It was unveiled recently that Google have been testing ‘related to’ ad’s in their result pages. We thought this new innovation was a great idea from Google when we saw these related ad’s appearing on keywords such as ‘World Cup’, where people were offered ad’s advertising tickets for the World Cup.
However, we have seen that Google are now rolling out these ‘related to’ ad’s on a companies brand terms. An example of this can be seen below for Thomas Cook, where Easyjet and Monarch are being promoted….
This raises the question of Google actually promoting other brands competitors on a firms brand terms and whether this is something advertisers would be happy about?
We feel this is a bold step from Google and can imagine a potential backlash as a result of this new innovation. Google opened up its trademark policy for brands, in the UK, back in May 2008 and many prestigious brands, most notably Louis Vuitton, filed legal action over their concerns about websites selling fake copies of their products and bidding on their brand keywords.
These ‘related to’ ad’s take trademark bidding to a new level where Google is actively promoting competition on a brands trademark and as such brands could see a decrease in click thru rate on their own brand terms and potentially an increase in the cost per click (CPC) for their brand keywords.
Black Hat PPC will be monitoring this closely and will keep you updated if we hear any further news on this.
