Brand bidding is a nefarious action that unscrupulous webmasters make to earn more money. As a result, brands lose some part of their well-deserved profit — and their teams often remain unaware of it. In this article, we’ll answer the most common questions about this phenomenon and explain how to prevent the damage that it causes.
What Is Brand Bidding?
Let’s imagine that you join a partner program. You let third-party marketers promote your brand in exchange for a reward.
One of the rules of the program is to avoid brand bidding. Only the brand’s team is allowed to bid on it. The verb “to bid” in this context refers to search engine auctions. If someone bids on your brand, it means they advertise their websites using your brand’s name. It’s a direct violation of your agreement.
Why Is It Bad for You?
There are at least four reasons why brand bidding is bad for businesses:
- The more people bid on the same words in a search engine auction, the higher it drives the price of these words.
- When consumers type in the name of your brand in a search engine, the first links they should come across should be the official website and the official social network profiles of your brand. It would be weird if, let’s say, Google ranked a third-party promotional website higher than yours. That would be reputational damage.
- The name of your brand should organically lead to your official web resources. If a third-party webmaster edges their way into this process, it deteriorates the customer journey. People will lose time, effort and nerves trying to find you online. Your number of leads might decline.
- You’ll lose money. You’ll have to pay third parties for your organic traffic.
Brand bidding is good only for unscrupulous advertisers. Companies can’t benefit from it in any way.
How Much Can You Lose on Brand Bidding?
Each case is individual. The larger your audience and the more active your brand-bidding marketers are, the more impressive your losses. It can be dozens, hundreds or thousands of dollars per month.
Here is an insightful example. BluPear is an automated AI-powered solution that helps businesses identify and avoid brand bidding. Over 150 global brands use it. Every month, BluePear enables them to save over 1 million dollars in total. By dividing 1 million by 150, we’ll get over 6600 per month. Of course, this calculation is a bit clumsy because the brands are very different from each other. But at least you see that such amounts of money are worth taking care of.
How Do Business Owners and Managers Handle Brand Bidding?
Some business owners and managers don’t do anything. They simply put up with losses.
Others try to detect cases of brand bidding and get in touch with webmasters who do it. They warn the marketers and/or fine them. If the webmaster goes on violating the rules of the partner program, the business owner or manager can disconnect them from the program. Plus, they can inform others about unscrupulous marketers.
How to Detect Brand Bidding?
The first way to detect brand bidding is manually. Type in the name of your brand in any search engine and check the websites that the engine offers to you. This method requires time and effort. You’ll have to repeat the search regularly. Experienced webmasters use elaborate tactics to hide their fraudulent actions. For instance, they can fiddle with geo-targeting or deliberately misspell terms that are related to your brand. You might fail to detect many cases.
The second way is to use an automated solution, like the above-mentioned BluePear. They aren’t free. The price is calculated individually and depends on multiple factors, such as the number of keywords and the geographical locations. AI-powered tools are very efficient and help you save much more than you spend on them.
How Do Automated Solutions Work That Detect Brand Bidding?
A manager will set up the tool for you. The solution will be working 24/7, collecting the information and visualizing it in a comprehensive manner. You’ll see screenshots and reports with numbers. It will be easy for you to detect unscrupulous webmasters and take measures to stop their nefarious activities.
