The Effect of Bidding on Brand Terms
A study on Bing Ads, travel and retail specifically, has been conducted to analyze the effect when brand ads were or were not present on a person’s search page. After analyzing over 3 million retail desktop impressions and 400,000 travel desktop impressions, Bing Ads has concluded that if an advertiser bided on its own brand terms, they would prevent clicks going to competitors and ultimately increase the amount of clicks towards their own listings.
Bing Ads research found out that if brands did not advertise their own brand on a listing page, 60 percent of the clicks will go towards the organic listing for retail, 60 percent for travel. However, when they do bid on their own brand, the percentage of clicks dramatically increased to 91 percent and 88 percent for retail and travel, respectively. In addition Bing Ads found that 42 percent of clicks went to the ad while 49 percent went to the organic listing for retail advertisers. However, this trend wasn’t the same for travel, in which 45 percent went to the brand ad and only 43 percent went to the organic listing.
However, although there were increases in clicks due to bidding on a brand’s ad, cannibalization must be considered, where an ad’s click might have gone to the organic listing. Bing Ads found that around 11 percent of retail clicks and 18 percent travel clicks would have resulted to organic listings anyways. These results show that advertisers who big on their own brands definitely do see a gain in clicks, and ultimately, business, but yet there is always the factor of how effective bidding ads are as not all of the increase is solely due to bidding on brands. Some clicks were merely detoured from organic listings to the brand ads.
