Ban branded search through trademark law
Branded search is an IP problem pretending to be a marketing opportunity, writes Mutiny’s Henry Innis.
I saw a post by a fellow colleague in the econometrics space, Dr Grace Kite, targeting brand search. In it she lays out the case (eloquently) against branded search. She suggests brands are largely bidding against their own trademarks.
Grace is right.
Interesting piece and hard to not agree. 2 things to add:
1/ trademarks used to be able to be restricted by Google, 14+ years ago. Brands who were Google clients could specify to Google a group of businesses banned from bidding on trademarks. Was very easy and meant most money was spent on category terms. This ended around 2008 around the GFC, brand terms became fair game.
2/ you may find most businesses (or many) buy brand terms not as protection but as a form of “best practice” that response rates are meant to be better if you have #1 paid return and organic return. This was pushed heavily by search engines in the mid 2010’s and endorsed by agencies and clients. There’s a lot of info around publicly making these claims. Brand terms are also a good way to juice perceived roi as when the results are aggregated it can make the campaign seem more effective (as brand terms have high response and seemingly low cost)
But yes agree, they are effectively a tax where you now rent results from search engines. Made worse by mobile where majority of above the fold/in screen content on results return is advertising.