1. Keyword targeted advertising (Ads across the Google Network)

2. Site targeted advertising. (Ads in specific sites)

What is the difference between the two? Well, the differences arise in the pricing models employed. Keyword targeted advertising uses the CPC (Cost per click model) whereas the site based targeted advertising uses the CPM (Cost per thousand page impressions) model; The M in the CPM is derived from Roman Numerals where M denotes 1000.

As a part of this case, I shall focus on keyword based advertising unless i explicitly state otherwise. Now, a major concept in keyword based advertising is Maximum CPC (The maximum amount that a business/consumer is willing to pay for a particular keyword each time a user clicks it on the google network).

How is this information relevant to our case at hand? Well, heres how.

Google employs an auction of the maximum CPC prices that the different businesses/consumers have bid in order to assign the keywords to them. How does Google decide the minimum amount of clearance of the auction? Heres how.

while determining the minimum CPC of a keyword. The minimum CPC is the clearance amount (i.e.) A business /consumer has to atleast bid more than the minimum CPC to be eligible in the auction process. Not only is cost (one of the above criteria), a numeric and therefore an objective parameter, even quality turns out to be quite an objective parameter. Heres how Google determines quality score of the keyword.

A keyword’s click-through rate (CTR). This is the number of clicks an ad receives divided by the number of impressions.

• Ad text relevance (such as if the ad text contains a keyword).
• Overall historical keyword performance with Google (i.e. how the keyword has performed in the past).
• User experience on the landing page or site associated with an ad.

Using these two parameters (Quality and Cost), Google assigns a minimum CPC amount for each keyword. Consider a scenario where google assigns a $3 per day minimum CPC for the keyword - Op9s.Just suppose that I as an owner put forth a bid of $7 (people who know me will be scoffing and laughing at this statement) ..... anyway... Yea, I bid $7 and say, theres this competitor of mine who comes in and bids at $9. He/It gets the keyword straightaway. How? Well.. He/It cleared the cost barrier by bidding a couple of dollars more than me and he also cleared the quality barrier. How?

Check the parameters Google uses to determine the quality score. A competitor having exactly the same line of business as you is bound to be operating on the same keywords. So relevance, CTR, Uexp is all bound to be the same for him/it too. So, then obviously when you (a reader/op9 member/subscriber) search for Op9s.com on google, you are bound to see my competitor's ad in the right hand column.

I have yammed enough to make you realize what I am getting to. My moot point here is Does Bharat Matrimony have a strong case? I am not sure how the issue of Trademarks creates a difference in this case. Isnt Google Adwords/Keywords independent of this aspect.

Let me give you an example from the Google barn itself. Have you ever searched for google Analtyics on google search? Try it.  

Look closely at the right hand column. Yes! The ad belongs to Webtrends Analytics - a direct competitor of Google Analytics. And an interesting piece of information here is that GA is also trademarked ;however it is from the Google stable and thus upto Google's dicretion as to how it wants to structure its search engine presence.