Comment by davemel37 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by davemel37 | Hacker News Reader

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This reflects the core argument to do this...but the truth is more subtle. Agencies and in house SEM teams are inherently biased to want to spend on brand terms because a) they can attribute more sales to their channel and b) Justify more spend which equals more revenue for most agencies...

I am not discounting the validity of the argument to bid on brand terms and I bid on brand terms for most of my clients...but I always disclose this inherent bias before making a recommendation...

In truth, every brand should test for themselves how it impacts their bottom line and if protecting their brand is worth the spend...

------ The cynical voice in my head thinks that most digital advertising today is really ad tech companies hijacking revenue that brands earned already...and if not for competitors using that same tech, no one really needs it... (i.e. remarketing, custom audiences, branded search, first party data, etc...)

In reality, I actively spend my clients money on these tactics and congratulate myself on the results I generate for them... but in the back of my mind I am waiting for the ad tech bubble to burst and media companies disappearing and being replaced by branded content, content marketing, etc...

Edit:spelling

It's (a) all the way down. The expression is robbing Peter to pay Paul - we've even tested it - while running ads on branded keywords does increase clicks, it increases the CPA from zero to potentially pricey. The net benefit is so-so, and if the client doesn't understand that they're cannibalising their organic traffic you have a problem - I.e. 99% of the time.

The only reason I've ever witnessed is SEO/M ego rubbing, and the conversations usually go:

"we are spending more than our monthly revenue on brand ppc ads!"

"But you cover the entire first page of Google for your terms, branded and product. Turn the ads off."

"But all our traffic cones through the ads!"

"That's because you're swamping your organic terms."

"Oh gee, I don't know, worm-tongue SEO/M-master, what do I do?"

"Spend more money with my PPC agency! We know more about web development then web developers, we studied drama and literature. And we have a certificate from google saying we're good webmasters. Do your development agency?"

If you are so sure of yourself, model it.

http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2016/04/21/compare-actual-vs...

https://google.github.io/CausalImpact/CausalImpact.html

Because some of the people who studied marketing did not sleep through their econometric classes.

>we studied drama and literature.

The horror.

I've worked with companies before that only gave credit for a fraction of revenue/orders driven by brand terms. They did a study on what % of brand SEM terms were cannibalizing against the organic listing and only gave credit for what they believed to be accretive.

That would be an intelligent way of doing it - most refuse to see the cannibalisation, however, and demand a purely cumulative effect, which results in unhappiness all around.

I can just as easily argue that branded search closes the sale at the bottom of the funnel and that generic search contributes to that sale...so without multi click attribution in the mix, its not fair to give credit to organic for cannibalized sales...etc... my point is really that there is room to argue both ways and without advanced attribution...someone somewhere is not getting the credit they earned.

The cannibalization is a bit of a catch-22. If you don't have paid ads on SERPs where you rank high organically, of course all your traffic will come from the organic results. But if you don't take the top paid spot, your competitor can -- and then they're "cannibalizing" your organic results.

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