New WatchMouse Product Detects Online Brand Abuse

Initial test reveals 81% of top 100 global brands are being exploited in search engine ads

GeoBrand, is an automated way to detect brand abuse in pay-per-click (PPC) advertising on Yahoo!, Google, and Microsoft Bing in over 30 countries. WatchMouse tested GeoBrand on Interbrand’s "2009 Best Global Brands" and determined that 81 percent of these global companies are the victims of advertising brand abuse.

The results revealed that:

• 81% of all top 100 brands had at least one competitor advertising on their brand name in search engines. See samples
• Of the remaining top 100 brands, 6% of the brands had at least one competitor advertising on their brand name through a reseller. See samples
• Only 13% of the brands did not suffer from significant brand abuse. See list

Search terms that had at least one ad by a competitor showing up:

Search terms that had at least one ad by a competitor reseller showing up:

No ads by direct competitors where found for a search on the brands: