United Airlines is suing Google Adwords in the Court of Texas for selling their name as a keyword to other buyers. I had already noticed on this blog that Kontera had sold the Google keyword to Windows Live. I thought it was a fair competitor's move, but United Airlines see things differently.
United Airlines tries to protect its brand trademarks. What this story tells us is that online advertising is more impacting than it used to be. For United Airlines, Google search engine is misleading consumers by offering inappropriate links to trademarked keywords.
Where traditional media stress on the visual quality as amain influence factor, online advertising was looked upon as a basic, yellow pages-type of advertisement. Text ads relied only on choosing the right words, and placing the ad on the right pages.
Now that United Airlines is suing Google Adwords, it just shows that in-text advertising gives extra trickiness to online advertising. Just like traditional advertising, online advertising uses familiar and pleasant symbols to attract the consumers' attention.
Online advertising strategies require extra thinking now. Buying competitors' keywords will hold more consequences, knowing it might lead to legal trials, a move that could intricate itself in any company's global business strategy.
United Airlines is not expected to win this trial, but it is setting the tone for other companies to protect their brands online. Online advertising just got a little harder to deal with.
