With the 2014 World Cup beginning shortly, thousands of marketers are looking to take advantage of this huge event. Will millions of people watching each of the games, and searching for information about teams, players, matches and more, there is a huge potential for the savvy marketer. If you were planning on using Google AdWords to promote your World Cup site, however, you might be disappointed.
Searches performed on Google for “World Cup” or any number of other copyrighted terms will return with no ads showing at all. Due to trademark protection laws, and some legal disputes Google has gotten into over this type of thing in the past, the search giant is shying away from displaying ads with trademarked terms in the copy.
According to the AdWords ToS, marketers should be able to target keywords that have trademarked words in them, but not use the trademarked words themselves. That is not, however, what is being done on Google’s end. They seem to be taking a very cautious approach to this event, and are choosing to display few, if any, ads for search terms that are copyrighted.
A search for “World Cup 2014” for example returns only organic search results, and the “OneBox” with information about specific matches that are coming up.
While some people are reporting an occasional ad, they seem to be very limited, and even the ones that do get through are often gone when the same search is performed the next day. So, if you were planning on promoting a World Cup 2014 site this year with AdWords, you had better rethink your strategy right away so you can still take advantage of one of the biggest events in sports.
