News Pooper

This week the Advertising Standards Authority released their numbers for ad spend across all media channels for 2012.  In not so surprising news digital continues its steady growth, while that staple of the 20^th century the newspaper continues its decline.  I’m still baffled when I see those rolls of newsprint laying outside people’s houses in the morning, like some old news dog has pooped out it’s latest slightly out of date offering on the footpath for us to step in.  Weird. 

Greedy old television keeps gobbling up ad spend to remain relatively stable.  I know, boring isn’t it.  Like Coronation St it just keeps fearlessly rolling on – for now.  OnDemand and Digital continues to nibble away at TV budgets, they will eventually succumb as they have in the U.S and U.K.  

Anyway, enough of this over opinionated babble, some key numbers;

• Digital spend in 2012 – $366m, representing 11.6% YoY growth
• Digital now no.3 media by ad spend
• TV no.1 - $614m, flat
• Newspapers no.2 - $540m, decline of 7.2% YoY
• Digital increased YoY by $38m, to represent 16.9% of all ad spend
• Mobile contributed $2.83m to digital spend, representing 176% increase from 2011
• On line video contributing $12.69m

Google Trademark Policy Change

Google have just announced a change to their Adwords trademark policy which will take effect from 24 April 2013.

Google will no longer monitor or restrict keywords in response to trademark complaints for ads served to New Zealand users which aligns with their global policy.  Google will continue to investigate and take appropriate action regarding use of trademark terms in ad text.

What this means: Despite your company holding a trademark, Google will allow competitors to bid on your trademarked terms - for example company and product names.

What we think: The standard Google rules regarding quality score still apply, so unless your landing page and ad copy are relevant to a competitor’s search term you will be penalised  and your cost effectiveness compromised. However, savvy advertisers who embark on an integrated comparative advertising strategy may well reap rewards.  There are other scenarios where bidding on competitors keywords will work depending on the key objectives.

To learn more about this trademark policy revision, visit https://adwords.google.com/support/aw/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=177578