Recently Google released their new trademark policy for the United States. This latest change has the potential to have a greater impact on PPC campaigns, which is why PPC account managers are taking notice.

This new policy allows using the trademarked terms in ad creative by resellers, affiliates, aggregators, unaffiliated informational sites, sellers components, replacement & compatible parts in US market. So there will be no more whitelists or blacklists maintained by Google’s systems – use of your trademark, as long as it seems legitimate, will be allowed freely.

Google is already facing two class-action trademark lawsuits, and as Eric Goldman on his Technology & Marketing Law Blog says, this move could open them up to more.

So how much impact will it show if global advertisers respond to this significant change in policy? What actions should you take immediately to mitigate the risk of having your trademark used incorrectly by your reseller network, affiliates and potentially competitors?

Action items:-

1) The key action you can take now is to refresh your guidelines for trademark use with your reseller network and affiliates. You cannot depend on Google to use it anymore – but you can still clarify exactly how these partners may use your trademark based on your contractual agreements with them. Setting standards such as ad content, format and even bidding rules will reduce problems in future.

2) If your trademark is being used by advertisers posing as legitimate resellers, you can still file a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) complaint with Google.  A successful DMCA complaint will not only remove paid ads of these advertisers, it will also remove their natural search listings entirely.  You can find more information in this link: www.google.com/dmca.html.

Contributed by Ajesh B

Mobile ads are a format of Adwords ads that appear on mobile websites and Google search pages when a user searches from a mobile device. Mobile ads are available as either text or image ads.

Mobile ads work on a pay per click as well as a pay per call basis. Every ad contains a headline and a description with a maximum of 18 characters each. The third line contains the site URL or a telephone number or both. Advertisers can therefore choose to connect to customers via whichever medium – phone or website – that they prefer, or they can let customers choose.

Mobile ads can be targeted only to following countries:  Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Always create a separate campaign for mobile ads. This campaign won’t require a separate landing page, because clicks on the ad will be directed to a Google-supplied mobile-friendly page describing your business.

Mobile ads pricing works same as PC based text or image ad. Advertiser only pays when user clicks on the ad and advertiser can even bid to connect users to their business via telephone (click to call).

It’s recommended to start off with just a small list of strong keywords and a few different targeted ads. Based on performance, the list can be expanded later on.

Opt for contextual targeting so that your ad reaches readers of specific mobile web pages written about specific concepts.

Target campaigns to iPhones, T-Mobile G1s and other high-end mobile devices with full Internet browsers through demographic settings of the campaigns.

Mobile ad performance can be measured pulling campaign level and placement performance report.

Contributed by Manisha Singh

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