So why do you need PPC Enforcer?

In 2008, Google made a change to their advertising policy, allowing any Google AdWords user to display an advertisement on the search engine result pages of third party trademarks and brands.

“From May 5, 2008, our trademark complaint investigations will no longer result in Google monitoring or restricting keywords for ads served to users in the UK and Ireland [...] This will bring our procedure in line with the approach taken in the US and Canada.”

Source: Google Inc.

In May 2009, Google further relaxed their policies towards brand and trademark bidding. Google AdWords employee, Dan Friedman, announced on the official Google blog that:

“Under certain criteria, you can use trademark terms in your ad text in the US, even if you don’t own that trademark or have explicit approval from the trademark owner to use it”

Source: Google Inc.

How does this affect you?

At the end of 2008, Interflora took rival UK online flower retailer Marks & Spencer to the European Court of Justice, for bidding on Interflora’s brand terms in Google AdWords.

“Interflora’s bidding costs for their keywords during the nine days leading up to Valentine’s Day increased from 2p per click in 2008 to 23-28p per click in 2009″ the High Court heard. “Interflora estimate that in total their costs will have increased by about $750,000 in the year from 5 May 2008.”

Source: OUT-LAW.com / Pinsent Masons LLP

In July 2009, language education company, Rosetta Stone, sued Google for allowing competitors to advertise on their brand terms, with Michael Wu, General Counsel at Rosetta Stone stating:

“Google’s search engine is helping third parties mislead consumers and misappropriate Rosetta Stone trademarks by using them as ‘keyword’ triggers for paid advertisements and by using them within the text or title of paid advertisements. Google and its advertisers benefit financially from and trade off the goodwill and reputation of Rosetta Stone without incurring the substantial expense that Rosetta Stone has incurred in building up its popularity, name recognition, and brand loyalty.”

Source: Rosetta Stone Inc.

How can you stop this from happening to you?

• Many industries have fought back against Google, building alliances that agree not to bid on each other’s brands. This saves companies in the alliance valuable time, that would have otherwise been taken up by lawsuits. It also reduces their online marketing costs, when otherwise their competitors would have been driving up their “cost per click” by bidding on their brand terms and vice-versa. This has worked well in the UK car insurance sector, although some instances of weekend brand bidding still occurred and went unchecked for many months.
• Other companies choose to take legal action against those bidding on their brands, although monitoring search results every hour of every day is resource intensive and not always possible.
• Some merchants prevent their affiliates from bidding on their brand terms, to stop them from pushing up bid prices and profiting out of the brand’s existing recognition and exposure. Many affiliates can still circumvent this however, by bidding on brand terms at weekends and in the evening, when merchants, PPC Agencies and Google account managers are at home.

This is where PPC Enforcer can help.

Screenshot - Click to view

You can give PPC Enforcer as many keywords as you like and manage multiple projects from a single log-in. You can also tell PPC Enforcer which websites are allowed to bid on your terms, by adding them onto a simple whitelist.

Screenshot - Click to view

Looking to monitor Google in France or for an extra feature? PPC Enforcer is constantly growing based on customer demand. Enforcer’s dashboard features a “Crowd Sourcing” system that enables you to make feature requests and for other users to vote your request up if they like it.

Need to give other people in your company access to Enforcer? That’s no problem, as PPC Enforcer allows you to create new user accounts with either read-only access or the ability to manage keywords, PLUS select which projects they can view.

Are you an Affiliate Network, PPC consultant or full-service marketing agency? Well PPC Enforcer can give you the leading edge, as a perfect add-on service for your clients. Our “Software as a Service” monitoring tool is hosted on a white-label domain name and you can even brand the interface with your company name and logo.

Hurry, places are limited!

“We have used PPC Enforcer for several months now and it has been a clear asset to our business. I would not hesitate to recomend PPC Enforcer to anyone who is looking to monitor their own brand terms.”

Source: Duncan Parfitt – LBi (Beta Tester)