So after all the hoopla about Google removing the trademark protection from its Adwords system (of which I only got chance to write about once as I was too busy doing something about it at work!) what was the outcome? The removal happened on Monday (bank holiday, coincidence? I think not) while most of us were enjoying the good weather or a badly played round of golf in my case. You can be damn sure there were no affiliates out on the golf course as they were all in-doors getting on as many brand terms as possible to make the most of the changes.
The net affect from what I have seen is the obvious rise in brand ownerships CPCs (about 30-60p increase on average) which is a big deal if you are somebody who relies no their brand sales to bring down the overall cost of the medium. Affiliates and clued up competitors are having a field day at the moment with not many people following Tesco’s moral stance of not bidding on competitors terms. I personally think it will all begin to die down as people realise the inflated CPCs they are going to have to pay to bid on competitors terms due to their lack of quality score will see a lot of them decide it is not worth the bother. But many companies are going to have to review their affiliate strategy and make sure they have clear guidelines on what is allowed and what isn’t otherwise they will end up paying out a small fortune to affiliates who are doing nothing more than brand bidding.