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Could be bad news for Career Builder and a lot of other job sites that bid on employer trademarked keywords on Yahoo!, such as Target, IBM and State Farm Insurance.
According to an e-mail from Yahoo! to its advertisers, "In order to more
easily deliver quality user experiences when users search on terms that
are trademarks, Yahoo! Search Marketing has determined that we will no
longer allow bidding on keywords containing competitor trademarks."
Considering the troubles Google has gone through with a similar trademark infringement case with Geico, this move wasn’t a surprise.
The question is how much teeth will this policy have?
Where it gets sticky is the term "competitor." This is pretty cut-and-dry if we’re talking Coke vs. Pepsi, but less so if it’s a job board vs. an employer brand. I might even guess some employers approve of this practice, but certainly others do not, or would not. Most have no clue what’s going on.
At the end of the day, it’s up to employers to decide if they approve of this practice or not. Even if you’re a client of a job board that’s utilizing your brand in their keyword buys, ask yourself these questions:
1. How do I feel about my brand driving traffic to a site that also has listings by my competitors?
2. How do I feel about my trademark being used to build a job board’s brand and traffic?
3. How do I feel about job boards running up the bid price on my trademark? (For example, Target is the third highest bidder for its own trademark at "Target jobs"):
Think Target’s OK with this? Maybe. Maybe not.
Curious about your own trademark? Click here to find out if someone’s bidding on your trademark on Yahoo! (and how much they’re paying).
If your trademark’s being hijacked, and you don’t approve, contact Yahoo! Search Marketing at trademarkconcern-ysm@yahoo-inc.com.
Popularity: 1% [?]
March 6th, 2006 at 5:23 am
I came across this issue recently. One of the job boards was telling me that one of their agency customers had complained about this i.e. job board were sponsoring agency name and ‘hijacking’ applicants. Job board felt it was OK as agency was advertising jobs on the job boards site.
Few employers are however aware of this but as you say, the employer brand is what attracts the applicants.
When I raised this issue with Google, they basically didn’t care!
March 7th, 2006 at 8:15 am
Joel, it seems to me that employers MUST buy their names and be first in the PPC listings, either directly or with the help of their marketing department, firm, ad agency, etc. For a few hundred dollars per month, companies can be first on Google, Yahoo and MSN and protect their employer brands… How many times will you need to write about this before employers figure it out?