Trademarks and Google AdWords

Brand owners can use their trademarked names in several ways with Google’s AdWords paid search, for competitive advantage. Control over trademarked names is offered at two levels.

• Worldwide, by country, a brand owner can protect their brand name in AdWords adverts.
• Outside North America (US and Canada), trademark holders can also control which AdWords accounts are allowed to show adverts against trademark searches.

Potentially, a company could be allowed to offer an advert against a trademark search, but denied the use of the trademark in the advert. Or allowed to use the trademark in adverts, but not against a search for the trademark. What you do depends on what your strategy needs are. Pretty neat.

For example, if Xyxxy Inc trademarks “Xyxxy”, the company could prevent other businesses from using “Xyxxy” in adverts, by applying to Google, worldwide.

Outside North America, the trademark search could be protected. When a user searches, only the trademark owners’ advert is shown. This means that Average Cost per Click could fall to the minimum $0.01 per click for an advertiser that is permitted to use the trademark keyword.

Implications in North America

In North America, competitors could still bid against the trademark, so that when users search for “xyxxy”, they’ll see competitor adverts and the trademark owner. The average cost per click will tend to be higher.

How much higher? It depends on the value of the sale, affiliate conversions rates and commissions, and competitor value in wresting away an interested buyer… It could be from pennies to dollars per click.

When to apply for trademark protection?

Easy question; hard to answer. We don’t have any simple and clear patterns to make an easy choice. For example, if you are starting an affiliate program, then you might want to allow affiliates to trade using the brand equity - allow your partners to use both the keyword search and even to use the name in adverts. Later in the lifetime of the same business, when the program has built up relationships with affiliates, an affiliate manager may want to make the affiliates work harder, by denying them the trademark in keywords. This denial of advertising opportunity will have the effect of reducing the paid search program costs, and should retain the sales from trademark related advertising. It will also annoy affiliates… So it needs some pretty careful thought and being sure that you won’t cause your affiliate program to screech to an abrupt halt that will take some time to recover from.

How does Trade Mark protection work?

First step is to register your trademark with the various national authorities. Pretty much every country seems to run their own trademark registry, though there are a few supranational ones, like that for Europe. It is sufficiently complex that consulting a trademark specialist lawyer is a good idea. I’m certainly not going to offer any suggestions about whether and how to trademark… Only about what you can do with AdWords and trademarks.

You should most carefully note that Google does not grant a trademark. National authorities grant trademarks, and as a courtesy to the trademark owner, Google helps the owner to protect the TM. If the TM owner doesn’t prevent searches, then searches are usable. If the TM owner doesn’t prevent use of the TM in adverts, then Google will let you use them. So if you want to use a TM, and Google stops you, the right people to ask for help will be the Trade Mark owners.

I’ve been involved with registering TM’s in AdWords accounts since, ohh, 2004 or so. Every year since then, Google grows the trademark team and promises that the time taken to complete the application process will get shorter. They got the time down to less than three months in 2005. Right now, I’m not hearing any commitment shorter than six months… YMMV.

Submit your trademark application to Google. Wait a while. Then you’ll get a letter saying that your trademark complaint has been dealt with, and only your permitted accounts should be able to use the term.

TM in Keyword Search

If you are Xyxxy Inc, with Xyxxy as a registered trademark, and you’ve submitted your trademark complaint form to Google, you can stop competitors and other businesses from advertising on “xyxxy” as a search… But if your Xyxxy business sells apples, then a search for “xyxxy apples” may still show up competitor adverts - because their keywords include “apples”, and that’s what is being matched, not the trademarked term.

Advertisers wanting to reach a trademarked brand, need to focus on using keywords to address everything that’s left surrounding the trademark in a search.

Trade Marks in Adverts

When you submit an advert, each word is checked to see if it is a registered trademark. Some surprising words are trademarks. In 2006, I saw a few people complaining that “wow” appears to be trademarked. It is probably trademarked by the MMORPG “World Of Warcraft” (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), often abbreviated as “WoW” or “WOW”. You can usually appeal against a trademark for what seems like a common word, if your usage is clearly nothing to do with MMORPGs (or whatever it is that the TM refers to).

If you submit an advert for, my favourite example, “lawnmower repair”, your advert could say “Lawn Mower Repairs/We can wow you with fast/collection, repair and return”. You could find that your advert was rejected in trademark grounds… but you might have no idea which word in the advert is triggering the result. If you think you know the reasons - such as collision with a MMORPG, then you could appeal to Google during the advert submission process. In this case, your appeal should explain that “lawn mower repair” and a MMORPG have little in common and it is unlikely that people looking for the other meaning will find any confusion.

Misleading Messages

Advertisers with their own trademark can get misleading messages about being blocked from use of their own TM.

Assume, again, that you are Xyxxy Inc, and you want to have the Xyxxy TM. You apply for and are granted European and US trademark registration. You tell Google that the TM has been granted and that you don’t want the TM used in adverts, except by a list of AdWords Account IDs that you will supply.

You submit an advert for a small European country, with a “low volume” language - something with a few million speakers. You might find that the advert gathers no impressions. Using the AdWords Tools to troubleshoot adverts (Ads Diagnostic Tool) that aren’t running, you’ll get the message that the advert is TM blocked. That’s because the advert hasn’t been through the editorial and TM review. Usually, if your advert hasn’t been through review, the Ads Diagnostic Tool will tell you that there is “no keyword for this advert”… If you are a TM owner, it will instead tell you that you can’t use your own TM. Pretty confusing. Also illuminating about Google’s internal processes, heh, heh.

Through a Scanner, Darkly

The order of the messages tells you something about how Google processes adverts and controls AdFlow.

For a TM owner to get the TM message, rather than the “no keyword” message, means that the TM check is performed before the editorial review check. Since TM’s in creative can prevent the advert from showing on any network, but editorial review is primarily a check for Google’s Search partners… that makes sense. You need to always do a TM check, but you only need the editorial review check for adverts that are shown on AdSense publisher sites or licensed search advertising partners.

Rounding Up

Whether Google’s process for handling TM’s in any particular legislative arena is legal, I neither know nor particularly care… It’s a tool in the Internet Marketing toolkit. Knowing how it works can make you more effective.

Affiliates and Trademarks

Knowing how Google handles Trade Marks can allow affiliates to be smarter about keywords and adverts. If you believe that you should be able to use the TM, you’ll need the agreement of the trademark owner, who’ll write to Google to authorise your account. If the TM owner refuses, you’re stuck and it isn’t Google’s problem…

Trademark Owners and AdWords

If you are a TM owner, then applying to Google is probably a good idea. You might not exercise your controls, but if you haven’t gone through the application process, then, when you do need to control the TM, you won’t have an unpredictable processing delay of up to six months.