my 2 cents on this :

1. If you have trademarked terms / registered product names , then you competitor can't use them in their adcopies . If they do then you can ask Google to pull down their ads on trademark infringement . They are still legally able to bid on your keywords. 

2. You start bidding on your own keywords & since you ads will have far larger traction than your competitor , you have to pay very low cpc bid .

3. As a tactic, you can also bid on your competitior's keywords, but it will only work if they are also that famous, else no point.

Replied 2013-07-09 06:24:18 UTC by Puneet Garg

Ive actually have come across this question before quite often when I consulted for companies in the past. So...targeting your competitors' name so that when a customer searches for your company's name is quite a common tactic. It's a great way to piggy back off someonone's success. 

If someone is really doing this to you, then you should be happy about it, because you're probably the biggest player in the market. On another note, it's actually not illegal to do this, and there isn't anything you can do. They are just targeting using your keyword, and they are not using your company name in the ad copy.

I'd like to suggest that it's not too damaging to your brand, and you should focus on targeting the keyword phrases that your customers search for instead. While many customers may search for your company's name in Google or another search engine, that could be the minority. Furthermore, if they are looking for you, most likely they will click on your link instead of your competitors' ad link.

So the conclusion is, this copy-cat tactic of your competitor's won't hurt you much, and remember that your success is about focusing on delivering the best solution, and not beating your competitors.

Replied 2013-07-08 02:53:03 UTC by Edward Liu