Having others bid on your valuable brand keywords is an increasing problem in PPC and paid search marketing.
It's a sneaky tactic that other marketers use to turn people away from your brand and toward theirs, by capturing them after they search for your brand name.
👉 Fortunately, there are many solutions to help solve this problem.
A number of fantastic PPC brand monitoring tools exist on the market today that will help to identify and prevent unwarranted cases of brand bidding. Additionally, they can help you save money by pausing bids on your branded keywords that nobody else is bidding on.
Benefits of Paid Search Brand Monitoring
- See who's bidding on your brand - It's always good intelligence to see exactly what competitors are bidding on your brand names. It allows you to assess the situation and take counter measures if necessary.
- Protect your most valuable traffic - Branded searches are the most high converting traffic source. You need to ensure that any of your partners, affiliates or competitors are held accountable for any infringements or attempts to earn from your brand name.
- Remove offending competition from search results - If somebody violates your trademark then you can take swift action to get their ads removed - for example by submitting a complaint to Google.
- Safeguard your brand - It's vital that people know they can't just steal your valuable customer base and piggy back off your brand name.
- Avoid wasted ad spend - PPC marketers love to bid on brand terms, but sometimes it's unnecessary. If nobody else is bidding on certain variations of your brand, then you're probably wasting a lot of money by bidding on those terms, when your customers will click on you organically anyway.
Why Is Brand Bidding Such a Big Problem?
As of June 4, 2019, Google removed restrictions that stopped your competitor's from bidding on your branded keywords.
The only caveat was that competitors can't use your trademarked brand name in their ad copy.
So in theory Adidas could bid on "Nike" related searches. And provided that they don't mention any of Nike's trademarked names in the ad copy, they're free to do so.
Here's an example of a Monday.com bidding on the brand name of their competitor, Trello.
As you can see, it's an aggressive marketing tactic by Monday.com.
They're not only bidding on one of their key competitors, but the advert is actively suggesting that their product is objectively better than Trello.
That's a very bold claim!
What's more, on the landing page they actually rank their own product vs. Trello side by side.
It's very understandable that marketers hate others bidding on their own brand keywords.
Other brands can come in and piggyback off the back of a strong brand name, attempting to draw customers away to their own brand and product.
Fortunately there are solutions available to help protect your brand's paid search defense.
The Top PPC Brand Monitoring Tools
There's a number of great tools on the market to monitor your brand in paid search, some of which are relatively unknown!
We're going to list our favorite below and also highlight the specific things that each tool excels at, along with price points.
Here's a chart comparing the top 5 PPC brand monitoring tools to explore.
Now let's get into the specific details of each tool, and I'll highlight exactly who the tool is a good match for depending on your situation.
Disclaimer
We do not have any commercial relationship with any of the tools mentioned in this list.
This is purely aimed at helping PPC marketers find a tool to help with brand monitoring.
All opinions are our own.
1) BluePear
Pricing starts at $525 per month.
It scales up to over $900 per month depending on your requirements.
BluePear is one of the industry leaders when it comes to brand protection in paid search, and for good reason.
Their entire platform is dedicated entirely to tracking the integrity of your brand in paid search - That's literally all they do!
Its target audience are the following two types of customers:
- PPC managers
- Affiliate managers
Their product is comprehensive and includes the following:
- PPC Monitoring - Monitors hundreds of branded keywords to automatically detect who is bidding on them.
- Hijack Detection - Aims to quickly detect anyone 'hijacking' your brand keywords and diverting profits from your business and eating into your PPC budget.
- Trademark Abuse - Specifically looks for instances where people are using your trademark's in their ads (which is not allowed).
- Automatic Proof Generation - Provides automatic images and context so that you can easily take that information and submit the appropriate complaints and takedown requests.
- Support - You'll get a dedicated account manager ready to help you solve any problems.
Who is this most useful for? 🤔
✅ This tool is most suited for companies that have in excess of $100,000 paid advertising budget per month, and a brand name that attracts a significant amount of searches.
