, is a form of search engine advertising where a company buys ad space on the search engine results page (SERP) of certain keyword search terms, paying for the right to advertise there. Much like organic search results, ads are usually composed of a headline, a display URL, and description text. But because they can be listed above organic results and be the first thing people see, ad positions are highly coveted by digital marketers.

Subsequently, search engines facilitate an auction-based system in which advertisers bid against each other on advertising rights for their desired keyword terms. Bidders pay using various models such as pay-per-click (PPC), cost-per-acquisition (CPA), cost-per-thousand, cost-per-call, or cost-per-lead. Needless to say, each search engine has its own unique trademark bidding policies by which marketers must abide and can use to their advantage.

 that explicitly contain a company’s unique name in part of the search is a crucial marketing strategy because these words demonstrate 

. Unlike generalized, informational keywords that suggest web users are simply researching and learning more about a topic, branded terms indicate users have already decided to buy a product and are actively looking for the best, immediate deal to close their purchase cycle. Examples of branded keywords might be “Nike shoe sale,” or “Hilton hotel booking.” Targeted ads on these branded keywords increase click-through rates and conversion rates, ultimately securing higher sales figures. A 2016 report finds that businesses earn $8 for every $1 spent on Google Ads. In fact, during the 2019 holiday season, Toyota automobile group achieved a 67% increase in conversion rates and a 34% reduction in cost per conversion by partnering with Google Ad’s in-market audience initiative. Besides directly raising profit numbers, trademark ads also widen brand visibility, exposure, and awareness. This advertising impact results in more direct type-ins for the brand name, improving brand credibility and domain trust. It also generates more traffic via organic search because web users become more familiar with the brand so are more likely to click through even when the brand is lower ranked in organic results. Clearly, trademark bidding is an extremely effective marketing strategy that brings both direct and indirect advantages to successful bidders.

Although the end goal ultimately comes down to maximizing revenue, the reasons for trademark bidding can vary greatly depending on the specific goals of the bidder—and yes, there are different types of bidders! Brands themselves, their competitors, and partners alike all participate in trademark bidding. The big question is why do different types of advertisers bid on the same keywords? Why not just stick to their own terms? Let’s break down the basics:

Brands bidding on their own keywords might at first seem like a nonsensical waste of money, but it’s actually a huge mistake not to bid on one’s own brand. Because paid ads can appear above organic search results, your domain may not be the first thing users see, even if it is the top-ranked organic result. By bidding on your trademark keywords, you can ensure your name saturates the search results of your own relevant terms—as it should—because best be warned, if you don’t do it, others definitely will. Others bidding on your branded keywords can siphon off potential revenue and blight the reputation of your brand with their unregulated practices. The ad copy text is also much more versatile than organic search results; advertisers can change and update their messaging on-demand, signal special flash sales, tailor their marketing to holidays, or announce new products. It’s a quick and easy way for brands to communicate with customers. And because your ads are perfectly relevant to your branded keywords (it’s your brand, after all), the cost-per-click to bring customers to your domain is comparatively inexpensive, so it’s usually a no-brainer for brands to cover their bases by bidding on their own brand.

Competitors bidding on your brand and vice versa

Competitors bidding on each other’s keyword terms is a business strategy. If two brands offer the same product, each brand could use the other’s keywords to generate leads for their own brand and make customers aware of their alternative product. By bidding on X brand’s keywords, Y brand can advertise their products on X’s name, drawing potential customers away from X brand. Branded keywords in this case are especially valuable because these customers have a high purchasing intent, which means converting them is an easy effort.

