Spy on competitors · Brand Bidding

Brand Bidding: Google Ads Trademark Complaint Evidence

Brand bidding is when another advertiser buys ads that show on searches for your company name. In the United States, Google does not restrict that. Buying a trademark as a keyword is allowed, and no complaint will change it. What Google does restrict is your trademark appearing in the ad text itself, and that is the half you can act on.

The catch is evidence. Google will not investigate a trademark that appears only on a landing page, so a complaint needs the live ad, with the offending wording visible, tied to a specific advertiser. Somebody has to find that ad while it is still running.

AdEye pulls a named advertiser's live Google ads out of the Ads Transparency Center into one searchable feed, covering Search, Shopping, Display and YouTube, and shows how long each creative has been running. You read the actual ad copy, save what matters to a board, and keep a dated record. It will not tell you which keywords anyone bids on, because Google publishes that nowhere, and it does not watch for new ads in the background. It answers one question well: what is this advertiser saying right now.

Ad Intelligence Feed

Live Google data

Enter a brand or a domain

Searching the Google Ads Transparency Center...

Try:

Public Google Ads Transparency data. Nothing behind a login.

Open your swipe file

Google Ads Transparency has no ads on record for that search. Google indexes ads by advertiser, so the brand's exact domain works best — for example nike.com.

Google Ads Transparency has no ads on record for . That is an answer about the brand, not a problem with the search: they are not running Google ads that Google publishes, or they advertise under a different registered name.

We could not reach Google Ads Transparency just now, so this is not a result about that brand, we simply could not look. Please try again in a moment. This search has not been counted against your allowance.

Open your swipe file

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See it run

Live Google Ads Transparency data · Run length · Public data only

GOOGLE ADS TRANSPARENCY

Run length on every ad

AI-tagged hooks & angles

Why it works

What brand bidding evidence you can actually collect

Read the ad text, not the keyword

Google treats keywords and ad copy differently. A rival can buy your brand name as a keyword all day, but the moment your mark shows up in their headline or description, the policy applies and a complaint has something to bite on. So the useful artifact is the creative itself, in the advertiser's own words, which is exactly what AdEye returns.

Catch it while the ad is live

Ordinary commercial ads are not archived. Google shows them while they run and they disappear once the advertiser stops, with no public record left behind. If you notice brand misuse and come back a week later to document it, the ad may simply be gone. Pulling and saving the creative the day you spot it is the difference between a filed complaint and a story.

Every Google surface in one view

Brand misuse rarely stays on Search. The same advertiser may run your name in a Shopping title, a display banner or a YouTube video ad. One advertiser record in the Ads Transparency Center covers all four surfaces, so AdEye shows the whole set together instead of making you check them one at a time.

Keep a dated record with run length

Every creative carries how long it has been running. That matters twice: it separates a stray test from a sustained campaign, and it gives you a timeline if the conversation ever moves past a policy complaint. Boards keep what you saved with its dates, so the record survives the ad coming down.

Know what you cannot prove

Nothing published by Google or by any third-party tool proves which keywords an advertiser bids on. Keyword and spend numbers sold elsewhere are modeled from scraped search results, not read from the account. AdEye does not sell you that inference. If you want to know who appears on your brand term, search your own brand yourself and look at who shows up.

Side by side

What proves brand bidding, and what does not

Based on Google's published Google Ads trademark policy, checked in August 2026. Where the free tool or your own account is the better answer, this table says so.

What you want to establish	Where it comes from	Can you act on it
A competitor uses your trademark in their ad text	The live ad creative, via the Ads Transparency Center or AdEye	Yes. This is the case Google's trademark policy covers
A competitor bids on your brand as a keyword	Not published anywhere by Google	No. Permitted in the US, and there is no complaint route
Which advertisers you actually compete against	Auction Insights, inside your own Google Ads account	Yes, and it is free and authoritative. Use it
How long the offending ad has been running	Run length on each creative in AdEye	Useful context, not required by the complaint form
A trademark used only on their landing page	Their website	No. Google does not investigate landing-page-only use
Estimated keywords or monthly ad spend	Modeled by SERP-scraping tools, never reported	No. Treat it as a directional sample, never as proof
Brand misuse on Meta, TikTok or LinkedIn	Each platform's own ad library and complaint process	Yes, but not through AdEye. We are Google only

What it surfaces

Every ad card carries the hook, angle and a working signal

You type a brand or a domain. AdEye pulls that advertiser's live public Google ads into one feed and AI-tags each creative on the paid plans, so you read the strategy and spot the long-running winners before you save a single one.

