SHOULD COMPANIES BID ON THEIR OWN BRAND
IN SPONSORED SEARCH?
Tobias Blask, Burkhardt Funk and Reinhard Schulte
Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Scharnhorststr. 1, 21335, Lüneburg, Germany
Keywords: Sponsored search, Search engine marketing, Paid search, Brand marketing, e-Commerce, Keyword
selection, Branded keywords.
Abstract: Sponsored Search allows companies to place text advertisements for selected keywords on Search Engine
Results Pages (SERPs). The objective of the present research is to determine whether and under what
circumstances it makes sense, in economic terms, for brand owners to pay for sponsored search ads for their
brand keywords. This issue is the subject of a heated debate in business practice, especially when the
company is already placed prominently in the organic search results. In this paper we describe and apply a
non-reactive method that is based on an A/B-test. It was employed in a case study of a European Internet
pharmacy. The results of this study indicate that the use of sponsored search advertising for the own brand
name enables advertisers to generate more visitors (>10%), resulting in higher sales volumes at relatively
low advertising costs even when the company is already listed in first position in the organic part of the
respective SERP.
1 INTRODUCTION
In the information society, Internet search engines
play a key role. They serve the information needs of
their users and are an important source for
advertising companies in terms of customer
acquisition and activation (Jansen and Mullen,
2008). Search engine companies like Google
generate most of their revenue through sponsored
search (Hallerman, 2008). At the interface of
computer science, economics, business
administration, and behavioral sciences, search
engine marketing has been established as an
interdisciplinary research topic and has seen a
growing and diverse number of publications during
the last years (Edelman et al., 2007; Skiera, 2008; H.
Varian, 2007; H. R. Varian, 2009). Selected decision
problems are examined from the perspective of three
stakeholder groups (i) users, (ii) search engines and
(iii) advertising companies (Yao and Mela, 2009).
Beside the optimal bidding behavior in sponsored
search auctions (Kitts and Leblanc, 2004), one of the
key decision problems for advertisers is the selection
of keywords appropriate for their campaigns
(Abhishek and Hosanagar, 2007; Fuxman et al.,
2008).
So far little research has been conducted on the
use of brand names in sponsored search (Rosso and
Jansen, 2010a). What is the subject of a heated
debate in business practice is whether companies
should bid on their own brand name or whether this
only substitutes clicks from organic listings on the
SERP. To answer this question, we apply a non-
reactive experimental method and use it in a case
study of an online pharmacy that is ranked first with
its brand name in the organic search results in
Google (Unrau, 2010).
The contribution of this paper is the development
and application of a method for measuring the
impact of bidding on brand names in a partially
controlled experiment. From a theoretical point of
view, we make a contribution to understanding
keyword selection in blended search. We begin with
a review of the literature on the competitive
importance of brands in search engine marketing.
On this basis we derive four hypotheses which we
examine using the methods described in chapter 4.
In chapter 5 we discuss outcomes and business
implications of this paper and finally give an outlook
in chapter 6.
14
Blask T., Funk B. and Schulte R..
SHOULD COMPANIES BID ON THEIR OWN BRAND IN SPONSORED SEARCH?.
DOI: 10.5220/0003515300140021
In Proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business (ICE-B-2011), pages 14-21
ISBN: 978-989-8425-70-6
Copyright
c
2011 SCITEPRESS (Science and Technology Publications, Lda.)
2 LITERATURE REVIEW
There are two streams of research which are
important for our work. The first studies bidding
behavior of competitors in sponsored search. The
second stream – blended search – analyses user
preferences for organic and sponsored results as well
as the interactions between them.
2.1 Brand Bidding and Piggybacking
Although brand terms bidding behavior is of great
relevance in business practice, there have only been
very few scientific publications on the topic. As a
first step, a distinction has to be drawn between the
bids on the own brand and those on other companies
brands. Previous research on sponsored search brand
keyword advertising by Jansen and Rosso (Rosso
and Jansen, 2010a), which was based on the global
top 100 brands included in the well-known WPP
BrandZ survey, reveals that 2/3 of the brand names
examined were used by other firms while only 1/3 of
the brand owners analyzed advertise in the context
of their own brand names on SERPs. Bidding on
other companies’ brand names is referred to as
piggybacking, for which three different types of
motivation have been isolated: (i) competitive:
piggybacking by an obvious, direct competitor; (ii)
promotional: e.g. by a reseller; and (iii) orthogonal:
e.g. by companies that offer complementary services
and products for the brand owners’ products. While
retail, fast food and consumer goods brands are
greatly affected by piggybacking, this practice is
rarely observed in the field of luxury brands and
technology (Rosso and Jansen, 2010a; 2010b).
