Adwords

Google revises AdWords trademark policy

Google has revised its policy on trademarks appearing in keyword ads, allowing brand names to show up in AdWords copy.

Google will begin accepting new ads that contain trademark terms on Friday although the ads will not surface online until June 11. Dan Friedman, a member of the Inside AdWords crew, announced the shift Thursday in a company blog:

In an effort to improve ad quality and user experience, we are adjusting our trademark policy in the U.S. to allow some ads to use trademarks in the ad text. This change will bring Google's policy on trademark use … Read more

Google hit with new lawsuit over ad keywords

About a month after an appeals court revived a trademark lawsuit over Google's keyword sales, another suit has surfaced in Texas.

Ars Technica spotted Firepond's lawsuit, filed Monday in Texas, against Google over whether Google should be allowed to sell keywords bearing a company's trademark to its competitors. A similar suit involving PC support company Rescuecom was brought back to life in April by an appeals court after initially being dismissed in 2006.

The issue is whether Coke, for example, should be allowed to buy keywords such as Pepsi and place ads for Coke products on searches … Read more

Google settles lawsuit over AdWords budget limits

Google has settled a lawsuit filed by advertisers who claimed they were charged for more ads through the AdWords system than they had agreed to pay for.

Under the settlement, two named plaintiffs will each receive $20,000, other marketers will get ad credits and Google agreed to pay the plaintiffs' lawyers more than $5 million, according to MediaPost.

The lawsuit, filed in 2005 in Santa Clara Superior Court in California, named as plaintiffs printing company CLRB Hanson Industries of Minnesota and Howard Stern of New Jersey (no relation to the radio personality). It alleged that Google misrepresented what constitutes … Read more

Buzz Out Loud 928: The 404-year-old virgin

Justin Yu is not a virgin, but he plays one on this podcast. And that's just the kind of thing you get when you have a member of the 404 on the podcast. We also evaluate the new nearly-buttonless iPod Shuffle, some online gaming stats, and Google's new ad-targeting system.

Listen now: Download today's podcast EPISODE 928

New talking shuffle http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2009/03/11ipod.html?sr=hotnews http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10193443-37.html

iPod touch 2G finally jailbroken with NitroKey http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/10/ipod-touch-2g-finally-jailbroken-with-nitrokey/

Speaking of hacking…Chinese … Read more

Google adds ads to Google News searches

Google has extended its AdWords program to Google News searches, delivering text ads on the right side of the search results page, just as Google has long done with regular Web search results.

Josh Cohen, a business product manager at Google, announced the move Wednesday in a company blog:

In recent months we've been experimenting with a variety of different formats, like overlay ads on embedded videos from partners like the AP. We've always said that we'd unveil these changes when we could offer a good experience for our users, publishers and advertisers alike, and we'll … Read more

Webware Radar: Shazam hits 35 million users

Shazam, a mobile music discovery service for the iPhone, T-Mobile G1, and other devices, announced Friday that it has added 20 million users since September and now has 35 million users worldwide.

Shazam's success is due in part to its availability. According to the company, its app can be found on phones offered by 75 carriers across 60 countries. Shazam users are tagging an average of 10 tracks per month, and the company claims that a total of 1 million tracks are being tagged monthly around the world. By the end of 2009, CEO Andrew Fisher expects the app … Read more

Google keeps its one-trick pony healthy

Google gets knocked for being a one-trick pony--the vast majority of its revenue comes from search advertising--but its strong fourth-quarter results showed what can be done by making sure cultivation of that business isn't hurt by diversification efforts.

The company on Thursday reported net income of $382 million for the quarter, a major drop from $1.21 billion from the year-earlier quarter. But that apparent drop was mostly because of two non-cash charges writing down the value of investments in AOL and Clearwire by $726 million and $355 million, respectively. Factoring that and some other charges out, the company … Read more

$9 million for SpotMixer's video ad service

One True Media, the parent company of an online video ad creator called SpotMixer, has announced a fresh $9 million in Series B venture funding. The round was led by DAG Ventures, with contributions from NTT Finance and existing investor Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

Amid widespread financial difficulties (to say the least) in the media business, SpotMixer and its new investors are pitching it as a cost-cutting option for small companies.

"While the market opportunity for video advertising remains well-defined, smaller businesses are more concerned than ever about how to most cost-effectively spend their limited advertising dollars," … Read more

Google censors political-donation transparency ads

Should members of the public be able to pay for Web advertisements detailing which companies have donated to politicians? While this seems like a great way to promote transparency in politics, Google forbids the practice--we are free to name the politicians who take money but cannot name the companies that give it.

With Google's domination of the search engine market, and the eyeballs that go along with it, the company's AdWords text ads have become a key way for activists, politicians, and corporations to reach the general public. However, over the past year, Google's excessively restrictive policies … Read more