Ethical, Legal, or Deviously Awesome?

[AaronHenry]

Howdy Moz!

Let's say we have a client out of Washington called "Acme Plumbing".  Of course they rank #1 for their own brand, but the trouble we found is directly above in the PPC section.

It appears that a competitor is targeting the brand by including some of the branding in the ad itself.  Specifically, it has the following format:

Acme Plumbing - Quality and Affordable Plumbing Service
acme.contractorreferral.net/plumbing
Submit zip code for free estimate

Clicking on the link takes you directly to a lead generation form.  Considering the protection on the name (), is this ethical or even legal?  Or do we just have competitor that found a sneaky way to try to divert traffic? Google's guidelines are clear about violations.  What about general branding, especially with established companies and regional brands?

[khi5]

Maybe your competitor is using dynamic ad titles and not targeting your brand. Try entering "ABC plumbing" in Google and if title starts with "ABC plumbing" then you know they use dynamic ads.

Why dont you create ads for your brands and you will quickly be nr 1 on PPC section and also quickly see price drops and pay very little per click (at least most likely).

Let us assume they were targeting your brand: it is unlikely their conversion will be any good since users are looking for your brand.

[acceleratormktg]

Unfortunately, there is nothing illegal about what the competitor is doing. We have dealt with similar issues in the past with some of our clients and have found that the advertiser is not breaking Google's TOS. Technically speaking, the competing advertiser is completely within their rights, especially if the brand they are cloning is not officially trademarked.

This is not to say that it is ethical, however. As a marketer and advertiser I would personally have a hard time doing this myself or justifying my team in doing it. We often bid on competitor's names, but we never try to make it look like we are the competitor.

Is it clever? A little bit. Could it get you a positive ROI? Probably. Is it worth it? Nope. In many industries a strategy like this could destroy a company's reputation or ruin interindustry relationships. Personally, I believe the longterm consequences are not worth the temporary reward.