The Assimilation-Contrast Theory (ACT) (Sherif
and Hovland, 1961) and the Mere Exposure Effect
(Zajonc, 1968) are models that offer an explanation
of the circumstances under which bids on one’s own
or third party brand names could be economically
valuable. In sponsored search advertising the use of
other companies’ brand names seems to be
advantageous when the perceived difference
between the own and other brands is low from a
user’s point of view (ACT), while the value of
bidding on own brand terms depends on the degree
of the Exposure Effect, i.e. the display frequency
that a brand needs in order to influence the
purchasing decisions of users positively. Until now
the empirical validations of these models for brand-
bidding have been based on user surveys (Shin,
2009) and can therefore be subject to the problem of
method bias. However, for the first time we are able
to present results that are based on data that were
collected in a non-reactive setup.
2.2 Blended Search
From the search engines’ perspective, the question is
about the extent to which the free presentation of
results in the organic part of the SERP counteracts
their own financial interests in sponsored search as
they generate essential parts of their profits in this
area (Xu et al., 2009). While a high perceived
quality in the organic search results helps search
engines to distinguish themselves from their
competitors and to gain new customers, it is exactly
this high quality in the organic results that may lead
to cannibalization effects between organic and
sponsored results (White, 2008).
From the users’ point of view, the question has to
be asked which preferences and intentions they have
when making their choice whether to use organic or
sponsored results. Depending on their personal
experience of this particular advertising channel and
their motivation to search, Gauzette (Gauzente,
2009) shows that consumers do not only tolerate
sponsored search as just one more channel for
advertising on the Internet but do sometimes even
consider these sponsored results more relevant than
the organic ones. This is particularly true for
transactional-intended queries, i.e. the so-called
commercial-navigational search, in which the search
engine is used instead of manually typing the URL
into the browser’s address bar. The same strong
preference for sponsored results can also be found in
the context of, for advertisers even more attractive,
commercial-informational queries where users,
although they have a strong intention to buy, are
nevertheless still looking for the best matching result
for their specific commercial interest (Ashkan et al.,
2009).
Along with the multiplicity of intentions that
individual users have when typing queries into
search engines, there are significant variances of key
performance indicators (KPI) that search engines
and advertisers pay attention to. Ghose and Yang
(Ghose and Yang, 2008) compare organic and
sponsored search results in respect to conversion
rate, order value and profitability. In fact, the authors
note that both conversion rate and order values are
significantly higher through traffic that has been
generated by sponsored search results than those
generated by visitors that have clicked on organic
results. It seems that the combination of relevance
and the clearly separated presentation of organic and
sponsored results as well as their explicit labeling
are factors that lead to a greater credibility of the
SHOULD COMPANIES BID ON THEIR OWN BRAND IN SPONSORED SEARCH?
15
search engine and thus increases the willingness to
click on the sponsored results, which are often not
inferior to organic results (Brown et al., 2007).
Studies on the interaction between these two
types of results indicate that their simultaneous
presence in both the organic and sponsored results
leads to a higher overall click probability (Jansen,
2007). More specifically, a high similarity between
the content in the respective snippets leads to a
higher click probability in the context of
informational queries (Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil et
al., 2010) while users who are searching with
transactional intentions seem to be more likely to
click on one of the results when the similarity is low
(Danescu-Niculescu-Mizil et al., 2010). Ghose and
Yang (Yang and Ghose, 2010) confirm this
observation and point out that this effect is much
more pronounced in the context of brand-keywords
with only little competition (e.g. retail brands /
names of online retailers) than it is in a highly
competitive environment.
In conclusion, and in contrast to a widely held
opinion in business practice it has to be noted that
previous research indicates that the placement of
advertisements on SERPs is useful for advertisers
even where the company is already represented in
the organic results for the respective keyword. For
the special - and for e-commerce queries most
interesting - case of commercially intended queries,
these studies indicate that the simultaneous
occurrence in both result lists increases the overall
probability to be clicked. The verification of these
findings to brand terms has however not been
accomplished so far and is the key contribution of
this paper.
