This was announced last week and the long and short of it is that google who previously restricted ads from being triggered on trademarked terms other than the trademark holders ad are scrapping the whole thing.
Basically if you did a search for a brand term such as ‘hmv’ then the only advertiser permitted to show a result on the paid ad space would be the trademark holder – hmv.
By dropping this brand protection from early next month it means that anyone can advertise on the hmv brand term. The only restriction that Google are keeping is that the brand term cannot be used in the ad text. So for example another music retailer couldn’t appear on the hmv brand term with the ad copy “we’re cheaper than hmv” as that would include the trademark. They could however appear with the ad copy “buy cheap CDs and DVDs today” as that wouldn’t include the trademarked term.
Obviously for brands this isn’t great. The brand term is one that always converts well as people are looking for you, you don’t really want your competitors ads showing all over your term.
Big consequences? Yes. The brand owners will try to protect themselves, google have moved responsibility from themselves to the brand owners so the brand owners have to step up to it. Unfortunately when google was in charge it was just an email, a short wait and then the removal of an add. Put brand owners in charge and it gets legal.
So, for the consequences. HMV are on TradeDoubler, so are some other CD merchants. Lets say a TradeDoubler affiliate for CD merchant A starts bidding on ‘hmv’ and using the CD merchant A. HMV say “this is out of order, we don’t want this happening, TradeDoubler remove this affiliate”. What do TradeDoubler do, it is their responsibility for this affiliate or is it CD merchant A’s responsibility? Would TradeDoubler be prepared to lose the HMV account over this?
So although some networks and agencies might be sitting thinking “god damn yes!” and thinking their turnover is just going to go up and up and up, in reality I think they now have a lot more responsibility for what their affiliate are doing to drive sales.
Also in relating to google, thinking they’ve just found a way to show more ads and make more money, an interesting image for MSN and Yahoo…
Got to be worth a punt, surely 
