Certain advertisers on Google’s trademark paid search engine marketing platform will now have greater freedom to use third party ad text, as the company is to bring their ad text trademark policy in line with that of the U.S Adwords system.
Last year, Google relaxed its policies on third party trademarks for North American advertisers to allow some AdWords users to use trademarked terms in their ad text if they didn’t own the trademark or even if they didn’t have explicit approval from the owner.
This meant that resellers of trademarked goods or services, or those who sell components, replacement parts or compatible trademarks that correspond to trademarks displayed could now run PPC ads that featured such terms. In these cases, the landing page for the ads must clearly be linked to the sale of goods, services or components/parts/etc relating corresponding to the trademark term
The new policy also allowed informational sites to use trademark terms as long the primary purpose of the site is to provide non-competitive and informative details about the goods or services corresponding to the term – and the advertiser does not sell or facilitate the sale of goods or services of a competitor to the trademark owner.
Now this policy is to be extended to the UK, Ireland and Canada from September 14th. So, for example, advertisers who sell mobile phone handsets will be able to highlight the actual brands they sell in their ad text, specifically targeting relevant searches and potential customers.
Additionally from the same date Google will be extending its policy on using trademarks as keywords to Europe, bringing the region in line with that existing in the majority of Google’s markets.
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