Billions Wasted On Trademark Bidding?

[peter_d]

Interesting point I hadn't heard mentioned before:

http://www.revenews.com/bradwaller/archives/002868.html

They say that about half of all search budgets are for a company's branded (and often trademarked) keywords, much is "wasted" because the users are trying to find the company's site anyhow....since many of the users who search for your branded term are looking for you anyway, you are paying for a "glorified Yellow Pages listing

[John Scott]

Good point.

I guess companies think of it as brand protection.

[WagerX]

Sure, Your effectively inhibiting your competitor from appearing next to your organic results. I think American Airlines is suing Google because their competitors show up in as Google adds when the search term is their branded trade mark. I'd like to see the results of that law suit. If American wins then Google won't be able to serve competition's adds AND they won't be able to charge for the brand "protection".