If you are running PPC campaigns in the UK or Ireland and you’re a believer in open markets and healthy competition, you will love Google’s AdWords Trademark Policy Revision. However, as with most of Google’s recent changes, it will cost you.

The changes are nothing new to US advertisers, as Google has been allowing advertisers to bid on their competitor’s US trademarks since 2004 but the UK market up till now has enjoyed more protection.

Advertisers unsure how this will affect their PPC campaign can read up on a previous post on brand bidding but basically i foresee the following impact:

•  ’small’ companies will use this opportunity to aggressively start bidding on their competitors’ trademark in an attempt to gain market share
•  dominant advertisers will have to spend more money to defend their brand from their rivals.

The stronger your brand, the more you will be (negatively) affected by this change as well known trademarks are a big driver of traffic and others are going to want a piece of it. This is a time for UK advertisers to evaluate their PPC campaigns and their brand bidding policies. They last thing you want be is unprepared when the changes come into effect on May 5 2008.

And Google? They benefit because in all likelihood advertisers will spend more money on Adwords (although the official line is that they’re are just doing it for the sake of improving ‘relevancy’ to the user).