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With a tough economy, and many companies struggling to keep, or gain market share, there seems to be an increase in lawsuits surrounding online advertising, and the strategy some companies use to bid on their competitor’s name.  We recently had an opportunity to be involved in a court case, and give expert testimony on the inner-workings of Google AdWords, and other PPC platforms, and how trademark rules are handled.

However, this is nothing new. Back in 2004, the insurance giant Geico, sued Google for allowing their competitors to bid on their name and “create confusion with consumers,” a clear violation of the Lanham Act.  So, what was happening is a Geico competitor would bid on the word “geico”, or maybe even “gieco”, and hope to outbid the actual company in the hopes of attracting potential leads.  Geico claims that not only was the competitor bidding on their name, but also using it in the ad itself.

Back in 2004, Overture had seemingly stricter rules, whereas Google took more of a “hands-off” approach, allowing trademarked terms and reviewing few complaints.  Now in 2009, things are more competitive, and compaines are doing whatever it takes to get leads and sales on one of the most cost-effective channels: the Internet.  So not only are some companies going to be tempted to bid on competitors trademarked names, but the owners of those trademarks are also going to be on the lookout more.  Here is what we know:

Google Trademark Policy

“With Google AdWords, 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.

Google’s trademark policy does not apply to search results, only to sponsored links. For trademark concerns about websites that appear in Google search results, the trademark owner should contact the site owner directly.

Learn more about Google’s trademark policy and copyright policy.”

Source:  Google AdWords Learning Center

Yahoo! Trademark Policy

“Advertisers sometimes bid on search terms that are the trademarks of others. For bids on search terms in Yahoo! Search Marketing’s Sponsored Search service, Yahoo! Search Marketing (formerly Overture Services, Inc.) requires advertisers to agree that their search terms, their listing titles and descriptions, and the content of their Web sites do not violate the trademark rights of others. In cases in which an advertiser has bid on a term that may be the trademark of another, Yahoo! Search Marketing allows the bids only if the advertiser presents content on its Web site that (a) refers to the trademark or its owner or related product in a permissible nominative manner without creating a likelihood of consumer confusion (for example, sale of a product bearing the trademark, or commentary, criticism or other permissible information about the trademark owner or its product) or (b) uses the term in a generic or merely descriptive manner. In addition, the advertiser’s listing should disclose the nature of the relevant content.”

Source: Yahoo! Search Marketing Legal Guidelines

So, in the end, both ad platforms tend to put most of the responsibility on the advertiser, but clearly are willing to investigate any disputes that may arise.  Both have ways to detect trademarked names, but only if they have been entered into their systems by the owner of the trademark.

Recently I saw in Google AdWords one of our ads in a campaign was automatically disapproved because we had a trademarked name in one of the ads – which we HAD permission to use.

Have you experienced any trademark no-no’s in any PPC platforms?  Describe your experience…

1 Comment »Tags: litigation, pay per click, PPC

Let’s say you have a PPC campaign running with lots of variations in ads, ad groups, messaging, etc. You even have micro and macro conversion goals set up in your PPC campaign and assigned each of them a value. You’ve organized everything in to groups for testing, but you just aren’t completely sure which combination of test variables is working properly.

Here’s how to know which PPC ad group is working:

1. Determine what the value of your conversions are. This can be subjective, so use your judgment based on what the sale is worth.  If a sale is worth $100, maybe a form submission for a lead is worth $10. If you have an e-commerce site, than include the value of a sale, perhaps in net terms.  (We can determine what the max amount we should spend on a lead by looking at how to measure cost per acquisition.)

2. Compare your ad groups side by side, looking particularly at what the ad group cost, total conversions generated, and total conversion value.

3. Divide the total conversion value by the total amount spent on the ad group.  This tells you how much you earned in value for every dollar spent. In the example below, Campaign #1 earned $4.11 for every $1 spent on advertising, while Campaign #2 earned $6.81 for every $1 spent.

We call this the Value-to-Spend Ratio. It helps quickly evaluate your campaign if it has lots of ad groups.

If you have an example where your Value/Spend ratio is less than 1, that means you are earning less than you are spending, so you will need to decide if that ad group should continue or not.

Here are two ad groups shown side by side:

On the surface, Campaign # 1 looks like a better performer.  It had a higher click-through rate, more ad clicks, more conversions and $67 more conversion value.  Even the average CPC between the two campaigns are identical.  But Campaign #2 spent less than half the money to get only 21% less value.

A lot of people might assume Campaign #1 as the winner here, but we disagree because of the Value-to-Spend Ratio.  We like this measurement technique because it is agnostic of the various types of conversions and conversion values.

Try it, and let us know how you made out!

No Comments »Tags: Google AdWords, pay per click, PPC, value-spend ratio

So often we are concerned with the “big conversion” on the website, like purchasing something, for example.  We call this a macro conversion – it’s your ultimate goal.  But what about other activities, maybe not as valuable, but still worth something.

