5 ms·

GoToMeeting uses competitor’s name in search ads to trick people

12 points by ifficiency 14y ago

latchkey 14y ago
Evil and illegal
- maxgaudin 14y ago
  Definitely evil and unethical but probably not illegal. This post shows some insight into the issue but not an answer http://www.sportsandentertainmentlawplaybook.com/intellectual-property/trademark/ninth-circuit-gives-green-light-to-google-adwords-use-of-competitors-marks/ http://www.sportsandentertainmentlawplaybook.com/intellectua...
  - latchkey 14y ago
    Using another companies trademarked name in advertisements for your company without their permission is legal?
    - ifficiency 14y ago
      We are in the process of contacting Google now and protecting our trademark.
  - chc 14y ago
    That post doesn't come anywhere close to establishing "probably not illegal." It's not 100% clear, but it sounds like Network Automation just bid on their competitors' product names to make their ad appear in searches for those products. That's aggressive, but like the court said, it's not particularly confusing unless you just genuinely can't tell the difference between the two products. But actually using their product name in your ad as a link to your product page, the way GoToMeeting seems† to be doing here? That is very different. I think I would mistakenly click that link thinking I was going to MeetingBurner, and I am more ad-savvy than most Internet consumers. † Note: I'm not actually going to accuse GoToMeeting of any wrongdoing here. Heaven knows I'd want people to wait for more than a TNW story before they indicted me. I'm just talking about the difference between the two instances.
  - AJ007 14y ago
    Bidding on a trademark term, and including a trademark term in an ad to represent something that is not there are two distinctly different things.
glimcat 14y ago
My first thought on these matters is usually "unscrupulous affiliate." This is particularly so when the writer hasn't bothered to contact GoToMeeting first. The fast reward loop behind posting sensational and confrontational headlines unfortunately tends to outweigh the backlash from not doing basic research before publishing. For that matter, it's possible that MeetingBurner took out the ads in attempt to generate press. There's no way to rationally conclude who the bad actor is, if there is one, because the writer didn't bother to do their research before holding their hand out for traffic.
- benologist 14y ago
  "This is particularly so when the writer hasn't bothered to contact GoToMeeting first. The fast reward loop behind posting sensational and confrontational headlines unfortunately tends to outweigh the backlash from not doing basic research before publishing." TNW have already established themselves as a scabby little rag that plagiarize and ignore Creative Common attribution requirements, not doing research sounds like par for the course.
- ifficiency 14y ago
  I can promise you we did NOT take out the ads to generate press. You are entitled to your opinion but I can assure you this was not done by our team.
  - glimcat 14y ago
    Not saying you did, just that the journalist has failed to meet minimum standards. On the other hand, the problem could have been resolved with a phone call - from your lawyer, if necessary. Immediately making a blog post out of it on your end wasn't the most scrupulous thing to do either. It also sounds like the problem arose from an innocent mistake on their end. Google doesn't warn against this when pushing their keyword insertion feature. It's on the user to be responsible, but Google could do a far better job on documentation.
zengr 14y ago
IMO that's a very common practice: http://i.imgur.com/m1eDE.png http://i.imgur.com/m1eDE.png (ebay store example) See the sponsored results by volusion, kabbge and ask.com
- ifficiency 14y ago
  The difference is they are not positioning themselves as Ebay. In the MeetingBurner example they do not say "Considering MeetingBurner?" positioning us as a separate platform. Theres is MeetingBurner - Feature rich web meeting software with the underlying link to GTM.
courtewing 14y ago
There is a response from a marketing guy from GoToMeeting in the comments of this article. I couldn't readily find a way to link to the comment, so I'll post it here for anyone that doesn't want to go hunting: "Hi, this is Andrew from the GoToMeeting search marketing team. I just posted over on the MeetingBurner blog as well. We do not use competitive names in search ads, but we do follow the common industry practice of bidding on competitive terms. In the instance of this ad, we were using a Google method called dynamic keyword insertion which delivers the searcher's query in the ad title. For example, if you were searching on the term "web conferencing," that query would appear in the ad title. In this case, the user entered "meeting burner" in the search field and it appeared in the ad title. This is why the Meeting Burner name showed up in the ad. Our search marketing efforts are never intended to deceive the searcher." Edit: I couldn't find anything in the FAQ about this, but if a post like this is not really accurately representing a situation, is that something I should flag? I feel that is beyond simply "disagreeing with the post", but I don't want to start abusing the feature.
- dmoy 14y ago
  If they were bidding on the phrase "MeetingBurner" and set that up as a dynamic keyword, then yes, it would be automatically inserted into the title. But that's still GoToMeeting's fault. The description is pretty straightforward in adword's support documentation: http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2454041 http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an... Key part: "Since your ad text is dynamically updated with keywords from your account, make sure that all your keywords would make sense inserted in your ad text." It should be obvious that if you use your competitor's brand name as a keyword, it'll get inserted like that. Maybe they're just bad at using AdWords, I don't know. Or maybe they're using a newfangled feature that's different from keyword insertion. ==== For more background info: You have an AdGroup, which contains a set of Keywords and Ads. The Ad is the part that has the text you see ("buy cheap stuff!!11one") and the target url, etc. The keyword is the part you bid on "cars", "insurance", and includes the bid amount, and some other stuff. Dynamic keyword insertion works by taking the keyword and inserting it into the ad text, so that you can set up ad groups like: Ad: "Buy cheap {keyword:cars}" Keywords: "cars", "fast cars", "sports cars" and you could automatically render ads, depending on the keyword used: "Buy cheap cars," "buy cheap fast cars", "buy cheap sports cars" The point is that you still have to manually select what keywords to add in, which means they were keywording off of MeetingBurner, and should have been well aware that this would have happened. Edit: added more info about AW structuring.
nhebb 14y ago
I guessed it was dynamic keywords, and the comment by Andrew Taylor of GoToMeeting confirmed it: "We do not use competitive names in search ads, but we do follow the common industry practice of bidding on competitive terms. In the instance of this ad, we were using a Google method called dynamic keyword insertion which delivers the searcher's query in the ad title."

