Press
Google’s New U.S. Trademark Policy Offers Both Pros and Cons for Digital Advertisers
Response Mine Interactive Outlines How the New Policy Will Affect Its Clients, Consumers and the Digital Advertising Industry
ATLANTA—May 19, 2009—Google officially announced its new U.S. trademark policy yesterday, creating a flurry of objections and excitement among advertisers and brands. Effective June 15, Google’s new trademark policy will allow advertisers to use trademarks in their ad copy. With the current policy, only those advertisers approved to use trademarked brand names are allowed to use them in ad creative.
Response Mine Interactive, an Atlanta direct marketing and digital agency that represents national brands like Staples and Travelzoo, said that this new policy will both harm and benefit its clients’ search advertising efforts.
"For Staples, Google’s new policy will have a negative impact on the campaigns. Under the current Google Trademark Policy, a client like Staples works to create strong partnerships with its suppliers to make sure that it’s able to use specific partners’ brand names in its ad creative," said Josh Carlson, vice president of media and search services for Response Mine.
"Now that this policy has changed and advertisers don’t need the approval of the brand to use the trademarked brand name in their ad copy, a company like Staples is going to have to work much harder to ensure that its creative stands out. Over time, this will lead to more competitive ad copy and higher cost-per-clicks for large brands," he continued.
In addition, with the cost of trademarked terms vastly increasing, companies will have less funding to put towards non-trademarked or generic terms, which typically make up about 75 percent or more of a Google AdWords budget. The majority of companies are likely to shift their budgets to protecting their trademarked terms because they typically offer the highest return on investment.
For some of its other national clients, Response Mine said Google’s new change in policy will greatly benefit its clientsÂ’ digital advertising programs.
"For a client like Travelzoo — an online travel aggregator — we’ve had to be very generic in its ad copy when advertising specific hotel or airline deals that appeared in its Top 20 newsletter," commented Carlson. "With the new policy, we’ll have the ability to add in certain hotel and airline names in Travelzoo’s creative to make it a more enticing consumer ad."
Considering the effects on consumers, Response Mine said that in theory, Google’s new trademark policy should be to the advantage of the consumer.
"Advertisers who utilize this policy in the correct way should be able to tell consumers exactly what they have available based on a specific search query. That being said, we know that this is not always the case," said Carlson.
"This new trademark change will lead to an increase in searches and clicks industry wide, but it’s the quality of those clicks that will have to be monitored over time. If everyone in the space is now going to be able to use trademarked terms, consumers are going to have to search and click a lot more to determine what company truly has the best offer and is actually a legit source for that product," he continued.
As an industry, Response Mine said that digital advertisers will soon be experiencing a much more competitive marketplace when the new policy is enforced, leading to increased impressions, clicks and most importantly, cost-per-clicks.
About Response Mine Interactive
Response Mine Interactive (RMI) is an award-winning digital agency that helps companies acquire more customers using direct response interactive marketing. Since 2001, RMI has helped deliver billions of dollars in revenue for leading brands in the retail, travel, healthcare and home services industries by improving the speed, volume and efficiency in how they market online. RMI provides strategic customer acquisition and lead generation services to national companies on a pay-for-performance basis. For more information visit www.responsemine.com or call 404-233-0370.
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Media contact: Megan Webb
Response Mine Interactive
716.573.9556
megan.webb@responsemine.com