Search engine advertising issues

The search engines advertising (Google, Yahoo!, Bing…) offer pay-per-click programs. The advertiser’s ad appears depending on the key word captured by the Internet user and his location.

Since September 14th, 2010, an advertiser can buy the name of a trademark as a keyword in Google Adwords without being its owner. This policy is the result of a ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) of March 23rd, 2010, clearing Google of trademark counterfeiting.

This change in the rules has led to numerous abuses and to the emergence of multiple advertisers. Keep Alert carries out an initial diagnostic and implements a daily watch over the period of the subscription you have chosen in order to detect all the adverts appearing on search engines when your trademark is entered.
All the results are subject to a timestamped screenshot.

Keep Alert deals with all the issues relative to the use of the trademark in advertising sales houses. The solutions brought by Keep Alert will allow you to benefit from numerous advantages for your company.

Issues

• Impossible to prohibit the purchase of your trademark from Google Adwords
• Previously blacklisted trademarks are available again
• Identifying advertisers using your trademark as a key word
• Detecting adverts using your trademark in different advertising sales houses
• Spotting the use of your trademark in competitor adverts, diverting your business
• Distinguishing price comparison websites who use your trademark to enhance their traffic
• Reporting non-authorised retailers who increase their sales without respecting your marketing regulations
• Detecting adverts used as marketing support to counterfeiting websites
• Determining adverts which are damaging for the image of your company
• Recognising information websites which could publish unofficial  information about your trademark 
• Protecting your infringed intellectual property rights in order to protect your trademark’s good reputation
• Uncovering geographical targeting and time zoning strategies
• Checking the appearance of adverts with typographical variances of the trademark (for instance: Alsthom, Futuroscopes, Rollex…)
• Spotting the affiliates positioned at the place of your official advert so as to obtain unjustified commissions
• Ensuring that removed adverts do not reappear
• Also proving the visibility of  adverts with negative keywords
• Fighting against the high rise of cost-per-click on trademark keywords
• Losing your top spot among commercial links on your own trademark.
• Decrease of the return on investment of SEM campaigns

Solutions

• Daily automatic check on search engine(s) for the appearance of adverts in a request on your trademark.
• Identification of the advertiser with the trio: Title of the advert, descriptive text of the advert, Url link displayed on the advert (“display link”)
• Daily timestamped screenshot of the search engine’s page displaying the advert (pdf export available)
• Daily timestamped screenshot of the landing page specified in the advert
• Worldwide surveillance perimeter: Google Adwords, Yahoo!, Bing, Baidu (China), Yandex (Russia), Naver (South Korea)
• Detection of the advert according to the language(s) of the country
• Geolocation of the advertisers
• Setting of the control rhythm, time and days
• Monitoring of the occurrence of the advert’s display with a time evolution graph 
• Automatic classification of new advertisers added  to your history
• Transversal search area of content among the fields of the advert (title, text, display link)
• Sorting per country, language, date, advertising sales house, heading… of the detected results
• Classification of the results per personalised “Use”, “Owner” and “Action” heading
• Control panel: advertisers per country, adverts per language...
• Excel export of all the results and associated data
• Creation of pdf reports with the selected adverts
• Monitoring of contentious cases: introduction to our legal partners

Advantages

• Worldwide monitoring of the use of your trademark in advertising sales houses
• Generation of claims letters so as to stop problematic adverts
• Withdrawal of advertisers using your trademark as a loss leader
• Presence of legitimate advertisers only
• Optimisation of the return on investment of your own campaigns of sponsored links
• Decrease in the cost-per-click (CPC) of your trademark thanks to the eviction of illegal campaigns
• Elimination of adverts for counterfeit websites which take advantage of your clients and prospects 

Discover the Keep Alert platform and its commercial offers for the surveillance of the use of your trademark by the advertising sales houses of Google Adwords, Yahoo!, Bing and other national search engines. Advanced options (typographical variants, configuration of control frequency, time and days…) are also available.

To get a quote for the trademarks of your choice, contact us.