Website competition advertising is wrong

Last year, this newspaper once reported that the online Mall of vicious competition events. In search engine ads to discredit the competitor malicious competitors to rob the phenomenon. In the past year, such a situation still appeared, so finally some enterprises can not go on, and then sued the law. Reporter recently, obtained a indictment of the crime, by the investment of Sequoia Capital, known as the domestic biggest selling shoes website "Good happy to buy", recently because of alleged infringement of the reputation of rivals, and was sued by competitors to Beijing Haidian Intermediate People's Court. This is the domestic area, the first one is also the largest, due to network advertising infringement caused by legal disputes.

1 search engine encourages advertising malicious robbery

In real life, businesses want to be in newspapers, magazines, television and other media to put an advertisement, need to submit legal business proof of law, and advertising content also need to be approved to comply with the provisions of advertising laws, such as "first", "most" and other one-sided exaggeration of the word, but also can not arbitrarily in inappropriate ways to compare and denigrate competitors; But in the online world, these rules that everyone should obey, are ignored by some businesses.

Reporter to a well-known online mall name to do the keyword, search engines such as Google, the results of the first show is "Go to XX Online Mall", XX is the online mall's biggest competitor. This is a very "gentle" approach.

This lawsuit is even more outrageous: users in Google input keywords-"Name Shoe Library" (Well-known footwear consumer website), in the search results to the right, sponsored links, impressively appear "buy sneakers, the name of the shoe store is not as good as happy to buy" title and link (see screenshot). After receiving the lawsuit, the website has removed the suspected illegal advertising words, but still buys the keyword of the competitor brand, displays the link of the website before the normal search result. Similar to the situation, in all areas of the business online shopping mall has occurred.

Journalists from the legal profession to understand that China's "Advertising Review standards (trial)," 32nd stipulates that "the advertising of comparative content, may not involve specific products or services, or use other direct comparison." "In our country, it is not allowed to indirectly compare the existence of advertising, nor is it allowed to compare advertisements directly." As a result, the case of advertising that compares the products or services offered by the product or service with competitors ' products or services, such as a good buy, is very rare, and directly violates the relevant provisions of articles 37th, 40th and the Anti-Unfair Competition Act 24th of the Law on advertising.

2 venture capital forcing business to profit

The reporter further from the Internet entrepreneur and VC (venture capital) in many ways learned that the reason for the emergence of "good music to buy" network advertising suspected infringement of the reputation of the competition, the main source of the current Internet industry business model problems, which to a large extent induced the occurrence of such things.

A VC investor said: "When venture capital invests in a business online mall, the money is not to be taken for good, there will be strict operational objectives, the amount of sales to be achieved, how much market share to occupy and so on, and, more extreme, the two sides have a gambling agreement, if they do not meet the expected target, The shares that entrepreneurs occupy will be reduced or even confiscated. "and a webmaster said that for the second round, the third round of financing success, even if there is no more than the gambling agreement, but also have to take special measures to combat competitors."

It has been reported that after the last year to obtain Sequoia Capital investment, good music to buy this February started a second round of financing, has been with the DFG, the speed of light capital and other VCs have contacted, and good buy senior also disclosed that has been with DFG, the speed of light capital reached a preliminary financing intention.

A VC believes that the prerequisite for starting a second round of financing is "growth rate." Good Tesco co-founder Luming has previously disclosed that the monthly need to 20%~30% speed growth, and the company's 2010 sales are expected to reach about 300 million yuan. But in the opinion of many experts in the industry, the goal is a little too high to be achieved, and it is simply not taking into account the ideal situation of competitors.

Not only that, VC people also revealed that each strategic investment will not be one-time to the account. "VC will be based on the monthly operating data per quarter, the funds into place in a batch, once the operation problems, it is possible to postpone or even suspend the funds." ”

VC money is hot for anyone who wants to start a business in the field. Li Shubin, founder of Tesco, had previously spoken out of "China's Zappos", but Hsieh, the founder of Zappos, published an article on the US mainstream Commercial Press, Inc., about the whole process of Amazon's acquisition of Zappos, and revealed that selling the company was not its own meaning, It was just forced by the investment side Sequoia Capital pressure.

3 The second spring catalytic impetuous false

For 2000 years or so, the internet bubble has turned into a low ebb, and in the last year or two, the buzz has been booming again. Jingdong Mall, Red children, the success of the VANCL, so that domestic web site to become the home of the investment of the favorite, also stimulated the domestic internet of the business-to-consumer upsurge. Although the payment environment, logistics services and user habits have improved greatly, there are still many obstacles to be crossed in the domestic industry, and these obstacles are precisely in the details.

A website operator, who declined to be named, told reporters: "The biggest cost of the Web site is advertising, at present we are all to advertise the volume of traffic, Jingdong Mall, Vancl, including last year once the scenery and quickly fell the thousand search nets, have smashed a large number of advertising costs to bomb traffic." When people see E-commerce cut off the cost of circulation, what people do not see is that the company's expensive brand investment, advertising input, hardware and software input and call center, supply chain reconstruction input. These inputs, in the absence of deep industry, are likely to exceed the cost of the entity sales channels. ”

There are internet industry insiders said that the good music buy into the infringement case, may be in the search engine advertising history is a precedent. It is reported that with the development of E-commerce, the search engine has become an important source of traffic and revenue for E-commerce sites, many sites have to search engine optimization and purchase price ranking as a magic weapon, which also spawned a number of specialized web search keyword optimization company, the hundred Le buy this in the search engine to do the article, It can be said to be a stone strategy, both in the potential users of all competitors to do their own ads, but also in the way of the competitor's potential users to be swept away.

On the "Good happy to buy" ads are sued, the industry is closely concerned, because the case will change the verdict of many similar businesses online advertising form and strategy.

4 Internet users how to deal with false advertising

For netizens, how can not be fooled? The industry said: "See an ad on the internet, especially the search engine results next to the ads easily confusing." Take Google as an example, all of the small print labeled ' sponsored Links ' are ads, these content needs to be extra careful. ”

Beijing Sheng Law firm director lawyer Yu Guofu to the New Express reporter said: "The merchant against this kind of network malicious advertising tort treatment is relatively simple, as long as the notary and then the evidence prosecution can be; but it is very difficult for individual consumers to prove that they are being misled by malicious internet advertising. ”