Online Strategies Magazine

November 2009 – Online Insights: Paid Search

Case Studies in Brand Defense

By Steve Jillings

Aggressive marketing tactics from competitors are nothing new, but successful brands are facing pirates of a new kind in the world of search engine marketing. As direct marketers move from traditional advertising to integrated advertising platforms with significant spend in both offline and online marketing, they need to be aware of pitfalls that can translate to millions in revenue lost to competitors.

Search engine marketing is one of the highest-stakes categories in interactive marketing, simply because it is one of the most prevalent and most accountable forms of online marketing. According to a recent report by Forrester Research, the interactive marketing spend will near $55 billion by 2014, with search engine marketing accounting for more than $31 billion of that total.

SEM Trademark Infringement
The search marketplace has grown rapidly, and as direct-response and other marketers grow their online presence, most will find their search space increasingly crowded with unwanted infringers. These infringers are intent on using a company’s own hard-earned brand recognition and trademark to re-direct potential customers to purchase the infringer’s product.

Here’s how it works. It’s a well-known fact that direct-to-consumer advertising drives buyers to other channels. And the number-one place TV drives them to is search. When a consumer goes online to purchase the product they saw on TV, they often start by searching for the product’s brand name on Google or another search engine. In spaces crowded with infringers, some or all of the results that appear in the paid search area of the search results page will be advertising from the competition–or, potentially worse, the brand’s own affiliates. If the infringer’s offer or ad copy is compelling to that consumer, what started as a search for a brand they saw on TV may turn into a purchase of a competing product and lost revenue for the major brand. With millions of search-engine users looking for products and services each day, this can have a tremendous cumulative negative impact on a company’s bottom line.

Click Cost Inflation
The infringer is often a known competitor, or an affiliate of a competitor, or sometimes a direct affiliate of the primary brand. If not managed carefully, even affiliates who should be finding customers elsewhere for a brand can make the situation worse by infringing and competing with that brand for its own customers.

The crowding and competitive bidding that is part of SEM trademark infringement essentially raises the click costs for all parties, in addition to preventing brands from taking full advantage of their offline marketing investments. In an environment of tightening budgets and increased pressure for ROI, click inflation makes it even more difficult for online marketers to justify their investment in search and other interactive media and demonstrate that they’re getting results.

Managing a Brand in PAID Search
The worst part is that trademark infringement is often done without the brand even knowing about it. Clever competitors and affiliates can buy your brand’s keywords in ways that make it very hard to track. They can bid for branded keywords in specific geographies (geo-targeting) or during certain times of the day (dayparting), when or where they don’t think the brand will be policing their own branded search results–if they’re policing these results at all.

Sadly, the vast majority of advertisers are not managing this issue well today. Understanding the complexity of infringement, coupled with the challenge of monitoring and managing the issue, makes it difficult to address in-house. And few search or interactive agencies are equipped with the right tools and high-level expertise needed to combat the problem.

The courts are just starting to address online trademark infringement, but there is a long way to go. Major brands like Geico, American Airlines and others have tackled the issue in the courts, but it’s rare that brands have ended up with satisfactory rulings. Just last year, Tiffany challenged eBay for using the term “Tiffany” to trigger a search. But the courts ruled in favor of eBay, determining it could continue to trigger searches using another company’s trademarked name.

Marketers don’t have to be on their own to police use of their trademarked brands online, but they need to choose their tools and partners carefully. There are tools that exist today to help with some aspects of monitoring, but few full-service solutions are readily available. Because of the lack of a turnkey solution on the market, our own company, Vantage Media, has developed a proprietary brand management suite called Brand Defender to address the issue on behalf of clients.

Fortunately, since paid search is one of the most measurable forms of advertising, the right solution can offer dramatic ROI. When managed correctly, the impact of protecting a brand online is easily quantifiable as infringers are removed from the picture. For client Auto Insurance Specialists (AIS), one of California’s largest auto insurance agencies, we developed a Brand Defender program that successfully removed 56 infringing bidders from AIS branded-search queries. These efforts translated to a more than 100-percent increase in sales volume year over year with a significant decrease in costs. For client Allied Van Lines, the world’s largest moving network, Vantage Media successfully removed more than 50 infringing bidders from Allied branded-search queries as part of a comprehensive search marketing program that led to a 600-percent increase in qualified sales lead volume.

Whether delivered by a compelling infomercial or other DR media, the sale clearly starts with that all-important first impression. The DR campaign can act as a catalyst to the online conversion, turning that impression into a purchase. But there are more and more pitfalls and traps in a complex search environment, one that demands a sophisticated approach that is nimble in response to the constantly changing search landscape. Clearly, there’s a growing need in the search engine marketplace to control the branded-bidding environment so that potential customers don’t get tripped up and lost along the path to purchase.