Trademark Trouble: When AI Rewrites Your Google & Meta Ads!
This article is a 2 minute read.
It is well understood that your business can use the name of a competitor, including trade marks, for "keywords" in Google Ads - so long as the content of the Ad does not mislead customers into thinking that your company is (or is associated with) "the competitor". This is the online equivalent of opening a Burger King next to a McDonalds and saying “hey, we sell junk food too! Playing within the rules was easy in the good old days, because the content of Ads had to be manually drafted.
However, we are now in a world where the likes of Google and Meta Ads are enticing marketing teams to adopt their latest "AI+" tools, with the lure of “up to 40% better engagement” etc. Unfortunately, some of these AI tools are not yet as ‘intelligent’ as they need to be to avoid exposing your business to a blatant TM Infringement or Passing Off!
In a recent example, our client’s Google Ads naively assumed that it could appropriate and rehash a "competitor name" (entered as a keyword) into the Ad Title itself. The outcome? A Google Ad equivalent to "Manchester City – Stadium Tour", when it was actually intended as a Google Ad for "Manchester Utd", taking customers to Utd’s website (a fictitious example for client anonymity). Cue disappointed football fans when the roof didn’t leak on their head, and they had to spend at least 30 minutes walking past the trophy cabinets ;)
We will defer to others for the precise tech solution to this problem but I am (ironically) informed by another AI tool that the answer probably lies in either “Dynamic Keyword Insertion” (DKI), Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) or Account Level Automated Assets (or the equivalent for the Ad platform you are using). Either way, get in touch and drop a post on our LinkedIn post if:
You have seen competitors’ Ads infringing on your trade mark or business name.
Your marketing team have accidentally allowed AI to step on the toes of someone else’s Trade Mark
You have any practical advice for our readers on how to rein in the AI settings on various Ad Platforms
As always, feel free to get in touch with the Techlaw team at info@techlaw.co.uk and follow us on LinkedIn here.