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Bidding on branded terms increases clicks by 18.3%
Jan
We conducted this study to find out whether running paid ads cannibalize organic traffic or not.
Most SEOs are against bidding on branded terms because it is believed that buying paid ads cannibalizes organic traffic and can also affect conversion and revenue attribution. Paid advertisers believe there is an escalate in overall traffic. Who’s right?
Let’s dig in and see what the data says, but first I want to thank our data scientist Xibeijia Guan for doing all the tough parts of this study and our CMO Tim Soulo for his input.
We looked at 3 months of AD data in AHREFS on ~2.3 million keywords from June 1, 2024 to August 31, 2024.
Brisk facts: :
- 46.7% of queries were tagged
- 59.5% of companies bid on their own branded terms
- In 63.9% of cases, the brand was the only bidder
On branded terms, running paid ads results in an average of 18.3% more clicks. Calculated as +22.2% more ad traffic and -3.9% traffic cannibalized from organic traffic.
Both SEOs and paid advertisers were correct in their assumptions. Paid to cannibalize organic traffic, but there is a nice escalate in overall traffic.
As you can see, running ads shifts traffic towards higher normalized values, which means more overall traffic.
Paid advertising significantly increases median traffic, although volatility also increases.
There is robust evidence (more data on the right) that paid ads consistently escalate total traffic compared to just organic traffic for branded queries.
In non-branded terms, running ads has little impact on organic traffic. You are asking for ads if additional incremental traffic makes sense for your business.
There is not much difference in the normalized values.
ADSs do not significantly escalate average normalized traffic for non-branded queries.
ADSs have a negligible impact on overall traffic differences for non-branded queries, with little evidence of traffic boosting or traffic cannibalization.
Final thoughts
Whether that extra traffic from branded bidding is worth it or not will depend on your business, but I’d say it’s worth experimenting to see if it’s profitable for your business.
I wouldn’t just go for raw traffic, look at the quality of the traffic and if it converts. For example, they may be competitors or your employees clicking on ads, so additional clicks may not result in additional revenue. You’ll have to try it to find out.
