Yahoo to Prohibit Competitive Keyword Bids Containing Trademarks!
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| by Otilia Otlacan |
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 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 reticulated 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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| About
the Author: Otilia is a young certified professional
with expertise in e-Marketing
and e-Business, currently working as independent
consultant and e-publisher. She has recently launched
MarketingWHO.com, a professional Marketing
Directory and blogs at The
Marketing Journal. |
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