An online cruise retailer has welcomed Google’s decision to scrap trademark protection as an opportunity for agents to fight back at large rivals.
Online agency cruise.co.uk has vowed to bid against trademarked rivals following Google’s reversal of its long-standing policy under its pay-per-click rules to protect bidding on company brand names.
From Monday this week any companies advertising on Google can bid against trademarked keywords for their company name to come up in the sponsored links section during searches on those trademarked names.
So far the move has faced fierce criticism from large travel firms. They fear their digital marketing costs will soar to protect their brand names.
But cruise.co.uk chairman Andrew Gardner said the policy change was particularly good news for the online agency because its name is not trademarked.
He said: “Our natural clicks are enormous but because our name is so generic we couldn’t get it trademarked, which we wanted to do. Big companies have been bidding on our name.
“It’s been a running joke in our company that Thomas Cook likes us so much it has been buying our name on the web – now we can get our own back.”
Google UK director Matt Brittin said advertisers were used to seeing their rivals appear on sponsored links because of searches on connected words. But under the new policy users would only have to type in a brand name for their rival to appear.
He said: “This change builds on what happens already.”