Last week at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) we heard from several customers that they'd like more information about two areas of adCenter that might be confusing: trademark policy and dynamic text, or parameters. So we thought we'd follow up with more info on these items. We hope this helps clear them up a bit.

Trademark Policy

It is our goal to have a fair and consistent trademark policy to enable advertisers to have the best experience and results when their ads show up on Live Search.  With this policy advertisers are required to agree that they will not bid on keywords, or use in the text of their advertisements, any word whose use would infringe on the trademark of any third party, or would otherwise be unlawful or in violation of the rights of any third party. There are a few exceptions to this rule.

For example, a trademarked term may be used as a keyword or in ad content for the following reasons:

 

Sometimes, the owner of a trademark has reason to believe that another advertiser is bidding on their trademarked term. When this is the case, the advertiser may request that the adCenter Editorial Team perform an ad and keyword review of the advertiser in question by submitting a Trademark Concern form.  If the advertiser is an approved affiliate, the concern is overturned; if the advertiser is not an approved affiliate, the ads are rejected and the affiliate must work with the trademark owner to become an approved affiliate to bid on the trademarked term. In both cases, the trademark owner is notified of the results.

 

If your ads are rejected, however, and you are an authorized affiliate of the trademark owner, please contact the trademark owner directly to resolve the issue. In many cases, authorized affiliates simply need to work with the trademark owner to authorize their campaigns with adCenter.

 

There are three types of dynamic text:

 

Use this type of dynamic text         To
Keyword {keyword}                           Customize your ad based on search queries
Destination URL {param1}                  Change the destination URL based on search queries
Placeholder {param2} {param3}         Revise your ads using placeholders

 

To learn more about dynamic text (or parameters) in adCenter, please check out these previous blog posts.

You can also review the Help topic About dynamic text for more information.
 

I hope this helps answer some of your questions. If you have other questions please check out the adCenter Forum.
Thanks!
Carolyn
Microsoft adCenter Community Team