No more taboo
Did you ever play the boardgame taboo? You try to get your partner to say the word on the card without actually mentioning the word. Google AdWords is finally breaking the seal on trademarks.
I just got off a call with a member of the Google AdWords team and he told me that come June 15th I'll actually be able to use the phrase "iPhone app" in my ads to sell our WalkJogRun Routes iPhone app. Until then my ads will be rejected if I say iPhone anywhere in the copy.
This is a huge PITA for anyone who understands how Google AdWords actually work. The performance of an ad in Google AdWords drastically improves if you use the term someone actually searched for in your ad copy and on the page they end up. If you search for Guinness and see an ad for spaghetti you'd be confused. What most people don't realize is that the distinction is far narrower than you'd expect.
The time people spend skimming the ads limits the ability to decode your copy and recognize it as a match for their search. In this case if you searched for Guinness and saw and ad mentioning porter (the style of beer guinness is based on), most people would ignore it and skip on. If you searched for Illinois and saw IL (the two letter abbreviation) you'll still see less clicks than an ad using Illinois instead.
This means that if I'm trying to sell an iPhone application by playing a game of taboo I've got no chance of getting a sustainable clickthru rate. It also means I am forced to pay a premium cost-per-click to get my ad in front of my prospective customers. Roll on June 15th.