Google has announced changes to their UK trademark policy that will bring it in line to their US policy. Currently, UK AdWords advertisers are not allowed to use trademark names in their advertising text without the strict permission of the trademark owner. Companies such as Apple and Sony have not allowed resellers to use their brand name in PPC marketing campaigns. Since May 2008, advertisers can bid on trademarks and brand names but can not use the the company name or brand in the actual text. In real terms, this has meant biding on the trademark or brand name is next to useless!
All this is set to change from 14th of September this year.
Some rules will still be set around using trademarks. One such rule will be that the advert must click through to a page containing information about the trademark or through to a product of the trademark. For example if you use the trademark of “Apple” it must link through to an Apple product or information about Apple as a company.
So what does all this mean in layman terms?
It simply means that e-commerce sites that sell branding products now have the opportunity to successfully bid on keywords and phrase to increase their sales using Google AdWords.
In our eyes this is no bad thing for the smaller e-commerce site owners, as e-retail sales are continuing to increase month by month, they have a better chance of getting a slice of this continuing growth.