What is your opinion on the practice of bidding on a competitor's name on Adwords or YSM? Do you think it is unethical or a fair PPC strategy?

I wouldn't call it unethical. You should be able to bid on any words that you want--as long as you're not violating someone else's trademark. As long as you're not representing or trying to dilute someone else's trademark then advertisers should have a right to advertise their company or web site for any keywords, even if they're made up.

Well,

It really depends on the word. If I sold bubble gum and had the website www.bubblegum.com and that was the name of my company then I think it's fair for others to bid on bubble gum...it is a product not a company. Now if i had a brand of gum called qwhi and did all the branding for it, it kind of sux to have someone piggy back on all of the branding that i did.

I've thought about this in the past and don't yet have a firm opinion. I don't do this, but the following seems reasonable to me. Say you sell Brand Y widgets, but Brand X widgets are better known (and therefore, searched for more). You create an ad keyed on terms like "Brand X widget" and have an ad like

Brand Y widgets
Quality widgets at a good price
Great for blah, blah, blah
Brand-Y-Widgets.com

What do the rest of you think?

Gan

I think that if you do not try to pass yourself off as that company, its fair game. If your ad represents your own company, you are not trying to deceive anyone, you are just offering other options for that product/service. It is unethical if you are trying to pass yourself off as that company to deceive the consumer.

What is everyone's feeling how domain squaters do this? They simply bid on my company's name to direct people to their site which is simply comprised of AdSense or other sponsored links. They technically are still potentially sending people to my site but can still be misleading.

Has anyone had similiar issues or problems combating these people?

Quite funny I was just thinking about this the other day. I think that there are a few things to consider: 1. it has become "the norm" these days, with affiliates competing with the brands that whose products they sell and adsense hosted sites doing likewise. 2. even without intentionally bidding on competitors brandnames, if you have broad matched your product or service keywords, unless you negative match all your competitors you will be bidding on their brandnames if someone combines a common product or service with their brand name. Therefore it seems that the onus nowdays appears to be on the Brand owners to copyright and monitor their own brand terms if they dont want competitors appearing on brand related searches

What is your opinion on the practice of bidding on a competitor's name on Adwords or YSM? Do you think it is unethical or a fair PPC strategy?


This is a good question. I personally like the idea of bidding against your competitor, however, search marketers must understand this opens a pandoras box. Whereas once you start bidding on your competetors trademarked name, they, if they are smart will start bidding on your trademark terms. this will of course bring your cost up. But there are upsides here!

Additional Impressions - market exposure...
Additional Cost - when they bid on your terms, however this should be limited.
More branding....
but, if you are smalller than your competitor.. for instance
BooksAmillion bidding on b&N.com its good for booksamillion.

Downside is opening the door...
Once your competitor bids on your trademark name... this drives your cost up
and
Potential takes customers away from you....
And, if you are bigger than your competitor, this may hurt... exp
B&N.com bidding on BooksAmiilion they is a very good change that B&N.com will take a significant amount of traffic away from Booksamillion.com

Smart marketers understand the pros and cons and weigh the value of the propostions....

The best anology I heard was when a person goes to the grocery store for Coke.... he heads to the soda aisle and there are all the Cola products.... he may have gone for Coke but leaves with Pepsi...

The name gets you there but the decision can be swayed and that is freedom of the marketplace.

With keywords.... so long as you do not mention the name in the ad - then you are pitching alterntaives - and the name owner has the ability to use the name and thus have better conversions etc.

So long as the process is equally open... it is what it is.

The best anology I heard was when a person goes to the grocery store for Coke.... he heads to the soda aisle and there are all the Cola products.... he may have gone for Coke but leaves with Pepsi...

Not to open up a can of worms about semantics but I have to disagree with this comment. When they go to the soda aisle they have an idea what they want but its not branded as the Coke aisle. The aisle is an open aisle for anyone that sells that product, it really has nothing to do with brand.

