On a dating affiliate program, it says this: Does this mean you cannot bid on just their trademarked name or any other brand of dating sites name that is trademarked? e.g. if you were promoting Yahoo Personals, does this mean you cannot use dating direct as a keyword? Thanks, Jon
You just can't use trademarks. For example, you can't use "Learn how to Google", "MySpace Surveys", "Xanga Tips", "Facebook Tweaks", etc. The exception is if you OWN the trademark, of course. So if you OWN Yahoo Personals, go ahead and use those trademarks - otherwise it's not allowed. I'm not sure if that fully answers your question, but that's how it works.
They don't want legal issues with their competitor as biding on competitors terms, causes "PPC confusion" with some customers. For example if you search for "Motorola" and a "Nokia.com" ad comes out - some customers may think that there are a relation between 2 companies. "PPC Confusion" is a serious issue and you may get warned by CJ or terminated by the advertiser if you violates it.
They won't ban you (from AdWords), they'll just warn you and pause the ad until you fix it. Google won't ban someone paying them money.
I think that he is not talking AdWords, but about CJ. also he is talking about bidding on trademark keywords, not about using trademark words on his ad - so no one will pause/disapprove his ad due to bidding on trademark keywords.
I've been on the CJ advertiser side, and when most advertisers say you can't bid on trademarked terms they mean you can't bid on their own trademarks. Contact the advertiser to be sure.