How to Protect Your Brand From Online Abuse In Contextual Advertisement?

Today, we focus on one type of violation of trademark rights on the Internet and analyze how the right owner can ensure the protection of his/her brand.

It's no secret that the active development of information in the 21st century makes it possible to create advertisements without exaggeration and guess potential consumers' desires by creating contextual advertising.

However, аraudsters can use a company's brand name as a keyword in paid search ads to attract potential traffic to their own website or affiliate program. In this case, the AdFlagger service helps you monitor, analyze, and block ads with your brand name that were used without your permission.

What Is Contextual Advertising?

Content-targeted advertising is the principle of advertising placement. When it is oriented to the content of an Internet page, either manually or automatically, it can be in the form of a banner or a text advertisement.

Any type of Internet promotion is considered to be advertising that displays information about a certain content or selected topic, for a specific audience, place, time, or in relation to another context of Internet pages. Most often, contextual advertising can be found on the search pages of various browsers, on some Internet pages, or in mobile applications.

Contextual ads do not appear by themselves. They are displayed based on queries generated by keywords by a specific user. At the same time, its appearance and rapid development immediately created problems for trademark owners.

What Is the Meaning of Trademark Violations?

There is a fact that about 84% of marketers are concerned about scams in digital advertising or bots, which can lead to lost ad budgets or affect their business. Fraudsters use the brand name or keywords for ads. Thus, when a user makes a request, he or she is redirected to another website.

This happens because the Google Ads service allows advertisers to select keywords that match search queries so that the user sees an advertising link to the relevant website.

In such a case, when the user applies the product's or company's name as a search word, his goal is to find information or offers about a specific product, its origin, manufacturer, etc.

That is why, when the list of typical results also includes links to websites where competitors' products are offered for sale, the Internet user may perceive such links as an alternative to the products of the company that he first searched for or believe that these links lead to a website where goods of the respective company are sold.

That is why, antifraud services, such as AdFlagger, are good projects to invest in.

What Kinds of Brand Context Can Hurt Your Business?

There are several reasons why someone would use your brand name or other branded keywords in their advertising campaigns or websites.

Using a brand name without your permission

Your competitors know that people searching for your products will likely buy theirs, too. This is a simple and successful way for them to attract the attention of a loyal audience and their funds.

Direct context on the brand from partners

Easy money is what unscrupulous or careless partners want. Being your competitors, they know that people searching for your brand name or products are ready to purchase. Affiliates use this simple method to get more conversions at lower prices and earn more from affiliate rewards.

How to Protect Your Brand?

The first thing to do is to contact the AdFlagger service. Thanks to this company, you will stop losing income from advertisements using your brand name. The service will help monitor, remove, and analyze all advertisements involving your brand name. This is the best way to deal with dishonest competitors or fraudsters.

If you have a registered trademark, you can limit the use of your brand in contextual advertising. To do this, you need to register your trademark on Google and specify the owner's contact details. Therefore, only he will receive permission to use this brand in contextual advertising.

As a result, the competitor's Google Ads account will be blocked, up to blocking the use of the domain in contextual advertising.

If a competitor uses your name in keywords, the AdFlagger service is also there to help. Moreover, Google writes that "the advertiser is responsible for both the ad content and the keywords." In this case, you run an ad based on your brand to avoid a dishonest competitor.

Conclusion

Brand context monitoring has many nuances and requires an individual approach for each company.

Using services like AdFlagger in your strategy and quickly reacting to threats, you will be able to maintain the flow of organic traffic from search engines, reduce affiliate marketing costs, and prevent competitor attacks promptly. Protect the brand name and save your budget properly.