Bidding on Branded Terms Increases Clicks by 18.3%

We ran this study to find out if running paid ads cannibalize organic traffic or not.

Most SEOs are against bidding on branded terms because it is believed that buying paid ads cannibalizes organic traffic and it can also impact attribution for conversions and revenue. Paid advertisers believe there is an uplift in overall traffic. Who is right?

Let’s dig in and see what the data says, but first I want to give a huge thanks to our data scientist Xibeijia Guan for doing all the hard data parts of this study and to our CMO Tim Soulo for his input.

We looked at 3 months of ad data in Ahrefs across ~2.3 million keywords from June 1, 2024, to August 31, 2024.

Quick facts:

• 46.7% of the queries were branded
• 59.5% of companies bid on their own branded terms
• In 63.9% of cases, the brand was the only bidder

For branded terms, running paid ads results in 18.3% more total clicks on average. Calculated as +22.2% more traffic going to ads and -3.9% traffic cannibalized from organic traffic.

Both SEOs and paid advertisers were right in their assumptions. Paid cannibalizes a bit of organic traffic, but there is a nice uplift in overall traffic.

As you can see, running ads shifts traffic towards higher standardized values, meaning more overall traffic.

Paid ads substantially increase the median traffic, though the variability also increases.

There is strong evidence (more data to the right of 0) that paid ads consistently boost total traffic compared to organic traffic alone for branded queries.

For non-branded terms, running ads has little effect on organic traffic. Bid on the ads if the incremental extra traffic makes sense for your business.

There’s not much difference in standardized values.

Ads do not significantly increase the median standardized traffic for non-branded queries.

Ads have a negligible effect on overall traffic differences for non-branded queries, with little evidence of any traffic uplift or traffic cannibalization.

Final thoughts

Whether this extra traffic from bidding on branded terms is worth it or not will depend on your company, but I’d say it is worth experimenting to see if it’s viable for your business.

I wouldn’t go by just the raw traffic numbers, look at the quality of the traffic and if it converts. For example, it could be competitors or your own employees clicking on the ads, so extra clicks may not result in extra revenue. You’ll have to try it to find out.