ads the contain trademarked terms is a separate process at Google AdWords. The ads are first approved to run for all other Google policies, and then they are checked so the use of the trademark and the landing page are in alignment with Google’s new trademark policy guidelines. This approval process may take a bit longer than the normal time you may have seen in the past for non-trademarked ads, so you will need to give Google AdWords ads containing trademarks a bit more time to show up on Google.

Also, you might notice that these trademark ads may show a status of “approved-limited.” This means that Google recognizes that the ad contains a trademarked term and that the advertiser was not given direct permission from the owner of the trademark to actually use it in Google pay per click ad copy. This does NOT mean that the ad will only show for a limited time or in limited regions, but it does mean that Google will check this ad continually to make sure it aligns with the new trademark policy. The content of your landing page will be constantly assessed by Google to make sure the trademark is still featured prominently, so be careful of any changes you make to your landing pages, especially after your trademark ads have been approved and are receiving click traffic.

This change is a real plus for anyone doing PPC management because we all know that if someone is searching for branded items, it certainly is nice to have that trademarked brand name in your ad. If I’m looking for Lexmark ink, I’m certainly more inclined to click an ad that has the Lexmark trademarked term in the ad, than on a generic ad that does not.

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Hot off the press from Google is big news that they are changing the way their trademark policy works in the US (view new policy). Under Google’s existing trademark policy, even if you carried a specific name-brand product, you might not be able to advertise that name in your ad. Meaning, if the BrandX camera company told Google not to let anyone use the BrandX trademark, you couldn’t actually say you sold BrandX cameras in your ads. Kind of silly. As Google said in their email, “the ads wouldn’t be useful since you wouldn’t know what products are actually being offered.”

This is especially silly, since any experienced pay-per-click (PPC) advertising manager knows that using the keyword that someone searches on in your ad helps increase CTR. I’ve never understood the fact that a company will allow someone to sell their product, but not allow them to use the product’s name to advertise it, but it happens all the time.

Under the existing Google Trademark Policy, you can contact the BrandX company and get written approval to use the trademark in your ad. But a lot of times it’s a time-consuming process – Google requires very specific language sent in an email to their trademark policy department, you can’t just use a blanket letter from the company or verbal permission. With some companies it was ridiculous in how long it took to get the required email. The bigger the company, the longer it seemed to take. I had one client that it took a month-and-a-half to get approved by legal – a four-line sentence took three lawyers and a month-and-a-half of time.

So I’m very glad to see Google has revisited their trademark policy, and the new policy seems pretty reasonable. There’s some pretty specific guidelines for the trademark use because we wouldn’t want anyone to be able to use any trademark as they saw fit. Here’s the new Google Trademark Policy, in a nut shell:

1. You can use a trademarked term at Google AdWords if you use it in a generic or descriptive way and not in reference to that specific trademark. I’m thinking Kleenex instead of tissue.

2. You can use the trademarked term at Google AdWords if you are a reseller of the trademarked product and your landing page and website clearly demonstrate that you can purchase that trademarked product. Since you are a reseller of BrandX cameras, you could now say that in your ad.

3. You can use the trademarked term at Google AdWords if you are a seller of replacement parts, components or compatible products and your landing page and website clearly demonstrate that you can purchase the trademarked product. If you sold camera bags and lens that were compatible with BrandX cameras, you could say so.

4. You can use the trademarked term at Google AdWords if your site is for “non-competitive and informative details”. The “advertiser may not sell or facilitate the sale” of a competing product of the trademarked term. Basically, you can’t advertise on BrandX, take them to an “informational” site that sings the praises of BrandY versus BrandX and then try to sell them on BrandY.

Some other things to keep in mind. This new trademark policy is for US ads served on Google.com, and US users for Search and Content networks. Google started accepting new ads with trademarked terms on Friday, May 15th, but will not begin running them until June 15th. If you currently have ads with trademarked terms that are disapproved, you’ll need to resubmit them.

I’m really pleased with this new change to the Google AdWords Trademark Policy. I think Google did a fine job of improving the results a search user gets, while still respecting the rights of the trademark owners. We’ll see how it plays out, but I think it will benefit everyone involved.

