Have you checked the rates to buy some pay-per-click ads lately? You know, the kind of sponsored results that pop up at the top of the page when somebody types the name of your university or college in Google’s and Yahoo’s search boxes.
According to “Colleges Challenge Web-Advertising Practices of For-Profit Institutions,” an article published this morning in The Chronicle of Higher Education, these ads have become more and more expensive thanks to a well-known for-profit university that knows how to recruit online, and someone has decided to publicize this issue:
Richard Oliver, director of online education at Tiffin University, confronted Laura Palmer Noone, president of the University of Phoenix, after a speech she gave at a higher-education conference in Boston
[…]
The sponsored links are bought through a bidding process. The company that pays the most gets the top ad. For the “Tiffin University” search, the top spot in the results sold for more than $8 for each person who clicked on the advertising link. That could mean thousands of dollars, depending on how many people clicked.
Tiffin cannot afford to pay that much for Web ads, Mr. Oliver said. But large companies can — and do.
“It’s Goliath coming after David,” Mr. Oliver said. “If nothing else, there should be some, what am I trying to say, professional-courtesy issues.”
Dan Carnavale also reports in his article that, “Phoenix officials say they have a policy against buying Web ads linked to the names of other colleges. But sometimes the advertising vendors they hire do so without their permission, university officials said. An official of one of Phoenix’s vendors said it buys ads based on city names and will remove the ads if anyone complains. Other vendors that appear to buy such sponsored links on search engines would not comment.”
So, how do you fight back? Just follow these simple steps:
- Check Yahoo or Google to find out if any of these big “companies” ads are displayed in the sponsored results when searching for the exact match – i.e. in quotes – of your institution name.
- In some states (The Chronicle’s journalist mentions New Jersey), this practice – i.e. buying ads that are displayed when another organization’s name is used as a keyword – is against the law. Find out what’s the law in your state.
- If you find an ad using your institution name for the well-known for-profit, just let them know that one of their vendors isn’t in compliance with their own policy. According to their president, this should be enough to have the ads pulled out.
I’ve used Google ads to promote some specific programs and got interesting results. If you have any success stories on this, please email me at karine@collegewebeditor.com or post a comment below.
Karine,
It’s not only the big schools that are doing this but also “lead generation†companies such as Vantage Media. Vantage Media is an advertising company that uses questionable methods to generate leads via the internet. Once they borrow a school’s name for advertising, it is hard to get rid of them.
Frauds they have used:
EDU.com is the latest example of Vantage Media’s use of school names. They insert the school’s domain name before the edu.com. Once a visitor has clicked through, the link is re-directed via college.us.com to EDU.com with the school’s name (MySchool.edu.com.) You can view the latest Educause discussion about Vantage Media’s EDU.com at http://listserv.educause.edu/cgi-bin/wa.exe?A1=ind0604&L=security&T=0.
Another method Vantage Media has used is to advertise a school by name in Yahoo or Google pay-per-click ads. When a visitor does a search by school name, an ad would show with that school’s name. Once the visitor clicked through they would see the following message; “Sorry, (School Name) is not accepting inquiries at this time. Here are other online schools you may be interested in.†Besides the deceptiveness, this is a trademark violation and many times the school is not aware of this.
In the Chronicle article Mark DiPaola, president of Vantage Media is quoted as saying, “Our intent is to never violate a trademark or even cause any confusion.” This is not true and there is documented evidence of this. His replies to complaints are usually marked with a proclamation of innocence or ignorance.
If more schools are made aware of Vantage Media’s practices, then hopefully less will use their lead generation “services.†A school should never have to bid against its own name.
Vantage Media Owned Websites:
• college.us.com
• edu.com
• eduvantage.org
• edumark.com
• college-info.org
Company Address:
Vantage Media Corporation
1350 Abbot Kinney Blvd #203
Venice, California 90291
Phone: (310) 482-3737
PLease keepo me informed about legal actions against Vantage Media.
Empire State College is a State University College (NYS public) that is considering taking action against the Search Engines &/or Vantage for trademark infringement and disceptive advertising.
Hi Jeff,
Now they are offering “trademark protection” online, which is like a snake protecting a mouse. I’ll post updates as they come no problem. Have you contacted Educause yet about Vantage Media?
Vantage Media sued for Intellectual Property – Trademark Violation – http://dockets.justia.com/docket/court-vaedce/case_no-1:2007cv00379/case_id-216551/
Unfortunately, there isn’t much information on this case yet but its obvious Vantage Media continues its deceptive practices.
Schools may now want to check their name as a sub domain of edudirect.org – their latest scam. Simply type in your name before their domain name. Example www.(school.name) .edudirect.org. You can try different combinations including using a period in between words if the school name has more than one word.
By doing this, some pay per click advertisements appears as http://www.YOURSCHOOL.edu if the letters are the right length since the rest of their domain name is cut off in the ad.
I love their deceptive marketing attempt: I just got a voice mail that said, “Hi, this is ___, I guess we must have gotten cut off. Anyway, if you want to know more about Vantage Media, call me back at 310/482-etc.”
Yes, they use all kinds of deception. But how did they get $70 million in venture capital with that kind of deception? Eventually, the trademark infringement will catch up to Vantage Media as more schools tire of this fraud. Since that is their core business, using school names illegally, it could wipe them out.
Venture capital companies have a higher risk than usual since they’ll have to factor in the law and the damage future legal proceedings will have on Vantage Media’s bottom line.
Interesting how this article refers to Vantage Media as a domain squatter…
http://www.thealarmclock.com/mt/archives/2007/02/domain_squatter.html