[Interview] What are the rules for successful Google Ads campaigns?

Since 2018, Google has allowed advertisers to use brand names in their Google Ads campaigns in Europe, without prior control. What's more, there are no restrictions on bidding on keywords containing brand terms.

While this policy may seem favorable to companies, notably by facilitating the work of legitimate resellers, it's a real source of problems for brands. The reason is that today, on Google, anyone can do anything with your brand in the search results.

The consequences for brands are damaging: pressure on bids, traffic recovery by third parties, impact on their image, damage to their customers...

To address these issues, we interviewed Jérémie Lipfeld, CEO of Monibrand.

What are Google's rules for buying branded keywords?

Today, Google advertising campaigns are very effective levers for acquiring leads, traffic, visibility and growth for a company in the short term. In fact, we've noticed that this acquisition lever offers instant ROI, more precise targeting and real-time management of the allocated budget.

Buying a keyword from a third-party brand can be intentional. It may be the work of an unscrupulous competitor who wants to use it as bait to make their own brand stand out. For them, this explains the success of paid search and the purchase of sponsored links. Worse still, counterfeit sites like to do this to attract traffic and sell fakes under the guise of legitimate resale.

But buying a brand's keywords is also often done accidentally. The advertiser can sometimes position himself on a word that resembles the brand, or simply on a generic term (such as box internet) that may be associated with the brand name by the search engine. And he won't even know it.

Getting a sponsored link in the top search positions represents a unique opportunity to gain visibility and generate qualified traffic.This motivates unscrupulous advertisers to deliberately bid on branded keywords that will bring them visibility and traffic.

How to analyze your keywords to make your Google Ads campaigns perform?

Choosing the right keywords

When setting up your Google Ads campaigns, there are a number of actions you can take to boost your visibility.

First and foremost, it's essential to choose the right keywords for your business. These must be varied and relevant, while respecting the terms requested by Internet users on search engines.

Your choice of keywords should also be related to your own landing pages. Particular attention should be paid to ensuring that your keywords enrich your ad campaigns and provide a value proposition in your meta description, enabling you to stand out from competitors bidding on your keywords.

Your keyword list must enable you to achieve a good return on investment when setting your campaign budget. To achieve this, you need to study the performance of your keywords. You must therefore opt for a good search volume, which must not be too high, to avoid being too competitive, but also to avoid spending more to not get the expected visibility.

You need to make sure you have the right CPC for the volume of keyword requests. This study and monitoring will enable you to stay within your budget and, at the same time, achieve a good conversion rate.

Choosing the right location

An analysis of the performance of your Google campaigns will enable you to remove irrelevant keywords or those that perform poorly. We recommend targeting different keywords per ad group. Create three ad groups with three different keyword lists. You'll then be able to see which keyword group performs best.

We also recommend that you study the performance of your campaigns according to location. In fact, the visibility and performance of your campaigns will vary depending on the radius of distribution. This monitoring will enable you to focus your campaigns on the most relevant perimeters. For example, you may want to focus on three different radii.

How can I protect my brand and keywords on Google Ads?

There are a number of steps you can take to protect your brand on Google Ads.

Monitor your brand on Google Ads

Start by monitoring what people are doing with your brand on search engines.

To get an exhaustive view at any time of day and across different locations, technological solutions are available to automate this monitoring.

Don't forget to take an interest in all combinations with generic keywords

We saw above that Google displays campaigns based on generic words (such as box internet), even when users use them in combination with brand names (such as box SFR). This happens without even being requested by the advertiser in question.

Buy your brand on Google Ads

This measure is fundamental: every brand needs to be positioned on Google. What's more, it's the best way to offer yourself numerous opportunities to attract traffic and develop conversions.

Contact advertisers who use your brand

Get in touch with anyone who advertises on your behalf. Most of the time, a simple exchange is enough to put an end to these practices, even though it's time-consuming.

Exclusion lists of branded terms can help prevent them from being suggested by Google alongside generic keywords.

Use a legal service to exert pressure if necessary

Registered trademarks are protected by intellectual property rights. Only advertisers authorized by the trademark owner can use them, including for digital communication and promotion. A lawyer or legal support will be able to make this clear to the advertiser who doesn't respond to your calls... And it usually works.

File a complaint

As a last resort, don't hesitate to take the matter to court. Out-of-court settlements are often reached, and the reason is that the law is on the side of the brands. A 2015 ruling by the French Supreme Court (Cour de cassation) concerning a dispute over misleading commercial practices on search engines is a good illustration of case law that has been in existence since 2010. It determines that a trademark can be purchased as a keyword, provided this does not harm the trademark or its functions.

The use of the trademark word must in no way create confusion in the mind of the Internet user as to the product, its origin or its owner.

The Monibrand solution takes all these recommendations into account, enabling you to regain control over the use of your brand on Google ads in the future.