When and where your ad will appear if it includes a trademarked term will depend on its compliance with AdWords advertising policies (including landing page content policies) and whether the advertiser has obtained explicit approval to use the trademarked term from the trademark owner. If the ad is in compliance with advertising policies and is approved after review, the ad may be assigned one of the following two states:
- Approved: Ads that are in compliance with AdWords policies for advertisers who've obtained explicit approval from the trademark owner to use a trademark using the AdWords trademark request process will be approved without a limited status and will be eligible to use the trademark in any country with any ad group level or keyword-level landing page. These ads will have an "Approved" status.
- Approved (limited): Ads that are in compliance with AdWords policies for advertisers who have not obtained explicit approval from the trademark owner to use a trademark using the AdWords trademark request process will be labeled "Approved (Limited)," and are only eligible to show automatically in the US across the Google Network, even if the ad also targets other countries. (Eligibility in this context refers to trademark status. Not all ads with "Approved (limited)" status are eligible to show. To see whether your ad is eligible to appear and receiving impressions, you can review your ad impression statistics within your campaign. Your ad's eligibility to show may also be impacted by other ad serving factors such as bidding, budget, or targeting settings.)
Ads with "Approved (limited)" status will not run as described until the new AdWords trademark policy takes effect on June 15, 2009.
Below is a list of advertising limitations for ads with "Approved (limited)" status:
Campaign targeting outside the US
By default, if an advertiser's campaign targets the US and other countries, the ad may be eligible to show in the US and it will not be shown in these other countries. For the ad to be shown in additional countries outside the US, advertisers must obtain trademark approval from the trademark owner.
If the campaign targets only countries outside the US, the ad will be disapproved unless the advertiser has already obtained approval to use the trademark from the trademark owner.
Keyword-level URLs
Ad groups that do not use keyword-level URLs will be reviewed as usual for compliance with advertising policies based on the content of their ad's Destination URL. The ad will automatically be eligible to show in the US only.
If the ad uses keyword-level URLs, we'll review each keyword landing page for compliance with AdWords policies. If the landing page meets our policy requirements, the ad will automatically be eligible to show in the US only. If the landing page does not meet our policy requirements, the ad will not be shown for the keyword.
Ad groups with multiple ads, where one ad does not include a trademark in the ad text
We may substitute an ad that does not use a trademark term in the ad text in the place of an ad that does, depending on the ads' compliance with AdWords policy and the advertiser's trademark approval status.
For example: If an ad group contains Ad A, which uses a trademark term in the ad text without trademark owner approval, and Ad B, which does not use a trademark term in the ad text, the following would occur:*
- Ad A will have "Approved (Limited)" status and may be eligible to show only in the US (regardless of additional countries targeted).
- Ad B will have "Approved" status and will be eligible to appear instead of Ad A (in additional countries outside of the US, if they are targeted).
* Presuming that the ad complies with AdWords policies.
Keyword insertion
Ads using keyword insertion with trademarked terms where the advertiser has not obtained approval to use the trademark from the trademark owner may be eligible to show with the keyword inserted into the ad text and the URL if the ad text and landing page comply with AdWords policies. If they do not comply with these policies, the ad will be triggered but the keyword will not be inserted into the ad text or the URL.
To learn more about about approval guidelines in your region for each ad type, please refer to our advertising policies.
