Trademarks & Other Legal Fun Stuff in Pay Per Click Advertising

Trademarks & Other Legal Fun Stuff in Pay Per ClickJennifer Slegg

TheSEMPost.com

@jenstar

Jennifer Slegg JenniferSlegg.com @jenstarJennifer Slegg TheSEMPost.com @jenstar

Jennifer Slegg @Jenstar

• Founder of The SEM Post for advanced industry news & tips

• Consulting for SEO / Google penalties, PPC, content marketing & content monetization

• I am Canadian

• Twitter: @jenstar @TheSEMPost

• Email: [email protected]


Trademark, Copyright

• When you can compare brands

• When you should bid on competitor’s brands

• Handling brand warfare & asserting your own brand in PPC

• Trademarks in PPC – what can or can’t you do?

• Stolen ad copy – any recourse?

• Stolen landing pages – any recourse?


When you can compare brands






Escalating Brand Warfare

• Consider “gentleman’s agreement” IF

• your brand is better known

• Low conversion on competitve brand ads


Affiliate Brand Warfare

• Embrace it!

• It is better your affiliates run ads that promote you rather than leaving it open (and cheap) for competitors


Using Sitelinks to Assert Brand

• Most rely on title to assert “official” orauthentic only

• Using sitelinks to assert brand

• “Official ___ site”

• “Brand/trademark reseller”

• “Authentic brand/trademark”

• “My brand / trademark”

• Use trademark symbols to stand out


When to bid on competitor’s brand• Cheap traffic

• Competitor isn’t bidding

• Brand exposure

• Drive their CPC up

• Focus on:

• Comparisons

• Features that competitor’s lack

• Special offers / deals


Keyword trademarks

• Bidding on trademarked keywords is fine

• Google and Bing will not investigate trademark claims on keywords


Using trademarks in ad copy

• Trademarks cannot appear in ad copy EXCEPT in certain situations

• AdWords Ads targeting US, Canada, UK, Australia, New Zealand

• Resellers permitted to use trademarks

• Informational sites whose main purpose is NOT selling the product

• Cannot be used to lead to competitor’s products (ie. iPhone in ad copy but leads to Galaxy landing page)

• Bing Ads will investigate trademarks in ad copy at customer’s request, including comparative ads


Using trademarks in ad copy

• Trademarks CAN appear in display URLsin AdWords but NOT Bing Ads

• Can only be enforced in countries youDO hold the trademark for

• https://services.google.com/inquiry/aw_tmcomplaint


Oddball Trademark Issues

• Sometimes your use of a trademarked term has nothing to do with the actual trademark.


Oddball Trademark Issues

• AdWords:

• Email [email protected]

• Trademark term

• Text of ad

• Keywords

• Customer ID

• Screenshot if possible

• Bing Ads

• Request an exemption within account

• If disapproved a second time, decision is final.

mailto:[email protected]


Protecting Your Trademark

• AdWords:

• File a complaint with Google

• Submit site exemptions for those who are permitted to use it

• Affiliates, resellers, partners

• Don’t forget to add yourself!

• Bing Ads

• You must be proactive and contact Bing Ads individually


Stolen Ad Copy

• Google doesn’t police this but will forward a complaint

• Send a cease and desist to advertiser for copyright infringement

• Many will remove as they don’t want to get on Google’s bad side, so use it to your advantage.


How to Find Stolen Pages

• Select 8-12 keywords in the MIDDLE of the page in the MIDDLE of the paragraph

• Put “ “ around the phrase

• Search it in Google and Bing

• If more than one copy of your article shows, check the repeat the search with the omitted results included. There could be more!

• There are also third party tools to police this.• Copyscape (paid)


Stolen Landing Pages

• Make sure you allow archive.org toindex landing pages

• Even though many block all bots, it is worth allowing if you have problems later.

• If you know competitor’s IP, block or redirect them… or….


Stolen Landing Pages

• Or you can serve them their own special landing page to copy


Stolen Content

• Play nice or not so nice?


Stolen Content

• Send cease and desist – yes, this is the “nice” way!

• Send via email to all addresses found.

• Set priority to high

• Request a read receipt (not all people will do this, but we usually aren’t dealing with the brightest here )

• Ask for removal of content within X hours (usually 24, 48 or 72 hours)


Stolen Content

• The “not so nice” way…

• File DMCA with Google

• Removes the URL from Google Search Results

• Prevents it from being used as an AdWords landing page.

• https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/dmca-dashboard


Stolen Content


• File DMCA with Bing

• Can file infringements for both paid search & regular search

• https://www.microsoft.com/info/Search.aspx


Stolen Content


• File DMCA with any other relevant search engine or site to your competitor.

• DMOZ listing

• AOL property

• Yahoo

• Yandex

• Duck Duck Go


Stolen Content

• The “really not so nice” way

• File DMCA with host

• Removes page from servers or suspends hosting account

• File DMCA with registrar

• Depending on registrar, suspends website or entire account.

• Are they running AdSense on the site? Report them to AdSense too


Jennifer Slegg @Jenstar

• Founder of The SEM Post for advanced industry news

• Consulting for SEO / Google penalties, PPC, content marketing & content monetization

• I am Canadian

• Twitter: @jenstar @TheSEMPost

• Email: [email protected]

Marketing

Trademarks & Other Legal Fun Stuff in Pay Per Click Advertising