Affiliate partners bidding on your branded keywords

In many cases, brands have rules for their affiliate marketing partners that forbid them from bidding on the brand’s trademark keywords. In other cases, however, brands do allow their partners to bid on their words. They may allow this for a variety of reasons, such as to increase their keyword coverage, to be in control of third-party discounts or promo codes, or to deter competitors from bidding on their keywords and keep traffic flowing to their domain. Of course, every brand is different, so the terms and permissions of affiliate trademark bidding vary with each partnership. In situations where affiliates violate agreement terms and bid on a brand’s keywords without authorization, the motive is usually because the brand is profitable, and affiliates can poach some independent revenue off it. 

 indicate high purchasing intent, which translates to higher expected conversation rates. Affiliate partners may try to capitalize off of this knowledge by bidding on trademark + terms that allow them to close a quick transaction and earn more commission from the brand with a few low-cost search engine clicks. Unfortunately, unauthorized brand bidding happens quite frequently because it is easy to get away with if brand managers don’t know how or when to look for it.

Below is an example of what trademark bidding looks like on Google:

Clearly, the first four results that users see when they type in “hotels.com coupon” are search ads, and the actual website for hotels.com itself isn’t seen until users scroll down. This means the four brands have bid on the term “hotels.com coupon.” They’re likely affiliates of the hotels.com brand who make some sort of commission from hotels.com when users use their discount code.

Here’s another example of trademark bidding on Google:

Again, the first three results for “overstock promo codes” are ads. In this case, however, overstock.com has bid on its own trademark terms and secured the first position ad. Even when users click on the ad instead of the organic result, they are still taken to the official overstock.com landing page, and overstock.com has managed to retain that customer without third-party commission fees or having to risk losing them along the way. This is a great example of brands bidding on their own keyword terms.

Now that we’ve outlined what trademark bidding is and the different types of bidders that you might encounter, it’s time to learn how it can negatively affect your brand and why you should protect yourself.  It’s incredibly important to understand your own data and evaluate how your return on advertising spend lines up with other metrics. Read our next article on compliance monitoring to learn more.

What is Trademark Bidding?

 is a multi-billion industry that has continuously and significantly grown year by year since its inception in the late 90s. From the arrival of Amazon Associates to the dot.com burst, the sector has experienced many changes. Over the last year—marked by a global pandemic—we saw shifts in buying patterns that had both positive and negative ramifications for the future of the affiliate marketing industry.

In 2020, companies notably reduced their affiliate marketing budget or even put their affiliate programs on hold. This was particularly true for the travel and tourism industry which was hit hard by pandemic restrictions (travel restrictions & lockdowns) and faced a staggering $935 billion loss. The majority of travel companies, such as 

 among others, either reduced their commission rates and/or paused their affiliate programs completely. Travel bookings that had been reserved before the pandemic were canceled, which meant previous transactions from publishers were also canceled. Those publishers who spent money advertising those transactions ended up losing money as well.

On the upside, however, the shift to e-commerce accelerated. We saw more transactions coming in from home and décor merchants as users began to spend more time indoors and pay more attention to home improvement. In fact, this trend was reflected in the stock market—prices for companies such as 

 rose. Another category that thrived was health and wellness, with more people buying exercise equipment and supplements as well as investing in mental health products. As lockdown and social distancing endured, people sought ways to cope, which translated to an increase in traffic and conversions for affiliates in the health niche.

Despite the uneven distribution in web traffic, 

 is still one of the most affordable marketing channels because merchants pay per lead or per transaction, which is a safe and cost-effective bet compared to other channels during the current crisis, especially for companies with limited budgets.

The affiliate marketing industry’s business module has allowed it to flourish, but there is still room for improvement when it comes to compliance matters. Transparent partnerships and transparent marketing practices within such a collaborative channel are crucial to further growth. At Evet, we took up this challenge by building a 

 solution, Evet Guard, for one of the biggest concerns in this sector.

Paid Search Marketing is an important channel for Affiliate Marketers, and if we look back to the origins of affiliate marketing, we can better understand how it has grown through the help of paid search.

