With Google's recent change in their trademark bidding policy, many companies are finding that their competitors are now free to bid on their company’s trademark terms. With little legal precedent to hang their hat on, companies are starting to turn to their affiliates for help.

In the past, many companies have specifically banned affiliates from bidding on the company’s trademark terms as part of their affiliate agreement. At the same time the companies started bidding on their own trademark terms on Google. But, companies can typically only buy one ad under any keyword phrase, and they have started to see the remaining spots being taken up by their competitors and their competitor’s affiliates.

In order to combat this, companies have started to turn to their top Affiliates for help by allowing their top affiliate partners to bid on the company trademarks with strict advertising copy guidelines that protect the company’s brand image. Typically the companies will also ask that their affiliates not overbid them for top position to ensure that their new strategy doesn’t bid up their price of bidding on the trademark terms.

Commission Junction has started promoted this “Blocking Strategy” to their clients. At the IAB Road show event in New York in August, representatives from CJ presented Brooks Brothers as an good example of successfully deploying a brand blocking program using their top affiliate partners.

So far I have personally had two companies approach me about starting to bid on their trademarks, and have seen a lot of programs that allow trademark bidding with maximum bid amounts defined in the contract.

“We would rather make a portion of the revenues and share them with our affiliate partners than let our competitors steal our sales!” Said one such affiliate manager.

Could this be the way the industry is heading on trademark bidding?