Bid on Brand Name Keywords? Case Study Results
Filed Under Affiliate Marketing, Brand Name Bidding, Google Adwords, Online Advertising, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Marketing, Yahoo Search Marketing, adCenter
I just read a fascinating case study on brand name bidding across the big three search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN. Jonathon Mendez concludes:
Running the PPC ads alongside the natural results for brand keyword queries provides a huge lift in orders and revenue for our client. The paid search ads clearly have a tremendous influence on user behavior. The ads did not drive more traffic but they drove more traffic that purchased.
This study showed that having PPC ads alongside natural results, does not have a significant impact on the amount of traffic the site receives, but it has a dramatic impact on the amount of revenue each visitor generates. He shows in a chart that the RPV (Revenue Per Visitor) increases by as much as 47% when the PPC ads are present. I think this is because the ad copy is preselling the visitors before they enter the site. It is easy to write good ad copy for PPC, but it is not so easy to get the search engine to display snippets that increase conversions.
It is important to note that this study was on 30 different branded keywords. So if your company has been struggling with justifying the spend on the PPC ads when you are already number one in the natural results, you have to read this case study. It shows that having PPC ads for your branded terms is not only a good strategy; it increases conversions across the board.
How is this relevant to affiliate marketing? As I have been discussing on this blog, brand name bidding has been in the midst of hot debate for about 2 years now. Very few companies have run these kinds of tests to determine the efficacy of allowing affiliates to bid on branded terms. Jonathon Mendez’s study clearly shows that someone should be bidding on branded terms, either through affiliate marketers or through an in-house program.
One study I would like to see is one that does a cost-benefit analysis of in-house brand name bidding compared to open affiliate brand name bidding. I would predict the open affiliate brand name bidding would drive more conversions, because with so many affiliates competing with each other, only the best ads would make it to the top. It would have to take into account those affiliates bidding on branded terms, sending the traffic to their own site, preselling that traffic, and then sending that traffic on to the merchant site. This is the kind of traffic that many affiliate managers want, but they can’t get it without outsourcing the brand name bidding on their display URL as well.
It is extremely difficult to manage the policy that permits brand name bidding but prohibits the use of the merchant’s display URL.
Jonathon Medez will be presenting this data in more detail in his presentation Ad Testing Research and Findings at the upcoming Search Engine Strategies in New York on April 12th 2007. Check it out if you are interested.
