Online marketers have debated for the longest time the merits of bidding on brand terms, whether it is the company name or specific trademarks and products. Bing Ads has been studying the main impact of brand term bidding for quite some time and it is discovered that, while performance of brand name keywords is affected by a number of factors, this is a strategy that works by effectively putting the advertiser on both offense and defense. This means that more clicks are placed on your ad and fewer against your competitors. To get this data, researchers had recently dived into two major vertical markets, analyzed 3 million impressions for retail and 400,000 impressions for travel. The researchers looked at the majority of brand terms associated with each industry and scenarios were evaluated: when brand names were present on the results page and when these brand terms are not present. The results were convincing. Search marketers have long debated the merits of bidding on brand terms, whether it’s the company name or specific trademarks and products. The “pro” side of the debate? More clicks for you; fewer for your competitors. The “con”? By bidding on your own brand terms, according to some naysayers, you could just be cannibalizing your organic traffic. But, as in most arguments, hard evidence ultimately wins the day. Bidding for Clicks Without a brand ad, a major travel brand we studied received 61 percent of clicks from organic listings. When a brand ad was present, overall clicks increased by 27 percent, even when we factored in paid clicks they may have received anyway from an organic listing. Retail had similar results – with 60 percent of clicks from organic listings when no brand ad was used, and an incremental click gain of 31 percent when brand ads were used. The bottom line? Bidding on your own brand terms simply delivers more clicks. The High Cost of Not Bidding As it may turn out, the risk of not bidding on your own brand terms are high even if your website’s SEO is strong. You will not only get a lower click yield but you would also lose clicks to more aggressive competitors who would be constantly looking for ways to get a larger share on your brand searches.