• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, May 16, 2017

Marketers and their agency partners have begun to notice a shift in brand loyalty on search engines and publisher sites.

The shift has allowed adMarketplace to capitalize on a business model that lets marketers bid on their own branded keyword terms and the branded keyword of their competitors in a chance to buy market share.

Consumers search for one brand, but if they see a search ad on a site for another company, they will convert about 65% of the rate they would have done on their intended brand, says Adam Epstein, president and COO at adMarketplace.

"Outside of the search engine results page, brand traffic is worth what your competitors are willing to pay to win market share," he said.

Brand loyalty seems to have taken a turn and consumers are opting in to the most convenient product or service. "If you order a coke at a restaurant and your server says all they have is Pepsi, you don't get up and walk out," Epstein said, alluding to the fact that the consumer would opt for the Pepsi.

This shift in consumer behavior puts brands in an interesting position. In fact brands are bidding on their own brand terms to protect them, as well as bidding on competitors when working with publishers across adMarketplace's network of sites. Publishers include Forbes, 5miles App, Daily Classifieds App, YP Mobile, Fixya, Latin Times, and Patch.

Steve Gibson, VP group director of search at Canvas Worldwide, also sees the shift on Google and Bing search engines. Consumers will search for a Honda and end up clicking through a Ford advertisement to a landing page. About 60% to 70% of searchers will pick another car, he said.  

"This happens more often when we buy our competitor's terms and add information like 'Honda gas millage,'" he said. "People are certainly less loyal. We know the number of loyalists, people who have bought one brand in the past, drops every year. This is across the board in automotive, except for BMW, which seems to buck this trend."

Gibson buys brand terms for "other" automakers and models through adMarketplace, because the site doesn't run a quality score rating like Google and they are "significantly" less expensive compared with Google and Bing.

On Google, Gibson said, the cost is 40% less on adMarketplace for category terms and 65% on terms used for conquesting.