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Advertiser brands are being used against them.
This week's Wall St.
Journal had an excellent article about “Piggybacking”. (No they are
not referring to throwing a kid on your back and jumping around the yard!) This
piggybacking is a form of brand infringement that is haunting thousands of
advertisers. It is the practice of buying a trademarked brand and profiting
from it. Google is guilty of facilitating this practice.
The Journal gave
several exceptional examples of how brands including American Airlines and
InterContinental are trying to fight back. One example was the term, “Holiday
Inn Orlando” which, when clicked, led consumers to http://www.LowFares.com. This site is
not authorized to use the Holiday Inn brand name. To make matters worse, the
site had Holiday Inn ads on the site. Each time these ads were clicked Holiday
Inn ends up paying both Google AND LowFares.com for the illicit click.
Google, in a typical “do no evil” response, refers to their trademark
policy. Unfortunately, their policy is not carried out on their site. This
problem is similar to the geo-targeting issue. When an advertiser tells Google
they want their ads targeted to the US, they expect that this will occur. We
find that as much as 10% of the US targeted ads appear outside the US.
This brand
hijacking is yet another aspect to the traffic quality management issue that we
help customers deal with. A high level of
diligence is required to ensure advertiser brands are protected. Time and time
again Click Forensics finds violations for our clients and even our own brand.
These problems are generally fixed when we alert the search engine. But
without constant monitoring, the damage is done.
Who profits from this?
GOOG.
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