Big news from Microsoft adCenter this past week: as of March 3, advertisers will be able to bid on trademarked terms.  This is a big switch for them, and brings them much closer to Google AdWords’s long-time policy.

Like Google, they will still be fairly stringent on use of trademarked terms in ad copy — for example, it must be “truthful and lawful” and include relevant comparison of product attributes represented by independent, 3rd party research.

This change certainly opens up an opportunity for nimble advertisers — build a competitive campaign ASAP to get out in front of your competition.  In AdWords, where bidding on competitors has been allowed for years, competitor campaigns somewhat cancel each other out — whatever clicks you are taking from your competitors, they’re likely taking just as many clicks from you!  And, of course, maintaining a healthy Quality Score on a competitor campaign can be difficult, to say the least.

But, if you get your adCenter campaign up & running ahead of your competition, you’ll have a few precious days/weeks all to yourself.  And even when they do join the fray, you’ll have a head-start on collecting click data & building a performance history.