12 points by ifficiency 14y ago

latchkey 14y ago

Evil and illegal

maxgaudin 14y ago
Definitely evil and unethical but probably not illegal. This post shows some insight into the issue but not an answer http://www.sportsandentertainmentlawplaybook.com/intellectual-property/trademark/ninth-circuit-gives-green-light-to-google-adwords-use-of-competitors-marks/ http://www.sportsandentertainmentlawplaybook.com/intellectua...
- latchkey 14y ago
  Using another companies trademarked name in advertisements for your company without their permission is legal?
  - ifficiency 14y ago
    We are in the process of contacting Google now and protecting our trademark.
- chc 14y ago
  That post doesn't come anywhere close to establishing "probably not illegal." It's not 100% clear, but it sounds like Network Automation just bid on their competitors' product names to make their ad appear in searches for those products. That's aggressive, but like the court said, it's not particularly confusing unless you just genuinely can't tell the difference between the two products. But actually using their product name in your ad as a link to your product page, the way GoToMeeting seems† to be doing here? That is very different. I think I would mistakenly click that link thinking I was going to MeetingBurner, and I am more ad-savvy than most Internet consumers. † Note: I'm not actually going to accuse GoToMeeting of any wrongdoing here. Heaven knows I'd want people to wait for more than a TNW story before they indicted me. I'm just talking about the difference between the two instances.
- AJ007 14y ago
  Bidding on a trademark term, and including a trademark term in an ad to represent something that is not there are two distinctly different things.

glimcat 14y ago

My first thought on these matters is usually "unscrupulous affiliate." This is particularly so when the writer hasn't bothered to contact GoToMeeting first. The fast reward loop behind posting sensational and confrontational headlines unfortunately tends to outweigh the backlash from not doing basic research before publishing. For that matter, it's possible that MeetingBurner took out the ads in attempt to generate press. There's no way to rationally conclude who the bad actor is, if there is one, because the writer didn't bother to do their research before holding their hand out for traffic.

