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It's a sneaky strategy used by savvy Internet marketers everywhere: Buy your competitor's name as a keyword, and serve up pay-per-click ads to poach customers from the search results. But for DoubleClick, the online-ad network that Google's trying to buy, it seems a bit foolish to use Google keyword ads to go after AdBrite, the San Francisco-based competitor. For one thing, it's apparently a violation of Google's own rules about trademarks. And on top of that, it comes across as an admission of weakness — that customers are more likely to be googling "AdBrite" than they are "DoubleClick."
SAN FRANCISCO, 4:21 PM, SUN JUL 6 |
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Comments
Regardless, it's not necessary for them to put Adbrite's name as the title of their ad. It's misleading, and yeah, it does seem like an admission of weakness. Doubleclick needs to make their presentation a little more user friendly.
It's OK to bid on competitive trademarks, you just can't use them in your creative.
It looks like they're using dynamic titles (where search queries are auto inserted). It can be affective when used properly, but you need to make sure competitors names are kept in a different ad group.
Looks more like a case of sloppy SEM than malicious intent.
I say make doubleclick pay! Click on the "ad" folks.
wow - especially weak posts today. take a day off, man.
More evidence that Google feels it makes all the rules AND can break them when it benefits them. But then again everyone who watches them knew that already.
@newsman- you are a tool, quit shilling.
AdBrite doesn't mind the publicity. The founder of AdBrite found his initial fame and fortune with a website named F**kedCompany.com, which became more famous each time a lawsuit was filed against them.
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