Making "false" claims in ad copy

cheapest, best, lowest price etc etc.

[tosspot17]

Hi, a couple of weeks ago, a competitor was advertising on adwords, stating he has the UK's lowest price for his widgets. We were cheaper, so we emailed google and told them, at which point the ads stopped. Now they're back up again with the same text, and he's lowered all the prices on his site to be a bit lower than us.

Now, I'm not really too bothered about this, because I think we offer a better service, and our price includes delivery, whereas his site doesn't mention delivery at all.

However, I wouldn't have thought google would allow the ad anyway, because even if he is the lowest priced widget seller on the net, how can he be sure he's the lowest priced widget seller in the UK? Has he checked _every_ shop in the country? Or have Google just not noticed his ad?

The ad text...

Joe Bloggs' Widgets
UK Lowest prices, Widget 1- £595
Widget 2-£895, Widget 3-£745
http*//www.joeswidgets.co.uk

Cheers,
Chris.

<added>Thanks for changing the title mods (incidently, given me food for thought about writing good post titles ;))</added>

[edited by: tosspot17 at 12:09 pm (utc) on July 11, 2003]

[edited by: Shak at 12:21 pm (utc) on July 11, 2003]
[edit reason] delinked url [/edit]

[Marketing Guy]

I would create a "range" of your widgets for a select group of members (;)) at a lower price and keep forcing them to lower their price until they stop using the ad.

You could offer your widgets at say £10 for members, but membership costs £500. You wont get any signups so you wont lose any profit, but you could argue to Google that your competition arent cheapest....

Naturally the membership fee, along with signup page should be hard to find, should the big G come checking....

Just keep undercutting them until they give in.

Ethical? Maybe not. All's fair....

Scott

[tosspot17]

Hmmm, i'm not too keen on entering into a price war with this guy. I don't think he'll be able to keep his prices that low for very long, and as I said before, I think we offer a much better service.

I am curious about whether people think Google will get rid of this ad though. Surely he can't prove to be the cheapest in the UK, online or offline can he? Therefore, they've got to disapprove his ad?

[hannamyluv]

If the ad looks like that, I am surprised they have let it run. It breaks a few of their editorial rules.

First of all, it doesn't use correct sentence structure. It is just a list. Adwords does not allow this.

Second of all, they don't let ads run that say "lowest, best, greatest, etc." because you can't prove it.

I would guess it will only be a matter of time before they shut the ad down, but if you wanted to speed things along, you could drop them an email pointing it out. ;)

[tosspot17]

Thanks everyone, i'll ask Google and see if they take it down...

Cheers,
Chris.

[kila_m]

The google editors will disapprove it eventually. They probably disapproving a ton of other ads for petty reasons ;)