Google Adwords Trademark Policy
If you are an advertiser advertising products that are protected by trademark on Google adwords, you should’ve already known that since June 15th, 2009, you are allowed to use the trademark terms in your ad texts (some conditions apply).
Right after the policy change became official, I immediately changed some of my ads which I was using substitution terms in place of trademark terms, and to no surprise, the ads were approved. Impressive. The CTR improved, and everyone was happy. I then slowly updated all my ads that were using substitution terms to trademark terms hoping to increase my conversions significantly.
It was working fine for a while, and then suddenly I’ve noticed that my overall impression and conversion has dropped. I came to find out that the ads which were approved by Google for trademark terms now had the status “approved (limited)”. The vague explanation from Google doesn’t help at all, and the ads just totally stopped showing.
So this is a reminder to all advertisers out there who had updated their ads with trademark terms, now will be a good time to check up on your ads to see if they are still getting impressions.
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Bill Bennett said:
Jul 18, 11 at 6:57 amI starting managing the AdWords account at my company part time in May and full time two weeks ago. I have to say that so far the AdWords policy regarding trademarks is the most opaque and confusing of any of Google’s policies (and they have a few!). Last week I exchanged email with support to ask them why several of my ads had been disapproved when the way I had used the trademark terms in the ads was not substantially different than how I had used it in other ads that had already been approved. The reply I received was very puzzling, and when I asked for clarification, none was forthcoming!
I was told that I needed to delete several low search volume keywords from the ad groups, and activate several other paused keywords. I just recently achieved “qualified individual” status with Google, and I don’t remember anything in the training that said that keywords or keyword status had any effect at all on ad approvals. When I asked Google’s rep to please point me in the right direction to material that I could read to hopefully avoid this issue in the future, all they did was refer me to Google’s material about low search volume keywords, which says absolutely nothing about ad approvals!