Utah and targeted keyword advertising
03/12/2009With a number of international occurrences of notable cases over the past few months on the Internet news front, it seems we tend to not even consider individual states' Internet law and the possible implications of such state laws. The Utah state legislature has tried in the past to regulate keyword advertising. Past attempts never found success. In 2004 Utah attempted to ban keyword advertising in adware, but that law was declared unconstitutional. Three years later, the state attempted again to regulate keyword advertising, with the passage of a new law, only to have it repealed the following year.
There are a few issues that complicate the matter. A lot of advertising - and most Internet advertising - are based on keywords. Keywords act as a method by which a marketer may reach a potential target (marketing speak for consumer or potential buyer ). A person surfing the Internet may type a word or string of words into a Google search box, and along with his results, the person will see ads containing the very words he used to search. These ads are AdWords ads, created by people aiming to get more traffic to their websites. AdWords is a premium Google service. People writing AdWords ads, especially the marketers and excitable small and mid-size business owners, tend to test different combinations of keywords to determine which ads get the most traffic. Without the use of many of these keywords, it would not be possible for Google and similar websites and services to match people using the search engine with ads that they might be interested in.
The bill, H.B. 450, was presented to legislature on February 27th with help from Jay Maguire, of 1-800-CONTACTS. The specifics of the bill involve using trademark triggers . For example, say you wanted to order some contact lenses from the Internet. You have heard about a company called 1-800-CONTACTS that sells contact lenses over the phone and Internet, so you type 1-800-CONTACTS into the search box of Google. While the first few results have URLs with 1800contacts.com, say the last result on the page was a different company that specializes in sales and distribution of contact lenses. According to the supporters of H.B. 450, such trademark triggers that lead the consumer to a different company are misleading and should not be legal (in Utah, at least). Not surprisingly, a number of Internet giants are strongly opposed to the bill. The companies, which include America Online, eBay, Google, Yahoo!, and Microsoft, called the bill a confusing, special, discriminatory obstacle to Internet advertising and consumer choice that exists nowhere else in the country. (Remember that it is also nowhere else in the country that a person wishing to consume alcoholic beverages must complete an application and pay a fee.) The coalition of companies also expressed its distaste for the bill in its lobbying literature, saying it would send a clear message that Utah is not friendly to innovative advertising-supported Internet businesses.
This bill may be voted on this week. If it passes, the immediate results may be disastrous or at least panic-riddled, more likely for businesses than for Utahns. It is unlikely that any serious Internet restrictions will be imposed on Utahns as a result of this law, but Google and similar content providers may have to finagle their output much more strongly based on geographic data than they do now. Now, the search results you get from a Google search are slightly influenced by the geographic location of you and your computer, as Google has several data centers throughout the country. If this bill passes, it will alter the way the Internet functions, in that state laws will affect not only the users and government, but also the organizations and businesses that rely on keyword advertising for traffic and Web permanence.
