February 24th, 2006 by James Omdahl
I guess I will jump on the bandwagon and report that Yahoo! will be ending advertisers ability to bid on competitors terms. I guess we should have named our business “Insurance” and not “InsureMe.”
Anyway, for your viewing pleasure, here is the email that we got from Yahoo! less the five terms that were removed from our account (not too sure how they got in there in the first place):
Dear Advertiser,
We wanted to let you know of a policy change that will affect your account.
On March 1, 2006, Yahoo! Search Marketing will modify its editorial guidelines regarding the use of keywords containing trademarks. Previously, we allowed competitive advertising by allowing advertisers to bid on third-party trademarks if those advertisers offered detailed comparative information about the trademark owners products or services in comparison to the competitive products and services that were offered or promoted on the advertisers site.
In order to more easily deliver quality user experiences when users search on terms that are trademarks, Yahoo! Search Marketing has determined that we will no longer allow bidding on keywords containing competitor trademarks.
Our records indicate that you currently have one or more listings that were allowed under the competitive advertising guideline. On March 1, 2006, these listings will be removed from your account, and we will no longer accept listings containing search terms comprised of your competitors trademarks.
These are the current terms in your account which will be deleted on March 1, 2006:
Keywords Deleted
For more information on our trademark policy, please visit http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/legal/trademarks.php. Please note that Condition #3 (”Competitive Comparison Site”) will be removed when the policy is officially implemented on March 1, but advertiser listings that qualify under the reseller or non-competitor information guidelines may be allowed, subject to Yahoo!s discretion to accept or reject listings. If you have any questions or concerns regarding this issue, please do not hesitate to contact your Account Management team.
While we apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you, we believe that this change in our policy enhances our ability to provide the best experience for users.
Sincerely,
Your Partners at Yahoo! Search Marketing
So there it is - Yahoo! is tired of the lawsuits, so they are throwing in the towel. Chalk one up for the lawyers.
It would be interesting to see what type of a financial impact something like this will have on Yahoo!s revenue - for some reason I think it could be substantial.
Have a great weekend.
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