PPC Marketers and Organic Search Engine Marketers had an especially big influence on affiliate marketing in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, when PPC marketing was still very new, the rules and policies created and enforced by major search engines were looser. Running a paid search campaign or getting ranked under generic terms at that time was easier and less costly than it is today, and there were far more opportunities to generate high sales. One prominent example was Google AdWords allowing advertisers to run multiple ads listing the same display URL and destination URL on the SERP of certain keywords. This policy meant bidders who bought multiple ads could direct all of them to the same place, and users looking at the SERP would be taken there no matter which ad they clicked. You didn’t even need to have your own website—you could simply send traffic from Google AdWords to the Affiliate Retailer website with a redirect link. SERPs were filled with identical Ad Copies, and affiliates were more concerned about obtaining higher commission rates from retailers in order to bid higher on trademark terms, ultimately to grab more clicks from a search campaign. In 2005, however, Google rolled out massive changes to their ad policy, and since then, only one ad per URL, per search term has been allowed.

Another early PPC compliance policy was that affiliates could not use the term “

” in their ad copy. This was implemented because so many ads had similar ad copy that users often relied on the “Official” label to differentiate between them and determine which belonged to the retailer. Indeed, one could receive up to 10% higher CTR just by using the term in their ad copy. There were many unknowns, affiliate marketers were new, and everyone was trying to figure out the best practice. It is still fair to say that PPC marketers then generated greater value for retailers than they do today. Because the low CPC rates and lesser competition allowed PPC Affiliate marketers to bid on not only branded terms but also generic terms and even competitor terms and send the traffic directly to the Retailers pages and they were able to see what type of conversions to experience from a wide variety of keyword groups.

The growth of the affiliate sector has predominantly come from PPC Marketers, Organic Search Engine Marketers, Domain Marketers, Toolbars, and Email Marketers who have created new compliance policies. And we’ll cover all this in future Bridge articles.

The question for today’s affiliate marketers is what type of value they should expect from 

, and what ideal PPC policies they should implement. It’s better to find the right way to work with affiliates than to lose an important marketing channel because of conflict with them. If a brand understands what’s going on behind the scenes and has the appropriate tools and applications to support their decision-making, they can make choices beneficial to growing their affiliate program. This is actually how we at Evet Guard grew! 

 helps affiliate marketers make the right PPC policy decision by providing information that allows them to monitor the Search Space. We want to bring more transparency and a wider selection of compliance products to the digital marketing sector because the more we know, the less scared we’ll be and the better decisions we’ll make. We also know that the less you worry about compliance, the more time you have to pursue creative ideas, engage with your publishers, and develop your affiliate channel.

Affiliate Marketing & Brand Compliance Insights: COVID and beyond

Mother's day is fast approaching on Sunday, May 8th, creating new opportunities for unauthorized publishers to illegally bid on your brands Trademark.

Holiday & Seasonal categories introduce new keywords and expand possibilities for unauthorized trademark bidders.

Seasonal Terms bidding periods affect the majority of retailers and are essential for merchants specific to the given seasonal category.

Unauthorized trademark bidders thrive during Holiday & Seasonal periods, simply because there are more keywords to bid on and much higher traffic to steal.

Consider that Mother’s Day drives higher google search volumes for terms such as "flowers", "chocolates", "jewelry", "accessories" etc.

Let's analyze some of those terms targeting big retailers:

1800 Flowers: Considering the seasonality & high amount of traffic for this brand, you can expect a significant increase in search volume for terms like

A similar brand likely to be affected is Godiva, with Keywords like


Of course there’s fine jewelry like Tiffanys


Michael Kors is another brand we expect to be impacted


As we get closer to Mother's Day, it is important to remind marketing and affiliate managers to pay close attention to their mother's day related terms.

The Evet Guard search monitoring tool is a wonderful resource to protect your trademark and during these seasonal periods.

With Evet you can easily modify your search terms to include seasonal & holiday terms in the keyword pool.

If you prefer to manually police the ad space, we recommend checking each individual term on desktop, mobile, tablet & across a wide variety of regions.

Don't forget, the closer we get to Mothers Day the more bidders you will see!

So take action now and protect your brands' Mothers Day Related terms from unauthorized trademark bidders.

Monitor + Seasonal Terms for Mother's Day this year

What is Trademark Bidding?

Affiliate Marketing & Brand Compliance Insights: COVID and beyond