This certainly isn't a cheap option, but if you're fed up of having issues around brand defense in paid search and you want a seriously strong solution that includes great support, then BluePear is a great option.
2) BrandVerity
Pricing starts at $799 per month and scales up to $1500+ per month depending on your requirements and the number of keywords you're tracking.
BrandVerity is a SaaS product that's 100% dedicated to brand protection. It's primarily a detection tool, and they've been in business since 2008 with some impressive marketing leaders on their team.
Here's some of the key highlights of their product
- Paid Search Monitoring - They identify and help to remove harmful ads showing on your most popular branded keywords.
- Web Compliance - Automatically monitor's your partners online marketing activities to ensure they're 100% compliant.
- Affiliate Channel Protection - They aim to seek out misbehaving affiliates who are attempting to hijack profits away by bidding on your branded searches.
Who is this most useful for? 🤔
✅ We would strongly suggest BrandVerity as an option for companies who have a significant affiliate program in place, since that is a major part of their offering.
Industries like Credit Cards, Retail & Travel are all suitable, and BrandVerity specifically advertises these industries on its own website.
3) The Search Monitor
Pricing starts at $600 per month.
The Search Monitor markets themselves as a complete brand protection solution to help with a number of key aspects.
- SEM Brand Compliance
- SEM Affiliate Compliance
- SEM Partner/Dealer Compliance
- Automated Trademark Enforcement
- Offer & Content Monitoring
- Take-down & Submission Analysis
They're trusted by some pretty major brands including Marriott, GrubHub and we even spotted a huge agency called JellyFish that uses their software.
Reading their in-house blog, they've got a ton of content aimed at PPC marketers in particular, and that's a clear sign that a large percentage of their customer base are looking for PPC brand monitoring specifically.
In particular, I really like their automations which make the entire process easy to manage.
Who is this most useful for? 🤔
✅ I'd suggest this is a tool best suited for larger organizations with significant ad spend.
This is due to the high price point and range of features available.
The simple reason being that if you're spending less than $100k per month on a tool like this, it's probably going to account for at least 1% of your overall ad spend, which is a significant amount in such a competitive PPC market.
4) AdPolice
Pricing starts at $199/mo but scales up fast.
You'll need to request a demo to get specific pricing for your brand.
AdPolice is a very well known protection tool that helps World-leading brands like Sixt, AVIS and Zalando. They monitor over 20 search engines and they market themselves very specifically as a solution that helps PPC marketers protect their brand names when it comes to paid advertising.
Here's their key features:
- Brand Abuse - Helps protect against people abusing your brand name & has automated systems to help remove unwanted usage of your brand name in paid search.
- Affiliate Fraud - Stops affiliates from abusing your brand name to attract sales. Has highly technical processes to spot even the most technical frauds.
- Competitor Violations - If competitors are doing something that's illegal, AdPolice will flag potential violations to you and help you take action against them.
- Reporting - They'll send you daily and weekly reports to keep you updated on everything.
Who is this most useful for? 🤔
✅ I would strongly consider AdPolice to anyone who wants a solution that's 100% focused on paid search monitoring.
5) Evet
Pricing ranges between $149/mo to $279/mo depending on your requirements.
Evet is a more price-friendly option that's completely dedicated to paid search monitoring in particular.
It's a smaller company but we like how focused they are on solutions for PPC marketers - Literally everything they offer is targeted towards PPC!
Here are all of the problems they're trying to solve:
- Decrease in CTR (click through rate) for branded searches
- Increased CPC for branded searches (due to competition)
- Misrepresentation of your brand messaging (due to aggressive competitors)
They scan the major search engines in 8 different locations and the UX of their tool is intuitive and simple to use.
Who is this most useful for? 🤔
✅ Evet is a great option for smaller brands who want to protect their brand from aggressive brand bidding.
We like Evet primarily because of the affordable price point!
Starting at $149 (with any time cancellation) is an attractive proposition for smaller brands who have a requirement to monitor their PPC brand terms.
