4 months on What is the effect of Google’s Trademark Policy?

Lots of our clients were nervous about Google allowing competitors to bid on Brand terms. 4 months on and we are protecting our clients with brand ads against competitors, and in some case bidding on competitor brand terms. In general, though, we haven’t seen a huge increase in competitive brand advertising, and that’s because Google’s algorithm works. Due to Google’s ‘Quality Score’ – a competitor’s bid needs to be fairly high if the click through rate on their ad is low – which is inevitable if a prospect is looking for a different brand… So ultimately it becomes usually unprofitable to bid on your competiotor’s brand terms over the long term. This article agrees with us: http://www.ppcblog.co.uk/google-adwords/another-look-at-googles-trademark-policy-change/