Google is under fire again for a practice known as piggybacking. This practice must be distinguished between something called “conquest buys.” Here’s the difference:
- Piggybacking – You bid on a trademarked name as a keyword and the name appears in your ad.
- Conquest Buy – You bid on a trademarked name as a keyword and the name does not appear in your ad.
Google’s policies for PPC ads allows for conquest buys, but it prohibits piggybacking. Nevertheless, smaller companies are doing it anyway and sometimes getting away with it. This is really getting on the nerves of the larger companies they are piggybacking off of. Should it matter?
There are some legitimate ethical concerns regarding piggybacking. One of the most compelling arguments is that it confuses consumers and costs the larger companies money on their marketing budgets. Imagine this scenario:
A searcher Google’s the name American Airlines and receives a host of search results that use American Airlines on their pages. Some of them are no doubt from American Airlines’ own web properties, but some of them are also news items and bloggers that mention American Airlines in their content. But what about the search ads, the sponsored results?
Take a look at the top ad and you might see “American Airlines” as the title of the ad. Below that, in the description, you read “Low air fares, guaranteed. No delays.” You click the ad and you land on a page that has nothing – absolutely nothing – to do with American Airlines. In fact, it’s the website of a travel agent who wants you to book your flight through their agency.” Deceptive? Feel duped? Well, that’s what the big fuss is all about.
I made up this scenario for the purpose of this blog post, but it could realistically happen and that’s what piggybacking is all about. The ad plays off the American Airlines brand, but does that agent have the permission to use it? What if the agent sells American Airlines tickets? Should he be allowed to advertise that fact? He bid on the term and won the highest bid so does that count?
These are all questions that Google may have to answer in court because American Airlines has sued them in Fort Worth, Texas. Other companies are threatening to take their business somewhere else? Like where? MSN Live? Doubtful.
When it comes to piggybacking, there are no black and white lines. There are legitimate concerns, but there are also good arguments for why it should be allowed. There is a competitive bidding environment, for one thing. If a company wants to bid on its own brand and push the other advertisers’ ads to the second or third page of the SERPs then they can do that. But with the rising prices of PPC ads, some of these companies are claiming that their search marketing budgets are being depleted by such practices. Should we care? Is piggybacking through search marketing ads a legitimate practice? It’s a discussion that could last a long time.
