Bing’s announced some big changes to their paid search advertising policy that will allow the use of trademarks in ad text and as keywords for triggering ads, closely mirroring Google’s update last year. These new changes go into effect tomorrow (3/3/11), and apply only to ads targeting the US or Canada. Along with relaxing trademark restrictions, Bing [...]

There’s a small but significant change being made to AdWords this week you should be aware of. Google announced they will now display only lowercase domains in ads, for example “Subdomain.Example.com/Subdirectory. . . will appear as subdomain.example.com/Subdirectory.” The change already has a few detractors and will doubtless accrue more, but Google has little cause to capitulate and gains more (like an increased [...]

We’ve seen Google testing a number of different display elements in AdWords over the last few weeks. Store Ratings Google is pulling store ratings from Google Products and displaying the aggregate rating inline with ads. Below are the display treatments for the top and right rail ads returned for a search for ‘grills’: Condensed Site [...]

I’m speaking at SMX East panel Trademarks and Search – How have things changed Monday at 3:45. Please stop by and say hello!

An adviser to the European Court of Justice just issued an opinion that “Google has not committed a trademark infringement by allowing advertisers to select [trademarked] keywords”. While the opinion is non-binding, the court is generally expected to follow the opinion. Google has moved to aggressively open up trademark bidding in the US, the UK [...]

We’ve seen advertisements similar to the one below for “top-rated-coupons.com” appear in Yahoo search ads for a number of the programs that we monitor: The ads are typically shown for “brand” + coupon searches. This particular advertiser isn’t an affiliate though. They are actually selling a mobile recurring billing scheme that gives “access” to coupons [...]

We’re excited to announce that PoachMark has officially launched. With over 200 affiliate programs monitored, we’re confident that PoachMark meets the robustness standards that we’ve established internally for this milestone. PoachMark is now monitoring the affiliate programs of top 5 e-commerce merchants and top 5 Internet advertisers along with niche online retailers. We think Stephen [...]

Updated on May 21 to reflect Google’s worldwide trademark policy changes and recent moves in the US. Google Yahoo Microsoft Search Ads Trademarks can be protected in: —-Keywords used to trigger ads? No (US/UK/JP + 190 countries) Yes (FR, DE and most of Europe) Yes Yes —-Ad text and title No No No —-Display URL [...]

I’ll be speaking on the Brand and Reputation Management Session. Stop by the session or find me around the show.

We were honored to be nominated for the Semmy Award for best PPC post of 2008 for our post on Search Engine PPC Trademark policies. Our thanks and gratitude to the nominating committee!