Nutricia, the company that owns the Cow & Gate and Aptamil baby formula brands recently got rapped by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority for magazine ads which claimed their milks could “support” the immune system. The ASA said that this sort of claim could only be substantiated with robust evidence. Baby formula brands are subjected to all sorts of regulations regarding the promotion of their milks. But how does this extend to pay-per-click search advertising?

This is an area where regulated companies need to tread carefully. For example, imagine a baby formula company bids on the keywords “breastfeeding” in order to send traffic to a page on their site about the benefits of breastfeeding. This sounds perfectly responsible and within rules. But what it they specify that Google should display their search ad to users who search for a phrase that contains the words “breastfeeding” (otherwise known as a phrase match)?

This brings them onto dodgy ground. Someone could search “baby formula advantages over breastfeeding” and up would come their ad. The right thing to do in order to avoid this is to specify exact matching so that the ad is only displayed when the searcher types the exact phrase you bid for.

Is anyone aware of any cases where regulated companies have got into trouble with authorities over displaying their ad next to questionable search phrases? Let us know by leaving a comment!