How Active Brand Bidding Monitoring Helped This Brand To Improve Their Campaign Performance And Reduce CPC by 21%?

Marketers spend heavily on building a brand presence both organically and with paid search campaigns. However, despite creating a holistic approach with well-crafted ads, optimized landing pages and targeted brand keywords, their efforts are giving desired results, and they see a high a cost-per-click (CPC).

One of the causes can be bidding on branded keywords by competitors or even worse your affiliates or ad networks. And the surprising fact is that this scenario is quite a common practice.

A well-known skincare brand recently faced similar challenges when they saw their CPCs skyrocket due to their ad networks partners outbidding them on their own branded keywords, impacting their profitability and scalability. In this blog, we’ll dive deep into the consequences of affiliate brand bidding and offer key takeaways for performance marketing managers running search campaigns on branded keywords.

The Problem: Rising CPCs and Decreasing ROAS

When you’re running a branded search campaign, you expect to see a high return on investment. After all, these are the keywords that directly relate to your brand name, so the traffic is highly relevant. But in many cases, what you don’t expect is for ad networks and fraudulent affiliates to target your branded keywords, pushing up the cost of each click and impacting the efficiency of your campaigns.

This was the case for a leading skincare brand that faced inflated CPCs due to their partnered ad networks bidding on their branded keywords. As ad networks began competing for these highly intended branded keywords, the price of their own brand keywords became highly competitive, resulting in a 25-30% increase in CPCs, especially during high-demand periods like sales events. This not only eroded the brand’s profitability but also made it more difficult to scale their search efforts.

The Impact of Brand Bidding on Ad Campaigns

When ad networks or affiliates bid on your branded keywords, they effectively raise the bid price, driving up the cost of your own ads. Here’s why these matters:

1. Increased CPCs: Higher CPCs can eat into your budget, especially during high-demand sales periods when competition intensifies. A rise of 25-30% can drastically reduce the number of clicks you can afford and negatively affect your ad spend
2. Decreased ROAS: With higher CPCs, your ROAS takes a hit. You’re paying more for each click but not seeing the same level of return, making your campaigns less profitable and harder to scale.
3. Loss of Control: As ad networks and affiliates continuously bid on branded terms, brands lose control over their own brand’s visibility in search results. Their ads become buried beneath competitors, decreasing the chances of appearing at the top of search results and gaining quality traffic.
4. Sustainability Issues: Without addressing brand bidding, you may face challenges in scaling your search efforts. The higher your CPCs are, the more you spend to maintain performance, limiting your ability to expand your campaigns or reach new audiences.

The Solution: Brand Protection and Proactive Monitoring

In the case of this skincare brand, the solution lay in leveraging a holistic brand safety solution for affiliate campaigns that could monitor and restrict unauthorized bids on branded keywords. By partnering with mFilterIt, they were able to implement a comprehensive strategy to reclaim control over their search campaigns. Here’s how the solution worked:

1. Real-Time Detection: The brand protection solution identified competitor bids on branded keywords in real time, enabling the brand to take immediate action before their ad spend was impacted further.
2. Detailed Reporting: Regular, detailed reports provided the brand with visibility into where and when competitors were bidding on their keywords, giving them the opportunity to restrict such bids and prevent escalating CPCs.
3. Proactive Action: Armed with real-time data, the brand was able to act swiftly, limiting unnecessary costs and optimizing their campaigns to ensure maximum ROI.

Key Results and Benefits:

1. Cost Reduction: After implementing the brand protection solution, the brand saw a 21% reduction in CPCs within just a month. During a peak sales period, the brand was able to optimize its search campaign and reduce unnecessary ad spend.
2. Enhanced ROAS: With the cost of clicks under control, the brand saw an increase in their ROAS, regaining profitability and improving their overall performance metrics.
3. Significant Savings: The brand saved close to ₹40,000 per day by preventing competitors from bidding on their branded keywords. These savings could then be reallocated to other marketing efforts, contributing to more sustainable growth.

Takeaways for Performance Marketing Managers Running Branded Search Campaigns

1. Monitor Brand Keyword Bidding Regularly: You need to stay vigilant and constantly monitor your branded keywords. If you’re not tracking who is bidding on your brand keywords, you could be unknowingly inflating your costs. Regular monitoring ensures that you remain in control of your search budget.
2. Take Immediate Action Against Unauthorized Bidding: As soon as you detect that competitors or affiliates/ad networks are bidding on your branded keywords, take immediate action to restrict them. A proactive approach can help you minimize additional spending and protect your brand’s search visibility.
3. Leverage Brand Protection Tools: A brand protection solution provides the real-time insights and detailed reports necessary to effectively manage brand keyword bidding. These tools can help you act quickly, prevent unnecessary costs, and optimize your campaigns for better efficiency.
4. Understand the Impact of Rising CPCs on Scalability: As CPCs rise, your ability to scale campaigns becomes limited. If your search campaigns become too expensive, you may find it difficult to maintain the same level of growth. By managing brand bidding, you can keep CPCs in check and scale your campaigns more effectively.
5. Prioritize Sustainable Growth: High CPCs are not only a short-term issue—they can affect your long-term campaign sustainability. Addressing brand bidding issues early on allows you to allocate resources effectively, ensuring that your campaigns remain profitable over time.

Way Forward

Brand bidding is a silent campaign killer, but it doesn’t have to drain your ad spend or ruin your ROAS. By understanding the impact of competitor bids on your branded keywords and implementing proactive brand protection measures, you can reclaim control, reduce unnecessary costs, and scale your campaigns with confidence. Performance marketing managers need to stay vigilant, act quickly, and utilize the right tools to safeguard their branded keywords from unnecessary competition. If you’re not monitoring brand keyword bidding, you might be paying the price without even knowing it.

Take control today to ensure your branded campaigns remain profitable and sustainable for the long run.