Re: Google, Overture -- is it legal?
Maya,
I agree with Karen that the policy for Overture and Google is that you have
to be a distributor or reseller of a product if you want to bid on the brand
name of that product. Many brands are getting much more aware of the damage
that can be done to their brand through non relevant advertising and in the
future you will see a couple of things happening:
1) Brands will write language into their reseller and distributor agreements
that don't allow these reps to bid on specific keywords, particularly brand
keywords
2) The same thing is already starting to happen in affiliate agreements
This is being done not only to protect the brand, but also because these
larger companies are starting to realize that the affiliate or distributor
channel is only valuable to them if it provides new leads, not leads that
are coming from a current source of advertising for them. If they allow
affiliates to bid on the same keywords that they bid on, all it does is put
up the cost of their own keyword marketing campaign.
What Karen said is also true. The search engines have a responsibility to
not mislead their searchers and if someone is searching for Tumi, they
should get to the Tumi site in a couple of clicks for it to be a relevant
search.
Many larger brands are contacting Overture and Google now and asking that
advertising using their brand name be pulled before they take legal action.
In ALL cases I have seen these terms are taken from the advertiser, and that
usually triggers a review of all of the keywords on the account for
relevancy, so I wouldn't advise you to try it :)
Mary O'Brien
mary,Trafficmentorseo.com
www.trafficmentorseo.com
Received on Mon Jul 21 2003 - 10:37:51 CDT
