Why a Strong Brand Is a Search Marketer's Best Asset
Travelocity: Nonbranded Keywords Only Convert 4% of Searchers — CHICAGO (AdAge.com) — For brand marketers using search, a brand name may be their best asset. That's the finding of a recent Travelocity study …
Context & Ripple Effects
Travelocity's study lands a year after a MediaPost survey found advertisers already rated Google's search ads ahead of Yahoo's and MSN's — a market where spend was racing toward whatever converted measurably. The new finding flips the usual framing of that race: the differentiator isn't the engine, it's whether the query carries a brand name at all, with nonbranded keywords converting just 4% of searchers per the study.
That matters because most search-marketing budgets had been built on bidding for broad category terms. If a travel giant's own data says its name outperforms its category, brand equity stops being an off-line metric and becomes an input to paid-search economics — a theme competitors and agencies now have to answer with data of their own.
First-order effects
- Brand marketers like Travelocity get quantitative cover to reallocate search budgets toward their own branded terms, where conversion per click is far higher than the 4% reported for nonbranded queries.
Second-order effects
- Agencies and engines selling generic-keyword campaigns face pressure to prove incremental value, pushing pricing and pitch toward brand-term management and away from volume bids on category words.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds across categories, search advertising stratifies into a brand-equity game and a direct-response game, forcing companies to measure brand strength by query share rather than ad recall alone.
The trend: Paid search is splitting into brand-led and intent-led markets, with owned brand names displacing generic keywords as the highest-converting inventory.