Can you bid on trademarked keywords?

[TheOceanAgency]

Google has various rules surrounding bidding on and using other businesses' trademarked keywords in ads.  My understanding is that you can bid on the trademarked key phrases but you cannot use the in your ads.  Is that correct?

[flowsimple]

You can get your competitor's trademarked terms to appear in your ads. There's a simple loophole, 3 words: dynamic keyword insertion. Boom.

[SanketPatel]

Hi Theresa,

You can bid on competitors trademark but it depends on who is your competitor but there are exception for reseller and you have taken authorization from website owner. They have different policy for "trademark terms used in ad text, "trademark terms used in keywords", "trademark terms used in display URL". You can find more about it here:

http://support.google.com/adwordspolicy/bin/answer.py?hl=en-GB&answer=6118

[csmithal]

You got it. While you can have your ads trigger for a trademarked/competitors' term, you won't be able to use it in your ad copy, therefore, your quality scores on those terms will always be low.

I would put it in a separate campaign for that reason.

[activitysuper]

If you add the trademark in the adtext the ad could be declined, I think companies can run into trouble if they use competitor brand names in ad text as it could look like passing off.