Paid Search and Branding

Back in January, I put up a post on how Display Ads Boost Search Performance. ClickZ has an article on how Paid Search Builds Branding.

According to the ClickZ article: "Turns out that search lifts brand metrics, particularly when paired with other media. "

I guess what they did was took a survey of people who were not exposed to the search ad (control group) and those who were exposed. Of those exposed, they kept track of who clicked and who didn't. So the results are:

1) There was a 1% lift from people who were on the page where the ad displayed remembered the CAMPAIGN. (hmmm....), and their was a 20% lift in campaign awareness when they actually clicked on the ad (duh!!).

2) There was a 6% lift from people who were on the page where the ad displayed remembered the BRAND top of mind awareness (ok, that's better), and a higher TOMA score for those who clicked (of course). I guess the lift in TOMA is not as high as Campaign awareness is because, many people already know the brand even without the search ad. So while the score is higher here, the absolute number of eyeballs is lower.

3) There was a 6% lift from people who were on the page where the ad displayed remembered what the brand was all about (hmmm.. not sure how this works unless the ad copy has brand value keywords), and a 19% life in brand value recall from those who visited the site (again.. duh!)

4) "The study also defined effectiveness and efficiency. Effectiveness combined the branding effect, multiplied by reach; efficiency was effectiveness divided by the spend for that media. By dividing by spending, the efficiency number was normalized to reflect the efficiency per exposed person, regardless of the size of the media buy." I guess I can buy that....
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"The results in lift are significant and, because PPC search marketers pay only for the click, the lift in branding due to the sponsored link is free."

FREE??? Nothing is free. It's part of the package. Impression is part of the metric for any PPC campaign.

"The huge branding metric lift as a result of visits is powerful and should be taken into account when the overall campaign objectives include branding."

All search campaigns should include branding as an objective. Do whatever the heck you want to do with the search ad copy, but at least put a proper Link URL that says who you are.