Companies involved in pay per click advertising may be familiar with the term brand bidding for certain search terms. Brand bidding means that marketers who are purchasing ads for search terms on Google bid on the brand terms of a third party. Essentially it means that your company’s website will appear when the user searches for a bigger brand name.
The concept behind brand bidding is that smaller, less known companies can get more traffic by being associated with more popular brands in the same industry. If a small, local shoe company bids on brand terms like “Nike”, for example, then their website will appear in search results and users might click on it during their search. The goal in brand bidding is diverting user attention to choose or at least become more familiar with a similar brand to the one they are searching.
Certain brands may not authorize other companies to bid on their brand name and only allow a group of affiliates to bid so that traffic is directed to approved pages. This can help block out certain bidders which may divert traffic away from them with their brand bidding practices. Technically brand bidding is allowed by Google and some companies have to be very vigilant to prevent it from affecting their traffic.
For the companies that allow brand bidding or simply ignore it, smaller brands can take advantage of using their notoriety to get better results from pay per click advertising. Bidding on specific brand names can result in a higher rank and more traffic overall. Most importantly, there is little risk involved since you only pay when users click through to your website.
Brand bidding may be threatening to some bigger brands but it can prove beneficial for unknown brands that want to increase their visibility.
Matt Ramage is founder of Emarketed a web marketing agency located in Los Angeles. He loves coffee, good design, and helping businesses improve their look and getting found on the Internet.
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