benologist 14y ago
"This is particularly so when the writer hasn't bothered to contact GoToMeeting first. The fast reward loop behind posting sensational and confrontational headlines unfortunately tends to outweigh the backlash from not doing basic research before publishing." TNW have already established themselves as a scabby little rag that plagiarize and ignore Creative Common attribution requirements, not doing research sounds like par for the course.
ifficiency 14y ago
I can promise you we did NOT take out the ads to generate press. You are entitled to your opinion but I can assure you this was not done by our team.
- glimcat 14y ago
  Not saying you did, just that the journalist has failed to meet minimum standards. On the other hand, the problem could have been resolved with a phone call - from your lawyer, if necessary. Immediately making a blog post out of it on your end wasn't the most scrupulous thing to do either. It also sounds like the problem arose from an innocent mistake on their end. Google doesn't warn against this when pushing their keyword insertion feature. It's on the user to be responsible, but Google could do a far better job on documentation.

zengr 14y ago

IMO that's a very common practice: http://i.imgur.com/m1eDE.png http://i.imgur.com/m1eDE.png (ebay store example) See the sponsored results by volusion, kabbge and ask.com

ifficiency 14y ago
The difference is they are not positioning themselves as Ebay. In the MeetingBurner example they do not say "Considering MeetingBurner?" positioning us as a separate platform. Theres is MeetingBurner - Feature rich web meeting software with the underlying link to GTM.

courtewing 14y ago

There is a response from a marketing guy from GoToMeeting in the comments of this article. I couldn't readily find a way to link to the comment, so I'll post it here for anyone that doesn't want to go hunting: "Hi, this is Andrew from the GoToMeeting search marketing team. I just posted over on the MeetingBurner blog as well. We do not use competitive names in search ads, but we do follow the common industry practice of bidding on competitive terms. In the instance of this ad, we were using a Google method called dynamic keyword insertion which delivers the searcher's query in the ad title. For example, if you were searching on the term "web conferencing," that query would appear in the ad title. In this case, the user entered "meeting burner" in the search field and it appeared in the ad title. This is why the Meeting Burner name showed up in the ad. Our search marketing efforts are never intended to deceive the searcher." Edit: I couldn't find anything in the FAQ about this, but if a post like this is not really accurately representing a situation, is that something I should flag? I feel that is beyond simply "disagreeing with the post", but I don't want to start abusing the feature.

dmoy 14y ago
If they were bidding on the phrase "MeetingBurner" and set that up as a dynamic keyword, then yes, it would be automatically inserted into the title. But that's still GoToMeeting's fault. The description is pretty straightforward in adword's support documentation: http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=2454041 http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&an... Key part: "Since your ad text is dynamically updated with keywords from your account, make sure that all your keywords would make sense inserted in your ad text." It should be obvious that if you use your competitor's brand name as a keyword, it'll get inserted like that. Maybe they're just bad at using AdWords, I don't know. Or maybe they're using a newfangled feature that's different from keyword insertion. ==== For more background info: You have an AdGroup, which contains a set of Keywords and Ads. The Ad is the part that has the text you see ("buy cheap stuff!!11one") and the target url, etc. The keyword is the part you bid on "cars", "insurance", and includes the bid amount, and some other stuff. Dynamic keyword insertion works by taking the keyword and inserting it into the ad text, so that you can set up ad groups like: Ad: "Buy cheap {keyword:cars}" Keywords: "cars", "fast cars", "sports cars" and you could automatically render ads, depending on the keyword used: "Buy cheap cars," "buy cheap fast cars", "buy cheap sports cars" The point is that you still have to manually select what keywords to add in, which means they were keywording off of MeetingBurner, and should have been well aware that this would have happened. Edit: added more info about AW structuring.

nhebb 14y ago

I guessed it was dynamic keywords, and the comment by Andrew Taylor of GoToMeeting confirmed it: "We do not use competitive names in search ads, but we do follow the common industry practice of bidding on competitive terms. In the instance of this ad, we were using a Google method called dynamic keyword insertion which delivers the searcher's query in the ad title."