TY - CHAP

T1 - Should Companies Bid on their Own Brand in Sponsored Search ?

AU - Blask, Tobias

AU - Funk, Burkhardt

AU - Schulte, Reinhard

N1 - Conference code: 10

PY - 2011

Y1 - 2011

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - Business informatics

KW - Sponsored Search

KW - Search Engine Marketing

KW - Brand Marketing

KW - Paid Search

KW - Brand marketing

KW - Branded keywords

KW - E-commerce

KW - Keyword selection

KW - Paid search

KW - Search engine marketing

KW - Sponsored search

KW - Brand marketing

KW - Branded keywords

KW - E-commerce

KW - Keyword selection

KW - Paid search

KW - Search engine marketing

KW - Sponsored search

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=80052486416&partnerID=8YFLogxK

M3 - Article in conference proceedings

SN - 978-989-8425-70-6

T3 - ICE-B 2011 - Proceedings of the International Conference on e-Business

SP - 14

EP - 21

BT - ICE-B 2011

A2 - Marca, David A.

A2 - Shishkov, Boris

A2 - van Sinderen, Marten

PB - Science and Technology Publications, Lda (SciTePress)

T2 - 10th International Conference on e-Learning, e-Business, Enterprise Information Systems, and e-Government - EEE 2011

Y2 - 18 July 2011 through 21 July 2011

ER -