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Very smart, but is it against the TOS to bid directly on the trademark/company name? Often times it is. That being said, they likely will not care with you bei

Very smart, but is it against the TOS to bid directly on the trademark/company name? Often times it is. That being said, they likely will not care with you being an extremely small player and bringing them 32 new customers. Solid Hack, congrats edit - CPC are going sky high after this :-) people might want to wait for a few weeks to let others forget

vrikhter 15y ago
I'm not sure. I didn't bother looking at this. I spoke to someone at Dropbox about this and he's seen the numbers, he seemed to be more interested in what I did rather than reprimanding me for doing it. Thing is that everyone maxes out at some point. You can only have so many referrals. Once you give them 32 new customers, you stop running the ads and move on with life. Also, you're just re-routing the new customers. They would have signed up potentially on their own (as you can see the multitude of clicks from the keyword 'dropbox'), so I imagine that could be the only problem for them - acquiring customers by having to give you extra space that would have signed up without having to give anyone extra space.
- matdwyer 15y ago
  Agreed - I'm not saying they'd stop you (you're basically doing their marketing job!), just pointing out that it could be a closed up loophole. For example, the more people that are bidding that, the higher dropbox has to pay for their own ad buys... i.e. if everyone is doing this, they either stop doing the ads themselves (unlikely, as they can't monitor) or stop the practice so they can control their trademark searches (for optimization, etc) Anyway, not saying what you did was bad - I think it is really cool!
calbear81 15y ago
There are protected trademarks that are registered with Google that are protected in their system but even then, I believe the rule is you cannot use the trademark in your ad copy but you can still target the term in you list. In many mature industries, the major players have reciprocal agreements in place with their suppliers and even with competitors to not bid on branded/trademarked terms.
- matdwyer 15y ago
  I was referring more to affiliate agreements - i.e. I have an affiliate account with Blurb, and I'm bound by a few technicalities like not bidding on Blurb, not writing blurb or posing as blurb on facebook/twitter, etc. If I break that they basically take all my affiliate $$. Not fun! This is obviously more consumer facing and not really a big deal, so I don't think it would be a problem.
scrrr 15y ago
When CPC are going high I suggest to target other countries and languages

vrikhter 15y ago

I'm not sure. I didn't bother looking at this. I spoke to someone at Dropbox about this and he's seen the numbers, he seemed to be more interested in what I did rather than reprimanding me for doing it. Thing is that everyone maxes out at some point. You can only have so many referrals. Once you give them 32 new customers, you stop running the ads and move on with life. Also, you're just re-routing the new customers. They would have signed up potentially on their own (as you can see the multitude of clicks from the keyword 'dropbox'), so I imagine that could be the only problem for them - acquiring customers by having to give you extra space that would have signed up without having to give anyone extra space.

matdwyer 15y ago
Agreed - I'm not saying they'd stop you (you're basically doing their marketing job!), just pointing out that it could be a closed up loophole. For example, the more people that are bidding that, the higher dropbox has to pay for their own ad buys... i.e. if everyone is doing this, they either stop doing the ads themselves (unlikely, as they can't monitor) or stop the practice so they can control their trademark searches (for optimization, etc) Anyway, not saying what you did was bad - I think it is really cool!

calbear81 15y ago

There are protected trademarks that are registered with Google that are protected in their system but even then, I believe the rule is you cannot use the trademark in your ad copy but you can still target the term in you list. In many mature industries, the major players have reciprocal agreements in place with their suppliers and even with competitors to not bid on branded/trademarked terms.

matdwyer 15y ago
I was referring more to affiliate agreements - i.e. I have an affiliate account with Blurb, and I'm bound by a few technicalities like not bidding on Blurb, not writing blurb or posing as blurb on facebook/twitter, etc. If I break that they basically take all my affiliate $$. Not fun! This is obviously more consumer facing and not really a big deal, so I don't think it would be a problem.

scrrr 15y ago

When CPC are going high I suggest to target other countries and languages