We regularly bid for our own keyword and it is super competitive as competitors are always trying to buy our company name. It is awkward when you type "My company", and the first page is all competitor ads
I read a lot of companies buy advertising specifically for their own name, because if they don't, a competitor will, and will appear first when someone googles the company name.
Do you mean your competitors buying ads for their product, but using your product's name as keywords?
Or do you literally mean your competitors buying ads that deceive the public into thinking they're clicking on your ad which will lead to your site, but it actually goes to their site?
This is especially true for brand adverts where the customer would have reached the site organically but you have to outbid a rival because they're trying to bid on your brand keywords. It's a "Google tax" for having a popular brand name. It really sucks.
When my business was new in 2003, and Google Ads too, we had a competitor bid on our name as a search term. We were outraged and found that Google had a page on, I think abusive search terms or something? But to action anything you had to write a letter to Mountain View. So we did that, citing deceptive practices or some pseudo-legal rubbish. And they actioned it! For years afterwards we saw no ads on our little UK company's name.
Also, now you have to buy ads for your own company not just to make it more visible than it would deserve by default, but to prevent your competitors being displayed first even if the user types your exact company name in the search field (what they are encouraged to do).
for the same reason that advertisers bid for their own keyword searches even though Google would place their result at the top of the page anyways - because other companies will bid their way to the top otherwise.
Yeah, I had wondered why companies advertise on their own name. The other day I was looking up ad word ideas, and the cheapest option was to run it against a top player in the field. Search volume was as high as a generic search, but only cost 1c instead of $4 for the generic keyword.
Couple that with how most people click the first link on the page (no accident mind you), it’s just downright extortion by Google.
This is a common phenomenon sometimes referred to as the Google tax. Which is why when you search for "company name" you still get ads for that company when the first actual result is their website, they bid on their own name so that competitors don't appear ahead of them.
Yes. You can buy ads for your own keywords. Some companies do, to deny their competition the option to. Much like you can buy the billboard outside your office to prevent your competitors from putting up a huge sign saying "i_am_proteus is a bad person, don't do business with him, do it with us: evilcorp7!"
As someone who does SEM, I played around with some queries, and...
-GTM is using the dynamic keyword insertion for the title of some their ads. This is not uncommon. And for the right queries, it does work.
-GTM is buying keywords for some competitors, for example, search fuzebox. On the other hand, they haven't found join.me just yet.
As an advertiser, unless there is a trademark block, you can bid on competitor keywords. What you can't do is use competitor keywords in the title or copy of your ad, dynamic insertion and/or copy. That second screenshot is most troubling, as the title does not match the query (i.e. that copy was built.)
GTM needs to remove their dynamic insertion ad from their competitor ad group and from any built copy. They should not be using competitor keywords in the title/copy of their ads at all, so for any budding SEMs here that's really what the issue is.
I guessed it was dynamic keywords, and the comment by Andrew Taylor of GoToMeeting confirmed it:
"We do not use competitive names in search ads, but we do follow the common industry practice of bidding on competitive terms. In the instance of this ad, we were using a Google method called dynamic keyword insertion which delivers the searcher's query in the ad title."
I think most people click the ad more than you. A lot of companies advertise on their own keyword so I’ll click the ad then for example if I want to charge the company.
This is only sort of true. Keyword bidding is a black box and the highest offer doesn’t always win. There’s all kinds of Google proprietary sauce that happens to determine the winner of the add placement based on factors that determine “ad quality”.
Not it you want to compete with them in the search space (and subsequently search advertising space). It creates something of a channel conflict for them :-) Eventually to actually succeed at it you need your revenue not to be controlled by your competitor.
Entire model is hostile to those advertising. At least in these cases. You need to advertise your company name in searches so that your competitors advertising on your name don't beat you.
This can only last as long as there is competitors willing to pay for those adds. Which might be getting tighter.
If a company is advertising on their own keywords
1) It's much cheaper because AdRank is better
2) They're probably doing something wrong - if people have typed your brand in already and you've got good SEO then there's no reason to advertise on it
They may not be able to call themselves by the competitor's name, but what about the "alternative to <company>" that we see a lot.
Furthermore, Google will "dynamically" assemble an advert based on the current search to 'optimise' click-though (and they recently sent a mail out making it clear this will be the only type of text ad going forward)
They think they're optimising "click through" rate.
But what they're really doing is using heuristics to find the advert that's most likely to be confused with the top search result.
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