3 HYPOTHESES
The following hypotheses are formulated with
reference to the online search and buying process.
We assume that, when a user searches for the brand
name of a company, both organic as well as
sponsored results are displayed. These results
contain links to the brand owner’s website as well as
links to other companies’ websites. The user has
three options to choose from (as shown in figure1):
he may click on one of the two links that lead to the
website of the company or click on a link that takes
him to a different website, which makes him leave
the area of observation of the study.
Figure 1: Hypotheses of this study in the search and
buying process from a user’s perspective.
Due to partial substitution effects, the following
hypothesis is almost self-evident as the studied
brand occupies the first result in the organic part of
the SERP for queries that contain the brand name:
H1: The number of visitors from organic search
results decreases when brand owners engage in
sponsored search for their own brand keywords.
In his paper (Jansen, 2007) Jansen assumes that the
simultaneous appearance in the organic and the
sponsored results has a positive impact on the
overall click rate of the companies’ advertisements.
This leads to:
H2: The overall number of visitors through
brand name queries from a search engine
increases when companies engage in sponsored
search for respective keywords.
It is important to point out again that this statement
is by no means self-evident, since it would be
possible that the sponsored clicks generated through
a brand term advertisement would merely substitute
organic clicks that would come for free when no
sponsored search is employed. In business practice it
is exactly this point that is the subject of an intense
and controversial debate between advertisers,
agencies, and search engines.
In their study (Ghose and Yang, 2008), Ghose
and Yang point out that the conversion rate of
commercial-navigationally intended queries is
higher for sponsored than for organic results.
Consequently, the following hypotheses can be
derived:
H3: The conversion rate of keyword traffic from
own brand keywords decreases when companies
decide not to place sponsored search ads for
these keywords.
Based on hypotheses H2 and H3 and other things
being equal the following hypothesis on the number
of sales and revenue derived from brand oriented
search can be made:
H4: The overall number of sales and the
respective revenue increase when companies bid
on their own brand names in sponsored search.
ICE-B 2011 - International Conference on e-Business
16
Table 1: Brand keyword clicks and revenues (with standard deviations) in the reference period (data are disguised to ensure
confidentiality).
Weekday Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
Ad status Off On Off On Off On Off
of all
visitors
562.3
± 93.7
543.6
± 99.9
497.2
± 101.7
452.2
± 119.8
376
± 89.2
283
± 69.7
431.6
± 103.2
Revenue
in €
8285
± 2117
7119
± 1924
6855
± 2022
6162
± 1903
4771
± 1630
3843
± 1608
7627
± 2537
4 CASE STUDY
The study covers a 14 day test period in which
sponsored search for brand keywords is switched on
and off on alternate days. Below, the respective
states in the test period are called “ON” (sponsored
search for brand keywords is employed) and “OFF"
days. A full two weeks test period was chosen to
allow us to monitor each weekday in both of the two
possible states to ensure an acceptable consideration
of the well-known weekday variations in e-
commerce. The test period does not contain any
holidays or other predictable events which could be
relevant for the search engine traffic and conversions
in this time span.
The company we study uses Google Analytics to
collect data on the number and origin of users
(organic as well as the sponsored results). In order to
leverage existing data as a reference we decided to
also use Google Analytics for our study. The
reference period (Table 1) stretches from April 2009
to August 2010 with the omission of the test period
which was chosen to be from April 12, 2010 till
April 25, 2010, starting with an "OFF" day
(Monday). The alternation of “OFF" and "ON" in
the test period was executed manually each morning
at eight o'clock.
Google Analytics assigns recognized re-visitors
to the origin of their first visit. For example, a user
who first reached the company's website on an “ON"
day via a sponsored search result would also be
associated with this type of result for his future visits
and will thus be assigned to the sponsored search
visitors regardless of whether he arrives via an
organic search result or by typing the address into
browser manually. This is the main reason why there
are sponsored search visitors on "OFF" days. To
derive statements on the effect of self-bidding, the
data from the test period is compared with a
reference period that has no overlap with the test
period and contains continuous self-bidding
activities for the brand keyword. As will be argued
in the next section, the main question about the data
is whether the results are statistically significant.
Using a Monte-Carlo-Simulation, we examine the
validity of the observations especially with respect
to hypotheses H2.
