AdGooroo Trademark Insight Tool Makes Infringement Monitoring A Breeze

Some of you may not have any issues with other advertisers infringing on your trademarked terms via search marketing… count yourselves lucky. For those of us who have been left by the search engines to self-police these problems, AdGooroo’s Trademark Insight tool can turn a laborious challenge into a fairly efficient task. AdGooroo is well […]

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Some of you may not have any issues with other advertisers infringing on your trademarked terms via search marketing… count yourselves lucky. For those of us who have been left by the search engines to self-police these problems, AdGooroo’s Trademark Insight tool can turn a laborious challenge into a fairly efficient task.

AdGooroo is well known in the SEM industry for their SEM Insights and Natural Search Insights products that help marketers get a very accurate view of paid and organic listings on Search Engine Results Pages.

In full disclosure, I’ve been using AdGooroo since 2006 and I have found their level of innovation, technology, and service to be at the highest of levels. I didn’t use the Trademark Insight tool until a few years ago, but it’s just one many products they offer in their suite of integrated tools.

Why Are Trademarked Terms So Important To Monitor?

Think about it: in most paid search marketing accounts, the branded terms are usually the highest converting and most efficient traffic stream you can have. Not only could competitors literally be taking money out of your pocket, but they could also be driving up your costs.

If they’re bidding aggressively, you’re probably following suit to maintain good average positions—so if you can knock some of those folks off of those SERPS, then you won’t have to bid as high to get in the same spots.

When you also realize that your quality scores could go up because your click-through rates could improve, it becomes obvious how impactful trademark wrangling could be.

As AdGooroo notes in their product literature:

Most companies do nothing to stop competitors and affiliates from advertising on their brand terms because of the difficulty in identifying offending ads. AdGooroo’s 24/7 automated brand monitoring service solves this problem by identifying those advertisers who are bidding on or using your brand terms in their ad copy.

Notice they mention affiliates as well. One of the biggest offenders (and I know this from personal experience) to trademark infringement are affiliates.

It’s become commonplace for most major advertisers who run affiliate programs to not allow their partners to run paid search ads on their branded (or trademarked terms) so that they’re not bidding against themselves or losing sales that they could have garnered.

I’d like to give these folks the benefit of the doubt and hope that when they do break these policies that they do so in ignorance and not on purpose…but the negative results are the same whether it’s competitors or affiliates.

So How Does Trademark Insight Solve This Problem?

Well, if you’re not up to speed on the engine stance on this issue (check out, for example, the AdWords trademark enforcement policy), the gist is that in most cases, it’s up to you to file a report.

Understandably, Google can’t sift through every advertiser on their platform and know who has the authority to use these terms.

So, right now, if you wanted to police your trademark terms, you would have to constantly manually search on your terms, take screenshots, fill out the paperwork, etc. Trademark Insight smartly automates this process.

Now for my favorite part of Search Marketing Toolbox, we go under the hood!

Once you load up your keywords, Trademark Insights takes over and checks for your terms across eleven search engines and fifty different countries. This prevents some rather savvy folks from trying to “geo-spoof” (not geotarget in your company known HQ areas).

After a day or two, here’s the kind of report you will see:

1 Overview Report

And here’s the detailed listing of the incidents…

2 Detail Report

You get a list of all advertisers and ad servers:

3 Ad Server Report

You can even see infringers based on destination and display URL:

4 Hijacking Report

Here’s my absolute favorite part of the tool which to me makes this product a no-brainer. In a few easy steps, Trademark Insight generates the proper engine form with all of the necessary info to file a complaint as outlined by the particular engine’s trademark policy.

5 Complaint Letter

How nice is that?

And finally, you can setup a daily email report to check if an incident occurred was discovered the previous day without even having to log in to the platform. Talk about “set it and forget it”!

6 Alert

If you’re a search marketer who has trademarked terms in your account and you’re not tracking infringement, it’s definitely possible you’re missing out on a quick fix to performance improvement. With AdGooroo’s Trademark Insight tool, you can monitor and file engine complaints quickly and easily.

Good hunting!


Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

Josh Dreller
Contributor
Josh Dreller has been a search marketer since 2003 with a focus on SEM technology. As a media technologist fluent in the use of leading industry systems, Josh stays abreast of cutting edge digital marketing and measurement tools to maximize the effect of digital media on business goals. He has a deep passion to monitor the constantly evolving intersection between marketing and technology. Josh is currently the Director of Content Marketing at Kenshoo.

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