Seems to me that Ford is cannibalizing their own organic traffic

[ed.brooks]

"Ford got 93.4% of paid traffic from the keyword “ford,” up from 83.7% in January 2016"

Seems to me that Ford is cannibalizing their own organic traffic (free clicks) and they are shifting that traffic over to paid traffic (expensive clicks). Google is laughing all the way to the bank!

And, won't this drive up the cost of AdWord buys for dealers?

Ford Increases Web Traffic Referrals From Paid Search By 880% via MediaPost

"The majority of ford.coms paid traffic came from the keyword “ford." Of the top 10 keywords, nine have the word "ford" somewhere in the term, with the exception of “mustang." In July 2016, Ford got 93.4% of paid traffic from the keyword “ford,” up from 83.7% in January 2016."

According to the MediaPost article, "Paid search is not the most effective way for automotive-related companies to drive traffic to Web sites."​

 

[Steve Stauning]

I know I'll be blasted by the PPC folks out there with all of their dubious stats about buying one's own name, but YES!!!! Ford is wasting their money!

 

[anthonycapital]

Brand terms may cost something like 20 times less than other conquest terms. It's a minimal investment to protect their brand.

It's comparable to saying "why bother to buy a sign for your building? they will see the ford cars parked out front and know you are a ford store"

 

[ed.brooks]

I know I'll be blasted by the PPC folks out there with all of their dubious stats about buying one's own name, but YES!!!! Ford is wasting their money!

I would tend to agree with @Stauning and perhaps more importantly, they may be driving up the costs for their dealers.

 

[craigh]

I would tend to agree with @Stauning and perhaps more importantly, they may be driving up the costs for their dealers.

Smart dealers shouldn't be buying loose keywords like 'Ford'.
In my opinion, that's not enough intent for me to pay for that visitor.
I also avoid buying vague Mustang keywords because it's just high school fanboys looking for pictures of Mustangs

I've never agreed with buying your own name, but at the OEM level it's more important because Google let's competing OEMs buy up keywords.

 

[craigh]

Just for fun, I spent their money by clicking the Focus link:

 

[Steve Stauning]

It totally makes sense for Ford to be proactive about protecting their models when competitors are using Ford brand names in PPC for comparison. I think the issue with me would be that it seems fairly unnecessary to just indiscriminately buy the word "Ford" when they (of course) dominate the page for that word organically:



Moreover, the word "Ford" likely has a much lower new car purchase intent than virtually any other possible combination.

While I wouldn't make Ford a negative keyword if I were there, I would be careful to only buy terms with more than just one word. Additionally, I would never buy my own dealers' names in their own towns (even if they weren't buying them):

 

[mwpistell]

Ford is bidding on their own brand name to force competitors who also bid on "Ford" to pay more per click. Typically, the more accounts in an auction the higher the CPC goes.

They also get the #1 position which takes up a lot of screen real estate, forcing everyone else down.

They almost certainly have a 10/10 Quality Score for their own keyword, so they pay pennies per click.

 

[ed.brooks]

Ford is bidding on their own brand name to force competitors who also bid on "Ford" to pay more per click. Typically, the more accounts in an auction the higher the CPC goes.

They also get the #1 position which takes up a lot of screen real estate, forcing everyone else down.

They almost certainly have a 10/10 Quality Score for their own keyword, so they pay pennies per click.

They can do whatever they please, but recognize the effect this has on their dealers; unless I'm mistaken, Ford currently requires dealers to spend 50% of the dealer's co-op funds on SEM, until the dealer reaches 35% impression share on both the dealer name and Ford branded terms.

They are spending more and they are forcing the dealers to spend more. And remember, according to the MediaPost article, "Paid search is not the most effective way for automotive-related companies to drive traffic to Web sites."

 

[mikesayre]

I agree with @mwpistell and I'd do the same if I was Ford. Besides I doubt they care, protecting the brand and getting in front of shoppers is higher on their priority list than saving a few bucks. Think of what they spend on big media in comparison.

Now requiring their dealer network to keep above a 35% impression share on their ENTIRE PPC campaign to receive co-op funds is another story. Lot's of issues there, any dealer would spend way too much money on make/model keywords trying to maintain that level in any larger market, so it will force their name/brand keywords to spend less, which is not a good strategy. What's going to happen? Dealer's are going to overspend and waste money to try and maintain that impression share level, but maybe that's the strategy? As a whole maybe Ford has looked at their dealer network and realized there are too many holes in the search marketing spend levels and this is an effective way to address that.