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Home::Online Promotion
Yahoo to Prohibit Competitive Keyword Bids Containing Trademarks
Author : Otilia Otlacan
Yahoo Search Marketing (searchmarketing.yahoo.com) has recently
announced its advertisers of a new policy to be implemented as
of March 1st 2006, concerning the use of trademarks within their
products and services *.
Under the new policy, no reference to a trademark can be made
(except for ads placed by the trademark owners themselves,
obviously), and consequently no bids can be make for keywords
containing such trademarks. Exceptions refer to usage of
trademarks in non-competitive ads, such as those made by
re-sellers, or in informative (and still non-competitive) ads.
The previous policy allowed references to competitors'
trademarks and comparisons as long as they were "objective and
informative" - the formulation makes me cringe, as it is clearly
troublesome trying to evaluate one's objectivity when speaking
of business competitors. As for the "informative" side of it...
the probability for someone to actually PAY for an ad to be
informative of someone else's product/service, that's as
believable just like the existence of Santa Claus.
It is really good to see Yahoo making a big step forward in
regulating abuse and misuse of trademarks, even though that
probably translates in some revenue loss for them, by having
certain advertisers migrate to a "friendlier" place such as
Google. According to Google's policies, "[...] advertisers may
select trademarked terms as keywords or use them in the content
of the ad. As a provider of space for advertisements, Google is
not in a position to arbitrate trademark disputes between
advertisers and trademark owners. As stated in our Terms and
Conditions, advertisers are responsible for the keywords and ad
text that they choose to use. Accordingly, Google encourages
trademark owners to resolve their disputes directly with the
advertiser, particularly because the advertiser may have similar
ads on other sites. However, as a courtesy to trademark owners,
Google is willing to perform a limited investigation of
reasonable complaints."
The question is why would Yahoo change its policies and
apparently offer Google an even bigger bite from the SEM cake?
It is way too early to say now, and their official explanation
is not entirely believable: Yahoo states to have had the users'
best interest in mind, by providing them with a better
experience when searching terms that contain trademarks. Though
this would make a laudable initiative with a good PR potential,
experts know the search market is driven by large publishers and
advertisers and not by the little surfing guys. Numerous
speculations can be made: threats of large legal actions from
trademark owners, pressure from certain groups of interests are
among the most vehiculated ones. However, a more plausible one
is that Yahoo makes preparations for a much larger scale
movement destined to influence the market in a manner we cannot
anticipate just yet.
Until further industry news, there's one thing to rejoice: from
now on, no "better than Botox" ads on Yahoo and their partner
sites!
* - the products and services covered by the new policy are:
Sponsored Search, Local Advertising, Search Submit, Product
Submit, Travel Submit and Directory Submit.
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