I think a better analogy might be if you compared this to a car dealership, lets say Ford. If someone goes to the Ford dealership they are expecting to find a Ford car (excluding used cars, thats a whole different story but still one that beenfits ford in the end too). A person should not have to go to that Ford dealership and have to sift through the Hondas, Chevys, etc. That venue is for selling fords and thats it. Visitors are going there becuase they are trying to find Ford, not cars that they have to figure out arent Fords, or even cars that arent Ford at all but put the Ford emblem on it.

Its seems its the same for someone searching using a specifc brand name. I do not think it should be fair game for just anyone to bid on other words and make the visitor figure it out on their own.

That is the ying and yang of this discussion... I don't care either way.... ban all trademarked terms and company names and what happens in the organic search??? Should only the company appear in those too?

By limiting it to not using the term in the ad but being able to bid on the term itself - Google allows a more open system...
Yahoo restricts advertising on trademarked terms.... that is the other way.

Neither stops the inane things that happen in organic.... if the PPC issue goes one way the next action will be against the organic... let's face it the people who own the space should be able to call their own method - you don't have to go there - but your name sure will.....

I'll keep the analogy train going.......

I guess to me bidding on keywords of a branded name isnt any different than if you tried to purchase a spot in the yellow pages for a different company's name and just put your own phone number. Sure, its at the phonebook's discression if they would want to do this (they would maybe make more money) but eventually people will get frustrated with the results and they will just ignore it and not use it anymore. People will always use search engines but as people get more web savvy they will eventually just ignore the paid listings.

I agree that the owner of the space can do what they want but I think Yahoo is taking the smarter approach in that they are helping the user and the advertiser as opposed themselves. Google may be helping themselves in the short run with added revenue from PPC but it will hurt them in the long run.

I guess to me bidding on keywords of a branded name isnt any different than if you tried to purchase a spot in the yellow pages for a different company's name and just put your own phone number.

That's not really the same thing. In this case (the phone book thing), the ad is deliberately deceptive and aims to get business from customers who think they're calling someone else.

But bidding on another company's name isn't overtly deceptive as long as my ad doesn't suggest that I'm representing the other company. There's nothing wrong with an honest ad campaign that essentially says "I know you were searching for that product, but here's a similar one you might like to consider instead."

For example, if I'm working for adidas, I would have no problem with bidding on "nike" as a keyword, as long as my ads explicitly state that they're going to an adidas page and are NOT going to nike.

Between this issue and arbitrage I know SES San Jose is going to be fun....

Sorry, cant go. Appearantly its not ok to fly across the country to go to conference the week before you get married. As much as I love a good debate, thats not one I wish to engage in. Hope you guys have fun.

I maintain keyword lists for most of our competitors. Some have caught on and started bidding wars with us for their own name, but have not bid on our name.

If the ad isn't deceptive, you're contributing to a positive user experience by giving them what they are looking for--be it an alternative or not.

I maintain keyword lists for most of our competitors. Some have caught on and started bidding wars with us for their own name, but have not bid on our name.

If the ad isn't deceptive, you're contributing to a positive user experience by giving them what they are looking for--be it an alternative or not.

See that is the fun part of this job... bidding wars over competitors names....

The best anology I heard was when a person goes to the grocery store for Coke.... he heads to the soda aisle and there are all the Cola products.... he may have gone for Coke but leaves with Pepsi...

Funny, but I was thinking exactly the same thing. Heck, the people who work with supermarkets know that getting good shelf space is key and it's quite conceivable yo'd want your brand next to one that gets a lot of attention, so you offer the supermarket owner a discount for that space.
Another example is when they compare absorbant paper towels on TV. "bounty gets this much liquid, and downy gets this much. buy bounty'

Consumers are looking to do comparison shopping anyways, so this is just another way to do it.

I'd say the more INTERESTING question is conversions : how effective is bidding on a competitor's name, brands etc in attracting paying customers? Is there a positive ROI? Is it a better ROI than you could get by putting the $ elsewhere?