RE: Apple Trademarks in Google AdWords
RE: Apple Trademarks in Google AdWords
- Subject: RE: Apple Trademarks in Google AdWords
- From: Fred Showker <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2005 07:04:37 -0400
Adam's latest follow-up on the AdWords story
(Yesterday's TidBits #800) indicates a slight
change in Google's monitoring of the words.
http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-800.html
Having been in the advertising industry for 35 years,
it's difficult to believe that this would be an issue.
Apply the same principles to brick-and-mortar world and
you quickly see how ludicrous it is. Imagine SONY
attempting to restrict the Sunday news paper from allowing
vendors to use SONY trademarks in advertising sales
of TVs. Or Ford. Or Proctor & Gamble. It's crazy.
Count the number of times the word "iPod" appears in
the Washington Post without a trademark symbol. The
only difference is the unique and far-spread niche Google
has built for itself. Being so visible and so influential
makes them a good target. Will Apple next turn to restrict
the use of their trademarks in Amazon.com?
But consider this:
Those AdWords are used extensively in Google's AdSense
program -- to match keywords in the content of the AdSense
site with the appropriate ads. Users of AdSense, Google's
context-sensitive text ads should monitor those ads closely.
Several months ago we began noticing a new wave of ads showing
up on our pages promoting "Free iPod" or "Free iBook." So,
we began monitoring any/all "cheap" or "free" product ads.
Here's a legitimate application of those trademarks that
Apple should be looking out for, rather than legitimate
advertisers.
Some of the ads lead the reader to believe that in exchange
for a review of the product, they will send you a free iPod,
iBook, or other products like Palms, cameras, etc.
It turns out they are any one of several "survey" companies
that use "Free" as bait to get people to take marketing surveys.
Two of those surveyors were also engaged in large-scale spam
campaigns. I tracked several of them through their servers --
by actually going to their survey pages, reading their policies,
etc., to find no mentions of "Free" anything once the reader
is in the survey path.
Not wanting any of our readers to get hooked in possible
online scams, I blocked those ads/domains from my AdSense.
To my surprise they were back again and again, under
different domains -- all of which resolved back to the
very same forms and bogus "give away" sites. Attempting
to reach officials at any of the sites was fruitless.
I complained to Google and worked with their AdWord and
AdSense specialists to track and validate my suspicions.
Yet they keep popping up again and again.
If you use AdSense, keep an eye on the kinds of ads that
Google purveys. I don't think Google checks their advertisers
as closely as they probably should. If you see objectionable
or seemingly bogus ads, you can block the domains in your
manager interface so they no longer appear on your site.
You don't want your readers / members getting snagged in
online email / identity harvesting.
:-)
Fred
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