Even though the applied method does obviously
influence the behavior of involved users and could
therefore be categorized as ‘reactive’ in terms of
social sciences, it shares common criteria with non-
reactive methods since individual users have no
knowledge of the investigation of his behavior.
5 RESULTS
5.1 Testing the Hypotheses
Hypothesis H1 predicts that the placement of
sponsored search ads for the own brand name leads
to a substitution of clicks that would have otherwise
been generated without costs through clicks on
organic results. This is clearly confirmed in the data.
The magnitude and significance of this effect is
clearly illustrated in figure 2. Comparing the
composition of the sum of all clicks generated on
"ON" days with the clicks on those days without
self-bidding activities, we find more than double the
number of organic clicks on "OFF" days (2392
clicks) than on "ON" days (1060 clicks).
It is, again, noticeable, and illustrated in figure 2,
that we find sponsored clicks in the data that were
generated on "OFF" days where we actually would
not expect any. This can be explained by two
effects: first, the status change was made manually
from “ON” to “OFF” and vice versa every day at
eight o'clock in the morning in the test-period so that
sponsored search advertisements were served until
eight o'clock in the morning even on “OFF” days,
accounting for the minor part of these clicks.
Second, as argued before the cookie based tracking
contributes to the occurrence of sponsored clicks on
“OFF” days. It is obvious that the existence of
sponsored search clicks on “OFF” days could never
generate or strengthen but would on the contrary.
SHOULD COMPANIES BID ON THEIR OWN BRAND IN SPONSORED SEARCH?
17
Table 2: Brand keyword visits, conversion rates and revenues in the test period (data are disguised to ensure
confidentiality).
Date
04/1
2
04/1
3
04/1
4
04/1
5
04/1
6
04/1
7
04/1
8
04/1
9
04/2
0
04/2
1
04/2
2
04/2
3
04/2
4
04/2
5
Weekday
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat Sun
Ad status Off On Off On Off On Off On Off On Off On Off On
Sponsored
visitors
76 376 56 340 64 184 44 436 92 340 108 292 68 252
Organic
visitors
488 204 340 124 292 88 396 176 436 248 304 124 136 96
of all
visitors
564 580 396 464 356 272 440 612 528 588 412 416 204 348
Revenue
in €
8564 5736 4704 6420 3328 3096 3720 8928 7796 6280 5832 4620 1112 7064
Conversion-
rate
23% 19% 22% 23% 19% 16% 12% 24% 23% 17% 17% 19% 10% 36%
weaken the findings that are presented in this paper,
since they tend to blur a potential effect. In
summary, it is clear that these findings are consistent
with the expectation of a substitution of organic by
sponsored search results (H1).
Figure 2: Organic (dashed line) vs. sponsored (solid line)
clicks during the test period.
The second hypothesis H2 deals with the question of
whether the sum of all sponsored and organic clicks
that are generated through the use of the brand name
as keyword in search engines can be increased
through the use of sponsored search advertising. For
this, we compare data from the test period with the
data of the reference period (figure 3).
Beginning with an "OFF" day, figure 3 shows
the values that were generated on a daily basis in the
test period as well as the weekday values of the
reference period, both representing the sum of
sponsored and organic traffic via the brand keyword
from the Google SERPs. The observations of the test
period mainly fall into the 50% percentiles of the
reference period and thus follow the overall
weekday cycle.
Figure 3: Daily sum of all clicks, generated through the
search engine via the brand term in the test period (solid
line) compared to the weekend values in the reference
period. The boxes contain 50% of the values from the
reference period.
However, one can clearly recognize an
overlaying pattern in the test period that is most
likely driven by the alternation of the status of
"OFF" and "ON". Overall, the expected pattern of
more clicks on "ON" days than on the surrounding
"OFF" days could be observed in 11 of 13 possible
daily changes.
What is the likelihood that this pattern occurs by
chance? To answer this question we conduct a
Monte-Carlo-Simulation, in which 1,000,000
random 14-day samples were generated, each
representing a random test period. To generate each
14-day time series, we use the Poisson distribution
ICE-B 2011 - International Conference on e-Business
18
and take weekday means from the reference period
as the mean of the distribution. What is remarkable
is that a fraction of only 0.2% of the randomly
generated test periods fit the observed (alternating)
pattern with at least 11 or more changes. Employing
this measure, it can be concluded with a probability
of 99.8% that the placement of sponsored search
advertisements for the own brand name actually
leads to an increase in the total number of visitors
for this keyword.
