The ePro » Observations

Adwords, trademarks, Google and the EU

James Docherty — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 13:08:07 +0000

The use of other companies’ trademarks in your Adwords campaigns is something that crops up from time to time. After a recent judgement by Niilo Jääskinen, the Advocate General of the European Court of Justice, it appears that the rules of the game are about to change (probably in the Summer of 2011).

What can we do in Adwords?

Currently you’re able to use someone else’s trademark as a keyword (or phrase) to trigger an ad. You are not allowed to use their trademark in the body of your ad. This seems to be sensible. You can advertise your alternative against a competitor or the market leader but you can’t mention them in the ad.

So, an ad triggered by the phrase “best hoover” can display an ad containing words to the effect “Our vacuum cleaners don’t clog up. Buy a Dyson”. In addition you can not show their URL at the bottom of the ad. I can’t think of a situation where the average user ,or indeed a “moron in a hurry“, can be confused by ads adhering to the current Adwords policy (please respond below if you disagree).

Are there implications for Google’s system?

By default the Adwords system is designed to match ads with keywords in a broad way. Ads will display against keywords and phrases that the system believes hold similar meaning. So, even when an advertiser adheres to a new law, they could potentially display an ad against a competitor’s trademark without specifically targeting that term. The following grab from the Google Keyword research tool seems to add weight to the idea that this is the case.

I wonder whether, since in its current form the use of the trademark is ‘behind the scenes’ and never seen by the user, Google’s use of trademarks in a database record somewhere to suggest that ‘ford’ is ‘similar to ‘vw’ against the likely trademark ruling? If so, this is surely absurd. Perhaps we’ll all have to add our competitors as negative keywords just to be on the safe side?

Is online so different from the real world?

The argument that I hear is that it’s not right for a business to profit from another’s trademark. Fair enough. How different is this from the scenario in the high street when Marks and Spencer opens a new shop? Other traders know that M&S will attract footfall in the same way that terms attract search traffic on Google. If the neighbouring traders can provide a compelling offer, they may be able to win some of that business that was M&S bound. No one’s been misled and I see nothing wrong. Surely, clearly written ‘competitive’ Adwords ads aren’t too different from that.

If you’re looking for some help setting up or optimising your Adwords and PPC campaigns, please get in touch, I’d love to help.

Photo credit: Tom Wardill

2 things that will blow your mind in 2011

James Docherty — Sat, 01 Jan 2011 12:59:08 +0000

It’s that time of year when everyone goes a bit Mystic Meg. We get the usual ‘predictions’ appearing in list after list and I thought it would be more useful to point to a couple of things that are real and have caught my eye recently.

Word Lens

This is one of those brilliant products that speaks for itself. Point your iPhone at a sign in a foreign language and the text is instantly translated into English without the need for a data connection.

Watch the video after the jump to understand just how cool it is.

Get more info from the Quest Visual website or download the app from the iTunes Store.

Qwiki

As the past’s sci-fi future becomes today’s reality, Qwiki is a glimpse at how we will all have access to the world’s information in new and interesting ways. OK, some could argue that’s it’s just a text-to-speech engine that regurgitates information from Wikipedia but it’s much more than that. It’s interactive in nature and the ability to drill into different segments of the timeline to discover more about the subject is really fascinating.

A subject I’m sure you’ll want to know more about is this example Qwiki on Internet phenomenon Justin Beiber.

Photo credit: AussieGall

Facebook’s UK user figures don’t add up

James Docherty — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 16:54:04 +0000

I’ve been working on some UK specific Facebook usage figures. By collating the information provided by Facebook and the figures from the ONS, I get a pretty confusing picture. The trends are as we would expect to see from everyone’s anecdotes (2% of users are 65+ etc) but the specifics are a bit muddy.

Specifically, when we look at the relationship between Facebook users and total UK population. Is it really possible for 117% of women between 19 and 24 to have an account?

Clearly not, so why the dodgy figures? Here are my top guesses:

UK population figures are impossible to get right
People are lying about their age (younger people saying they’re over 13 to get an account and older people pretending they’re younger)
Foreign students skew the figures
People have more than one account
Of course, Facebook could be inflating their reach figures when reporting to their advertisers but that wouldn’t be cricket would it!

I’m sure its a mixture of all of these guesses but the last one is worrying if we’re basing online advertising decisions on the figures Facebook are publishing.

You can get all the figures in a handy pdf from my UK web usage statistics page.

The evolution of successful blogs

James Docherty — Sun, 26 Oct 2008 21:20:00 +0000

The guys at website monitoring service Pingdom have done an interesting visual round up of how some of the more successful blogs have evolved over recent years. There are a few trends to note but for me the move to a very crowded masthead stood out. Most of the blogs featured have decided to place a large ‘leaderboard’ style banner ad at the top (or near the top) of the page. I read this as a sign that the attention ads get here is too difficult to ignore when compared to the revenue from other areas on the site. It really reminds me of the huge mastheads we now see on print newspapers.
If you’re planning a blog it might be worth learning from the big guys rather than find out through your own evolution. Although the specifics are clearly relevant for those looking monetize content, the layout lessons must be applicable to corporate, promotional blogs too.

Take a look now: A visual round-up of successful blog evolution