6) Brand Auditor
Pricing - Unknown
You'll need to request a demo to get specific pricing for your brand.
Brand Auditor is a very specific tool that focuses on just one thing - protecting your brand from other people bidding on it in the search engines.
Here's how it works:
- Scans the internet (all languages) 24/7 to check instances when people may be bidding on paid search for your brand.
- Automatically collects evidence for you and even formats it into a complaint template (huge time saver)
- Gives you immediate email notifications of potential threats.
- Allows for immediate complaint handling to relevant search engines.
Who is this most useful for? 🤔
✅ This tool is most useful for both affiliate manager's and digital marketing experts who just want a single, simple tool to solve their brand monitoring problems.
It's a no frills approach to brand monitoring and we love this one in particular because of the high levels of automation - Once it's set up you can largely just sit back and relax.
And even if you do come across and offending website, this tool makes it easy to file a complaint fast.
7) Impact.com
Pricing ranges between $500/mo to $5,000/mo depending on requirements.
Impact.com offers a huge number of features beyond just paid search monitoring.
Impact.com is first and foremost a partnership management tool.
However, they have a very impressive software suite and have since built their own paid search monitor crawler into the software which crawls for unauthorized brand bids across search engines.
The great thing about Impact.com is that you get this specific PPC solution whilst also getting access to their entire partnership management platform!
Who is this best suited for? 🤔
✅ Impact.com is definitely best suited for organizations who are building partnerships with influencers and affiliates.
We like consolidating tools where possible (who wants to have thousands of SaaS tools?) and Impact have a seriously impressive suite of software that's trusted by some huge brands like Adidas and Shopify.
8) Adthena
Quote-based pricing per customer.
However we found that typically you can expect to pay at least $40k/year for Adthena, or around $3,000+ per month.
Adthena is a seriously impressive tool for paid search marketers specifically.
However, it's really a complete PPC competitor analysis tool with multiple features.
Here are some of the top features their tool offers:
- Brand Activator - a tool which helps to automatically pause unnecessary brand bids, saving customers $15k monthly each on average.
- Brand Protection - a tool which prevents competitors stealing clicks or affiliates hijacking your brand search terms.
- Smart Monitor - Automatically tracks your competition and identifies any shifts across your competitor's PPC strategy.
- PPC Optimization - They help identify gaps in your strategy and new opportunities.
Who is this best suited for? 🤔
✅ If you're a serious PPC team and money is no object, then Adthena is our favorite tool.
It's a comprehensive suite of PPC intelligence tools, not just for PPC brand monitoring only.
9) ThePaidClick
Pricing starts at $699/month with annual commitment.
ThePaidClick has been around since 2011, and offers two key features to its customers:
- PPC Brand Monitoring Tool
- Web content monitoring
Overall, this software is quite similar to the likes of BrandVerity and BluePear (previously mentioned) but may be worth a demo!
Who is this best suited for? 🤔
✅ PPC managers who are looking for an alternative solution.
It's similar to many of the other solutions on our list, so we would recommend having demos across multiple products and seeing which ones you like best.
Other Tools
If you'd like to explore even more tools for paid search brand monitoring, consider the following:
10) BrandShield.com - More legal-centric software intended to completed protect your brand online.
11) Kantar.com - Super high end solution for full brand intelligence.
12) AdSecurity.com - focuses on branded ad protection.
13) Rightlander.com - primarily designed to help with affiliate compliance.
14) SEMRush - doesn't have a specific brand monitoring tool, but you can still check what keywords competitors are bidding on.
PPC Brand Monitoring Tools Can Protect Your Paid Search Budgets
All of these tools are incredibly useful at protecting your brand from paid search specifically.
As experienced PPC marketers, we understand how valuable your branded campaigns are (usually they most highly converting) and having a solution like this is vital if you're a known brand.
👉 Our suggestion is to demo the top tools listed here for yourself and see which one you like best.
If you're looking for a comprehensive hands-off solution, our PPC agency provides a range of services including advice on how to best handle paid search monitoring as well.
Here’re some other PPC tools you may want to consider: