Brand bidding is a controversial subject.
For some companies, they see it as a great way of directing customers to their site and triumphing over their competitors. Others, however, have seen the negative effects it can have on their ROI and their Adwords account Quality Score.
“Search is a problematic channel for brand owners. Competitive brand bidding is commonplace, and the practice goes largely unchecked across major search verticals. In addition, managing trademark infringements (utilised negatively in competitor ad copy) are difficult to address at scale and can be a drain on resources. For many advertisers, these attacks on brand represent a significant threat to digital brand equity.” Brand Bidding Impact Report, Adthena
Can AI Protect Your Brand?
For many years, brands have struggled to assess the ROI impact of competitive brand bidding and trademark infringements in search.
One barrier has been the data challenge, and the task of monitoring tens of thousands of keywords, several times per hour. It’s an area where the scaling capabilities of AI and machine learning technology are presenting fresh opportunity.
Adthena’s report on the impact of brand bidding and trademark infringement reveals some fascinating statistics about the extent to which it is happening in search, and can be read in full here.
At this moment one third of all branded search queries reveal competitive brand bidding, and 50 per cent of advertisers have been shown to bid on pure brand search terms.
In fact the true value of lost brand conversions, which is only revealed with a Whole Market perspective of search, is often much greater than advertisers expect.
Can AI Tell If Your Brand Is Under Attack?
AI and machine learning technology enable the monitoring of all brand AND brand+generic search queries.
For some brands, this keyword set can number tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of keywords. Crucially, this provides a level of scale that simply wasn’t possible from human-curated keyword lists.
It means that for the first time, advertisers have the ability to pick up all bidding and trademark infringements that take place on their brand terms.
The result of an AI-driven brand protection solution can be dramatic. For example, one advertiser operating in luxury fashion and accessories were able to reduce instances of brand bidding by as much as 50 per cent.