Check whether a rival names your brand in their ad copy
Pull a suspected advertiser's live ads by brand name or domain
See how long an offending creative has been running
Save ads to a board with dates as a lasting record
Review affiliate and reseller ad copy for policy breaches
Compare an advertiser's Search, Shopping and YouTube messaging
Assemble the ad list a trademark complaint asks for
Public ad-library data only, nothing scraped or inferred

GOOGLE Top performer

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Why AdEye

One feed, the AI read, the working signal in view

Not a stale doc full of screenshots. One query for a brand, the run length on every creative, and a swipe file worth reopening. Public ad-library data only.

Every platform at once

The Google Ads Transparency Center searched by brand or domain, so competitor ad research is one query instead of clicking through Google's own viewer.

The AI reads the why

Every creative is tagged with its hook, angle and format, and a working signal flags the long-runners and scalers, so you see why an ad works, not just what it ran.

A swipe file that stays current

Save winners to boards, each keeping its run length and a link back to the original creative on Google, so the file is still useful months later.

Good questions

Questions about brand bidding

In the United States, bidding on a competitor's trademark as a keyword is generally permitted, and Google does not restrict it. What is restricted is using someone else's trademark in the ad copy. US courts have looked at keyword advertising repeatedly and have largely turned on whether the ad itself confuses shoppers, which again points back to the wording of the creative.

Yes. Google's trademark policy explicitly does not restrict the use of trademarks as keywords, so a competitor may target searches for your company name. You cannot file a complaint about the keyword alone. Your leverage starts when your brand name appears in their headline, description or display URL.

Search your own brand name on Google and look at which ads appear above the results. That is the direct check, it is free, and it is the only reliable one. Auction Insights in your own Google Ads account then tells you which advertisers you overlap with on your branded campaigns.

You need to be the trademark owner, you need the specific advertisers you are reporting, and you need the trademark to appear in the ad itself. Google will not act on a mark that shows up only on the landing page. Capturing the live creative and its wording before the advertiser rotates it is the practical part.

Google routes trademark complaints through its Report Content on Google process rather than a standalone form. You identify yourself as the rights holder, name the countries where you hold the mark, and list the advertisers whose ads use it. Complaints only cover territories where you actually own the trademark.

Google allows the trademark in ad text when the landing page is primarily dedicated to selling the trademarked goods or clearly facilitating their sale, when the page gives informative detail about those products or services, or when the word is used descriptively in its ordinary meaning. Resellers and review sites usually fall inside these exceptions.

Not through Google, if they keep your mark out of the ad text. The realistic options are a direct request to the advertiser, a legal route if there is genuine confusion, or simply defending your own branded terms so your ad holds the top slot. Many brands find the last one cheaper than the fight.

No, and no honest tool can. Google never publishes an advertiser's keyword list, so every keyword and spend figure sold in this category is inferred from scraped search results. AdEye reports only what Google itself publishes: the live creatives an advertiser is running and how long each has been live.

No. There is no background monitoring and no notification when an advertiser launches something new. Checking on a rival means running the search again. If continuous alerting is the requirement, a dedicated brand-protection platform is a better fit than AdEye.

Affiliates are paid on conversions, and a searcher typing your brand name is the cheapest conversion available, so bidding on it is tempting even when the program forbids it. Affiliate ads also tend to lean on the brand name in the copy, which is precisely the behaviour Google's policy restricts and the easiest kind to document.

Only while it runs. Ordinary commercial ads are not archived once the advertiser stops them, and Google publishes no retention window for the Ads Transparency Center. Political and social issue ads are the exception and are kept for seven years, and any ad delivered in the EU is archived for a year after its last impression.

No. AdEye reads Google's Ads Transparency Center only, which covers Search, Shopping, Display and YouTube. Microsoft Advertising, Meta and TikTok each run their own trademark complaint process and their own ad library, and you would need to work through those separately.

No. Google indexes the Ads Transparency Center by advertiser, not by topic or keyword, so searching a term like running shoes returns nothing. You search a brand name or a domain and get that advertiser's creatives. AdEye follows the same structure because that is how the underlying data works.

If you check one advertiser once, the free Ads Transparency Center is enough and you should use it. Paying makes sense when you review many advertisers, want the creatives sorted by run length, or need a saved dated record rather than a screenshot folder. Plans start at $39 a month.

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