Competitor copied Advert

Competitiors copying adwords adverts

[APDave]

I have been advertising with Google Adwords since August of last year.

In the last few days/week I have noticed that a competitior has copied my adverts.

Does anyone have any experience of this and whether it is worth contacting Google and asking them to remove the offending adverts.

TIA
Dave

[nyet]

I am no lawyer (thank goodness!) and I am not 100% on this, but unless they are using a valid trademark of yours I don't think G will pull their ad.

[showyourpic]

Must be a trademark in order for google to remove it.

[AdWordsAdvisor]

Also, please see:

[webmasterworld.com...]

AWA

[good2go]

Be of good cheer. If your competitor just copies your ads, imagine what that same laziness translates to when it comes to keyword selection, Match Type, negative matches, conversion tracking, and all the other elements that make a successful campaign. Also, take a current screenshot showing the ads are the same. Test new Title Description URL to get something better, then see if they copy it again. If they do, take another screenshot.

Then email them directly with the evidence, ask them to cease and desist. Email as many folks in the company as you can. Maybe a little peer pressure internally will make them reconsider.

Finally, use text that only applies to your site in some way. In other words, make it so that if they copy you, it will be obvious to the web surfing public who is the Wannabe and who is the real deal.

This can make you better! Really!

[HomeBrew]

McDonald's probably got peeved the first time Burger King opened up right across the street. So what did they do in defense, open up another store. It's not wrong to copy a working ad. Some ads must be copied because there is only so much to work with, words vs. full pages. Look up a popular computer program. All the ads are the same, give or take a word or two. I've copied ads many times, and then tweaked them to work better. I heard a guy crying about it in another forum before he gave up the campaign. I'm still making sales on this product. Sorry, this IS business. I don't want to be McDonalds in first spot. I like being Burger King and paying less.

[APDave]

As an update I recieved an email from Adwords this morning confirming what AWA and others had already said.

Thanks to everybody who replied with constructive advice.

Homebrew I think you have confused the issue with McDonalds/Burger King there is no problem establishing competing businesses as it encourages competition and gives consumers a wider choice.A problem would arise if I were to copy McDonalds advertising/sales literature I would then be on the recieving end of an extremely expensive lawsuit.

Whether you like it or not copying another advertisment is theft of their intellectual property to justify this because it is business is a little naive.

[HomeBrew]

APDave, certainly copying McDonald’s sales literature and advertisements is infringement and will get you sued. Within the tight space of Adwords, you don’t own the ad. Let me explain further. You are an affiliate marketing a software product for DVD copying. The sales page claims it to be the fastest copying on the market. You and many others bid the search term “DVD copying software”. Suddenly, there are four ads with headlines “Fastest DVD Copying Software”. No one has the rights to the word “fastest” and they have all paid for “DVD Copying Software”. Now one ad description says “Try It Now and See For Yourself” the next says “Guaranteed. Try It Now and See”. Has ad number one been copied? I say no. If this were full page text and the page were sprinkled with a few changed words, then yes you have infringement. However, in our tight little world of Adwords where a portion of the words are already bid upon and paid for by numerous people, there is no room for copyright. Yes this is business. Hobbyists and crybabies can quit. I’ll keep selling.

[nyet]

I'd have to agree with HB on this (although I hope less voiciferiously sp?) an ad can only contain about 12-14 words total. I think it would be very hard to claim a copyright on such little text unless it was very specific and unique. But that seems hardly even possible with such little space. Unless of course it is a trademark like "have it your way" (Burger King).....

[chrisk999]

Your Google ad rep can pass on a message from you to the owner of the copied advert, if you can't find their exact email address.

They won't forcibly remove it for you though.