From the third hypotheses (H3), we would
expect the conversion rate to be lower on days
without sponsored search advertising than on the
other days in the test. Given the average conversion
rate of 22.7% ± 0.3% in the reference period (figure
4) we find a lower conversion rate for the test period
of 20.1% ± 1.6%, consistent with the study of Ghose
and Yang (Ghose and Yang, 2008), who observed a
lower conversion rate for traffic from organic
listings. It should be mentioned, that due to the low
number of transactions per day (and the
corresponding statistical error) we cannot observe a
consistent difference of the conversion rate between
“ON” and “OFF” days as for the overall clicks
(figure 3).
Figure 4: Conversion rates observed in the test period
(solid red line) with standard errors vs. average conversion
rates with standad errors on a given weekday (solid line)
in the reference period.
Following the proven hypothesis H2 (more visitors
through sponsored search advertising for the brand
name) and the lower conversion rate observed in the
context of hypothesis H3, we expect less sales and
reduced revenues in the test period. In fact, the
revenue via the brand keyword in the test period (€
77,200) is lower than 70% of all comparable 14-day
intervals in the reference period (figure 5).
Considering the revenue trend over the reference
period, the relatively low revenue in the test period
becomes significant since the revenue in the
reference period shows a rising trend as shown in
figure 6 (two-week revenue mean after New Year’s
Eve without the test period: € 99,130 with a standard
deviation of ± € 6,107.89). A similar reduction of
sales can only be observed in the two-week period
around Christmas and New Year's Eve 2009
corresponding to observation point 19 in figure 6.
Thus, we interpret the lower revenue as a
consequence of not employing sponsored search for
brand keywords.
Figure 5: Empirical cumulative distribution of the
revenues in the observation period (14-day intervals,
containing the reference – as well as the test period), the
test period is indicated by the vertical line.
5.2 Economic Impact
We now estimate the economic value of sponsored
search for own brand names. During the test period
each weekday was observed in both states, "ON"
and "OFF". The number of additional visitors can be
estimated by the sum of all clicks on "ON" days
minus the sum of all clicks on "OFF" day in the test
period equal the total number of additional visitors
for one week. In the current study, this results in 380
additional visitors per week. This is a significant
growth of more than 10% achievable through
sponsored search for own brand keywords.
Given the average conversion rate of 22.7%
(reference period) and an average value per
transaction of € 60.88 this leads to an increase in
sales of about € 275,000 per year. The average cost
per click for the brand keyword in the test period
was € 0.03, leading to additional costs of about
600 per year. To sum up: Even if there were only
very moderate margins for online pharmacies we
SHOULD COMPANIES BID ON THEIR OWN BRAND IN SPONSORED SEARCH?
19
would recommend the use of sponsored search
advertising for brand keywords.
Figure 6: Time series of revenues (14-day intervals)
during the reference period (dashed line), including the
test period (observation point 27, indicated by the vertical
line) and a trend line (solid line).
In general, it seems to be likely that sponsored
search for own brands lead to more visitors and
accordingly to more sales and higher revenues for
the brand owner. The low prices per click for brand
keywords and a higher conversion rate make brand
name advertising economically profitable in the
context of sponsored search.
6 CONCLUSIONS AND
OUTLOOK
It is plausible to argue that users who search for a
specific retail brand name in a search engine have
already decided where their search is going to end
(the website of the retailer). Yet, evidence from this
study suggests that this is not the case for all users.
Some users apparently find other advertisements or
organic results on the SERP more interesting so that
they can get lost for the brand owner if he is not
present in the sponsored search results.
We expect that the extent to which the described
effect occurs in practice for other companies
depends on a number of factors. E.g., the intensity of
competition – defined by the number of competitors
who are also bidding on the brand name – is likely to
have an influence on the observed effect. This is of
special interest, because since September 2010 (in
the European Union) companies can not ban other
advertisers to bid for their brand keywords
(Bechtold, 2011) which will lead to a more intense
competition. In the light of this change the present
research gains in importance for a whole range of
advertisers. Other factors may be the price level of
sponsored search clicks, the reputation and brand
value of the advertiser and product characteristics.
Considerably more research is needed to determine
the extent to which these factors have an impact on
the described effect. Besides that, the authors
currently work on a project that will help to
understand user behavior in this context.
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