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If you’ve logged into your Google AdWords account lately, you might have noticed a new link in the upper right corner, New Interface (Beta). If you click on it, you’re treated to a whole new way of looking at your Google AdWords account. Not every Google AdWords customer has this beta option, but Google is slowly rolling the new AdWords User Interface out to more and more customers.

When Google initially introduced the new beta version of the AdWords User Interface (UI), I played around with it a few times in my few client accounts that had the option, but it looks like last week the new AdWords User Interface rolled out to a much wider audience and I decided I better get myself familiar with it. I’m not going to review every new part of the Adwords UI, but I will highlight a few new features that I’ve noticed in the past few days.

The Pros of the New Google AdWords Interface:

• The “Tree” Based Visuals: I can get to any campaign or AdGroup using the tree interface, instead of going back out to the campaign summary or AdGroup summary.
• Nice Graphical Representation: in each campaign and AdGroup you can view a graph based on criteria like CTR, Conversions, Impressions, CPC and more, for whatever time period you prefer. I love looking at graphs for trends – is CTR dropping or CPC rising, etc. I used to use this a lot on the account dashboard, but this is even better, and I can choose to hide the graph if I want.
• Query Report Built Into the Keyword Tab: Another new AdWords User Interface feature that I like is the “Show Query Report” button within the keyword tab. I can select a few broad and/or phrase match terms, then hit the Show Query Report button and it will give me a list of the search queries that were triggered by the keywords I selected.One caveat is that it appears you have to have quite a few impressions before it will show you data. A lot of the terms I tested kept giving me the error “Not enough data to show particular queries.” It still seems a bit “buggy”, because a number of times the report would generate partially, but without the search queries, and trying to refresh would cause a bright red error bar to come up. This one is also a Con because once you’ve generated the list, it’s a bit kludge to put the actual terms into the AdGroup, but I’m hoping that will approve.
• One last pro: you can still switch back to the original interface if the new UI gets a bit confusing.

And now on to my new Google AdWords User Interface Con List:

• Ads Showing in the UI May Not Be Active: this one is a big problem for me, because I almost lost a client last week because of it. When you are in the keyword tab of an AdGroup in the new AdWords User Interface, one ad will be showing on the top left, just like in the original UI. Unfortunately, that ad may not be an active ad (in fact, I have YET to see where the ad that shows is going to an Active ad, unless only active ads are in that AdGroup – it almost seems to default to a Paused ad which is terribly annoying). I had a client who went into the new interface and was clicking around. He clicked the ad that was showing and was stunned to see it was going to a dead page of his site. He went through a bunch of the AdGroups and saw the same thing, and then called us, completely irate, because this was a change that had happened in January, and that I had told him was taken care of. He demanded a refund of several thousand dollars and was very close to quitting before I got him calmed down enough to understand what was happening and explain to him that the changes were made, and the only ad that was actually active in those AdGroups were all going to a live page in his site.
• Quick Add Tool is Missing: one of my favorite tools in the original interface is on the keyword tab and it’s the Quick Add link. Click it and Google lets you manually enter your keywords, AND generates a very specific list of keywords that you are missing that are all based around the existing keywords in that AdGroup. I use it a lot to see what keywords I might be missing in an AdGroup AND what negatives I should include. The Keyword Tool just generates too much “noise” to be used effectively in this same manner. And now it’s missing in the new AdWords User Interface, and the Show Query Report is not an effective substitute.
• Show Query Report: it’s on my pro list too, but most of the time it either doesn’t give results because it doesn’t have enough data or it keeps having errors.
• The MCC Drop-Down List is Not Alphabetical: this is a con for PPC management agencies like ourselves who use an MCC to manage our clients – the Drop-Down Client list isn’t alphabetical, so it can be hard to find a client in the list.
• The Next/Previous Links on the AdGroup Level Are Gone: in the original interface, I could sort my AdGroups by some criteria, like Cost or Impressions, and go into the first one, then hit the next link to move to the next one. That link is gone, so I have to keep going back to the Campaign level to see what the next AdGroup is that I need to go into.

Now this certainly isn’t a comprehensive list of Pros and Cons but just the first ones that have come to me over the last four or five days of continually using the new AdWords User interface. I’m sure I’ll have plenty more in the days and weeks to come. There’s no set switch date that I could find when they are moving from Beta to the new UI permanently, but I recommend getting used to it now, when you still have the ability to switch back and forth between the beta and original Google AdWords User Interface.

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