A portion of the political and online marketing worlds are fired up about Google’s refusal to run ads from Republican Senator Susan Collins due to conflict with the Google Trademark policy regarding MoveOn.org. This policy allows any trademark holder, to prevent other people or organizations from using their trademarks in the headline or the 2 lines of copy in a paid adwords ad. Trademarks are only protected if the trademark holder has filed the correct request with Google.

But there is a very simple work-around that will enable Sen. Collins to run her ads.

Place the trademarked terms only in the visible URL.

Google does not apply trademark protection requests to the visible URL.

We have had this discussion/argument with them over the rights of clients who had filed for and been granted trademark permission before. While Google would immediately stop any ad running using the trademarked terms in the headline or body lines, they would not stop running ads that put the trademarked terms in the visible URL. They claimed, clearly and repeatedly, that their policy did not apply there.

In our case, it was a clever affiliate who was using a prominent retailer’s name in the visible URL but linking the actual link to their site. They got tons of traffic for many days until we could cancel their affiliate contract, taking the profit out of the activity. But until then, Google refused to stop running the ads. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that Google will only run one ad with any visible target URL at one time, so in our case the faker actually blocked the trademark owner from running ads for their own trademark. Yet Google steadfastly refused to do anything.

Below are the ads Collins tried to run.

Here’s what she should run. In fact, I’m running it for her right now (keyword ‘Susan Collins’). At least as long as my $20 lasts.

To be clear to those not familiar with running Google Ads, the visible display URL (www.moveon.org) can be completely different than the actual URL to which the ad links. In the ads above, the actual traffic goes to www.susancollins.com, not to moveon.org.

I’m making this post primarily because I think the current Google policy, as it has been explained and enforced in campaigns which we’ve managed, is stupid. Either ban the trademark terms from use in the ads or allow them. Don’t treat the visible URL differently than the headline or body lines.

Personally, I don’t believe that you should be able to prevent the purchase of trademarked terms. It should be illegal to mislead, which ironically is exactly what the current policy allows, but not to compare or condemn. And on one last note, I’d personally donate to moveon.org long before I’d do anything to support Sen. Collins. So my $20 is being spent in the interest of online marketing, and I’ll give $40 to moveon.org just to even things out.

Update: Here’s a screen shot of my ad running:

Update 2: 12-hours later (Sat 10/13 9:30am EST), ads still running with 21 impressions, 3 clicks.