We forget that marketing is basically broken down into these 3 pieces:

Everyone, including upper management, is zoning in on purchase.  But what about awareness?  Remember the circles of trust graphic?  It’s highly unlikely that many will purchase from you when they don’t know you.

My point:  create micro conversions in the Awareness and Consideration stages and measure them!

Things like entering a zip code, joining a mailing list, or subscribing to your RSS feed.  Now you have a chance to converse with some highly potential, future customers on a permission-based marketing system, versus a interruption marketing system.

Now, assign a value to these micro conversions.  A zip code might be worth $1 to you.  Asking for a zip code is great because it further refines what geo-tracking in Google Analytics can’t do.  Now you know what zip code your visitors are from, so it takes some of the guesswork out of your next direct mail piece.

Use this value to compare to the costs you’ve put into the activity, such as SEO, PPC or even web analytics.  Before long, you will be able to see which activity is driving the most value.

1 Comment »Tags: conversion tracking, conversions, pay per click, PPC, Web Analytics

A good alternative to normal PPC advertising through Google, Yahoo and MSN (“The Big 3″), is to try Facebook.  There are three primary reasons why I like Facebook advertising:

1. It’s a different model.

Instead of targeting a broad range of search terms to an unknown demographic, I am targeting specific interests on specific profiles that fit my criteria.  If I am running an ad for golf clubs, and you are not a golfer per your profile, then you probably won’t be seeing my ads.  It’s like uber-targeting.  Sure, you can do targeted placements in Google AdWords, but it’s not the same as targeting what specific things people like/don’t like.

2. It has referent power.

When we look at the “circles of trust” related to why people buy, the inner-most circles are are the reasons why – personal experience, or someone you know told you about their experience.  So here’s the cool thing with Facebook.  If you set up your company page, and get your customers, friends, etc. to “Fan” you, when the ads run and appear on someone’s profile, if one of their connections is a “Fan” of your page, they will appear above the ad kind of like an endorsement.

3.  It’s really easy to set up

Google and Yahoo have built complex systems that require tons of maintenance, and are difficult sometimes to maneuver around.  They are great if you want to run hundreds of ads with thousands of keywords, and multi-layer targeting.  With Facebook, you can literally start running a few ads in less than 5 minutes, and get some decent results.  Here’s how you do it:

Step 1:  Determine what you want to advertise, and create the first ad.

I thought I would promote myself on Facebook by creating an ad that would target Marketing Managers, VP’s of Marketing, etc., by letting them know that we are results-based analytics firm.  I can upload an image if I want, like a logo or creative banner.

Step 2:  Select your audience.

Now, this is the cool part.  Not only can I select what part of the country I want, by age, sex, marital status, education, and even job title.  You can’t target like this in Google or Yahoo.   So for my little ad experiment, I can reach 31,640 people who could be interested in my ad.  With Google or Yahoo, you end up throwing out this huge catch-all net to see who will click on your ad based on search volume, which can be wasteful.

Step 3.  Select bid method and pricing.

This works similar to Google, Yahoo and others, so if you are already familiar with CPC and CPM bidding, this is pretty much the same.  What’s also neat is that they give me a range for my suggested bid.  I haven’t run enough ads to know if this is truly the low and high bids (I suspect not), but you can get a pretty good sense of what this would cost.

And that’s about it!  The next screen basically reviews your ad, and authorizes payment via credit card.  They have  Facebook Insights where you can measure the performance of your ads, and get all kinds of demographic data on the people who clicked on them.  If you need help setting up a PPC strategy for your company, let us know.

Update – January 13, 2009:

After using this platform for sometime now, even though it’s performing nicely for some of our clients in terms of cost per conversion, I feel that I also need to point out it’s limitations:

1.  There is no conversion codes to place on your “thankyou” page like Google and Yahoo.  You basically have to go into your analytics reports and view by source, and then segment by goal completions.  Even then you will have to do some manual math, or you can take the time to try and create a custom report, or advanced segment in Google Analytics.

2.  There is no way to mange multiple clients.  The interface is limited to one ad campaign per account.  Both Google and Yahoo offer their “MCC” accounts, or Multiple Client Center.  You will have to create a new account for each client – this is a real drag.

3.  There is no user permission system.  You won’t be able to give multiple folks varying levels of access to the account – it’s one account, one level of access.

4.  There is no change log capability.  If you’re like us, and you are constantly changing ads, target keywords, etc., you like a system that will at least track all of that for you and dump it into a .csv file at least.  Not possible with Facebook…sorry folks.

So in a nutshell, while I am still happy with the results we are getting from the ads, I am disappointed that the folks at Facebook couldn’t make a more sophisticated ad platform. With ALL the people on it, and ALL the revenue potential, this is all we get?  (But then again, have you tried linking your Facebook status update feed into your FriendFeed account?  They bury the RSS, and then you have to right-click on the link to get the address – really?)

2 Comments »Tags: Facebook advertising, pay per click, PPC