Just a few days after BharatMatrimony/Shaadi controversy on Google Adwords, it seems we might be heading for another controversy.
Yahoo India is advertising on Rediff keyword (Www Rediff Com) and the property that is being promoted is Cricket.Yahoo.com.
Have a look at the screenshot:
Yahoo India advertising on Rediff keyword
Yahoo has been on an advertising spree (the ‘You’ campaign) and even bought the front page of ToI to tell you that Yahoo is all about ‘Y’ou!
But then, advertising on Rediff keyword? How (un)cool is that!
What’s your opinion?
There’s nothing controversial about this. It’s not an ‘oops’ situation. It’s smart advertising, and can be stopped easily enough if the trademark owners want to protect it. Please, stop crating a mountain out of a grain of sand.
“It’s smart advertising, and can be stopped easily enough if the trademark owners want to protect it. ” – Is rediff a bigger brand than Yahoo? Think about it and you will realize that it’s not a ‘smart’ advertising.
Smart? Stealing on someone else’s name is cheapness. How shameful.
How can we even call it smart.. rather its cheap marketing. Yahoo is trying to get traffic when some is looking for rediff.
i agree with the article.. can’t be anything cool about fooling your users!
I disagree with the article. The keyword is a free trade “item” and you can use it to advertise your site as long as you can pay the advertising fee and place a bid higher than others.
Did Viagra sue all these websites who use their name to spam email inboxes?
haha but all that spamming ultimately helps viagra’s sale! why would they sue!
@sumant I fail to understand, despite my 10 minutes pondering on your comment, How is this smart?
It’s anything but smart…it does not make sense business-wise, besides ruining the already deteriorating image Y! commands.
Btw, Ashish, they also had the HT full front page ad yesterday.
a) I’m fairly sure that someone’s screwed up and they’ve simply used DKI in the wrong place.
b) Bidding on competitor terms is an acknowledged practice worldwide (using their name in your headline is a little bit, erm thick) so agree with Sumant there. Infringing on competitor market share is a practice as ancient as marketing – don’t see why everyone’s so horrified.
@Darryn, does it make sense for Yahoo to do that? you agree with your bracketed text that it is a bit thick and that is what is being talked about. Why should Y! do this unless it is to ruin their name or even better to wake the ‘Fake Ajit’ into action.
Brijesh – Bidding on a competitor term is underhanded (debatable) but far from nonsensical. Think of it as your chemist trying to get you to try a new hair gel. You’ve gone to get Gel A but he says try Gel B, it’s got x, y and z benefits. You’re left to make up your own mind but he’s put the message across to you. Let me expound in context: Rediff cricket is well established and as far as I know more coveted by clients as ad space during the cricket season than Yahoo any day. Yahoo’s trying to get people to visit its cricket channel, right. Where do they get these people (a cricket enthusiast, online) from? He’s going to be on a Cricinfo or a Rediff Cricket section or will have heard by word of mouth that this is where he can source ace cricket content. He goes to the net and searches for Rediff cricket and boing, he sees a Yahoo ad which he may or may not choose to click on. If he fancies it and stays, hey presto, mission accomplished. If not, the user will move on to Rediff as originally planned. My “thick” mention did not refer to an aversion regarding Yahoo bidding on Rediff but instead on them using Rediff in the headline of the ad which basically makes someone think that it’s a link to Rediff – they’d click in to Yahoo and then promptly click out once they realise it isn’t Rediff. As mentioned before, I’m relatively sure this is a search guy’s enthusiastic use of DKI (dynamic keyword insertion: where the search is automatically used in the ad text) as opposed to intentional use of Rediff in the headline of the ad – note how even the capitalisation matches. Ruining their name over bidding on Rediff is a bit dramatic methinks.
Exactly, if people click into Yahoo and leave immediately, Yahoo is penalized for having to pay Google yet not being able to convert customers to their site.
It is a free trade situation IMO.
@darryn — Understood and accepted — All i was saying is, it’s a brand-ruining move – especially for an established and leader brand like Y!.
had some new entrant done this (and will probably do, because it makes sense to piggyback on someone else’s already established brand), this is acceptable. in other words, this should not be acceptable for Y! besides anyone else — but then , as you mention, this seems to be a mess-up rather than an intentional move.
@roy — yessir, it’s a free trade till the time Rediff sues/copyrights/trademark/ — it’s funny that it would make sense for Y! — get new users (by fooling them to click on rediff, which makes business sense) but brand gets ruined.
I think that it comes up automatically, some bots controlling the keywords and bidding…
Well, Unethical and damn mad way of advertising..
I guess its better to sue Google[:P]..I don’t know its possible but if there is a chance its better to do it [:P] at least once.
don’t you think yahoo’s its you campaign sucks?I really do not see any point in that advertisement.what do you say?