Authors:
Tobias Blask
;
Burkhardt Funk
and
Reinhard Schulte
Affiliation:
Leuphana University of Lüneburg, Germany
Keyword(s):
Sponsored search, Search engine marketing, Paid search, Brand marketing, e-Commerce, Keyword selection, Branded keywords.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Applications
;
Artificial Intelligence
;
B2C/B2B Considerations
;
Banking/Finance
;
Business and Social Applications
;
Business Performance
;
Business Process Management
;
e-Business
;
Enterprise Engineering
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Industrial
;
Knowledge Management and Information Sharing
;
Knowledge-Based Systems
;
Software Agents and Internet Computing
;
Symbolic Systems
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.