Which would you rather pay, $1.24 per click or $0.73 per click? Before you answer, consider that at both of these prices you will be getting the exact same placement on Google for the exact same set of keywords. Consider also that the keywords we’re talking about are your own brand keywords. You might think that the answer is obvious, but many search engine advertisers choose to pay more. Why?

The problem is information. Unfortunately, many advertisers don’t seem to be aware of what is happening on their brand terms. They aren’t tracking the volume of bidders, they aren’t measuring the financial impact on their campaigns, and they aren’t aware of potential remedies. The problem is compounded by inaction. When a company allows this practice to continue they create an environment that encourages more bidders to join in.

There are a few legitimate reasons for having a large amount of competitive bidders using your brand keywords. Imagine for a moment that you are a manufacturer of a line of popular consumer products. You sell your products direct to consumers online and you bid on your brand keywords in order to drive incremental traffic and to highlight promotions. But, you also have established retail partners who account for a large portion of your overall revenue. Those partners would be very upset if they could not bid on your brand for PPC.

Of course, this situation only applies to a limited number of companies. Many other companies have heavy competition for their brand terms without a legitimate business rationale. If that is the case for your company, what can you do about it.

Reversing the Trend

There are a few tools available to help advertisers track the Web sites that are bidding on their trademark and brand terms. By compiling and analyzing data from such a service, a firm can assess the extent of the problem, identify major infringers to target for removal, and track competition levels over time to see if their efforts are paying off.

Once the problem has been identified, there are a range of options for how to deal with the issue. In many cases, affiliates (of your own company or others in the space) make up the bulk of the brand bidders. In this case, it may be possible to remove those bidders simply by notifying the affiliate network or management company. Many affiliate agreements have provisions barring affiliates from bidding on the brand names of their partners.

Depending on the name of your company and the status of your trademarks you may also be able to appeal directly to the search engines. Google provides a trademark review request form online which, when properly used, can result in the removal of offending advertisers from your trademarked phrases. If your company name is very general and could have generic meanings, you may have difficulty getting the engines to enforce it (think American Apparel, which could refer not just to the brand, but also to anything that Americans are currently wearing).

There are also some legal remedies that you can pursue, especially if advertisers are using your trademarked name in their URL. Be advised, however, that heavy-handed legal action may result in negative press (and still may not accomplish its intended purpose).

As an example of what can be accomplished, and what kind of difference enforcement can make, please refer to Figure 1. This graph plots the number of infringing bidders vs. average cost-per-click for one of Brulant’s clients over the course of a few months. The graph shows that there is a clear correlation between the values; when infringer levels spike, cost-per-click follows closely. In addition, the downward trend in the infringer numbers shows that Brulant’s efforts to reduce the overall number of bidders are succeeding. Based on the volume of traffic for the group of keywords being measured, the savings over the course of the year will register in the thousands.

Figure 1

The Pay-Per-Click Search Marketing Team at Brulant has been designing, developing and executing pay-per-click search marketing programs since the late 1990s and is recognized as a Google Adwords Qualified Company and Yahoo! Search Marketing Ambassador. Trademark monitoring and enforcement is just one of the many value-added services that Brulant provides to its search engine marketing clients.