Branded Keyword Management

Every time you scale a campaign's budget, you should know exactly what you're scaling. A lot of brands don't. I recently audited an account where a campaign was running at 15% ACoS. The brand looked at it and said, "This is one of our best campaigns. Let's increase the budget." But here's what was actually inside that campaign: Someone searches their brand name + "driving gloves" — they already know you. They click, they buy. ACoS on that keyword: 6%. Someone else searches "winter gloves for drivers" — they're shopping around. They click, maybe they buy, maybe they don't. ACoS on that keyword: 45%. Both keywords are in the same campaign. The 6% branded ACoS drags the average down to 15%. Looks great. The brand scales the budget. Amazon pushes more spend toward the unbranded terms. ACoS balloons. The brand pulls back and calls the campaign broken. It was never working the way they thought. The branded keywords were the safety net. Here's the problem with putting branded and unbranded in the same campaign: You can't control how Amazon splits the budget between them. And when you scale, you don't get to choose where the extra dollars go. Same thing happens with auto campaigns. Branded search terms sit inside your auto, inflate the numbers, and when you scale, you're just feeding more budget into branded traffic you were already getting. Separate them. Branded keywords get their own campaign. Their own budget. Their own benchmarks. Unbranded stands on its own. No safety net. That's how you know if your growth campaigns can actually grow. Stop scaling blended averages. Start scaling what's actually working.

We don't pay for any Amazon reporting. Amazon's Search Query Performance report tells us how customers discover our listings. This report tells sellers search volume, impressions, clicks and purchases for their top 1k keywords. Both in total and our brand's market share. To find this report: Brand Analytics ➔ Search Analytics ➔ Search Query Performance   At the top, toggle between 2 ways to view search data: ➔ "Brand View": 1k most important search terms to your brand. ➔ "ASIN View": 100 most important search terms by ASIN.   First: Organize & Label the Data.   Export the top 1k keywords by week as far back as possible. Merge into 1 spreadsheet. A free chrome extension makes this very easy. I'll share it at the end.   In a new tab, list each unique search term and add columns with fields you'd like to filter by. Match these fields into the main dataset. These are the fields I add:  • Keyword type: Branded, Generic or Competitor • Competitor: Yeti, Hydro Flask, etc • Product Type: Adult Bottle, Kid's Bottle, Backpack, etc. • License: Character or Sports Team   Now I can see our performance when customers search for Yeti, ice buckets, Paw Patrol, our branded keywords, etc.   Here are a few ways I look at the data:   1. Search Type   One of my favorite charts is the % of our clicks coming from branded, generic and competitor search terms.   Successfully brand building means more clicks from branded search terms over time.   Generic keywords drove 60% of clicks into our listings. Now branded keywords drive most of our clicks. Growing clicks from branded search is important, this is how we track it. (chart below)   2. How Are Customers Finding a Listing?   Pulling the "ASIN View" report for every ASIN in a listing shows exactly how customers are finding your listing.   For our kids listings, character specific keywords are a huge driver. They sum up to be about 40% of traffic.   "Spiderman Toys" has been a great keyword for us. We can know how we're doing YoY on keywords like this.   3. Amazon Ads Incrementality   Knowing if Amazon Ads are increasing total sales is one of life's great mysteries.   Match this report with Amazon Ads click data by keyword & date.   Test turning on and off campaigns and watch what happens to clicks in the SQP report.   The change in average clicks from a keyword is what ads are actually producing.   You can understand how much money you are lighting on fire with branded ads. Only 20% of branded ad clicks are incremental for us.   4. Simple Modern vs Competition's Search Volume   We compare total searches and clicks for our brand to competitors by week.   It shows relative brand health and who's trending up/down.   It shows us passing Hydro Flask over the last 2 years.   5. Flipping Competitor's Customers   With this data, you can see search volume for competitor keywords.   If successful, this is a great customer acquisition tactic. A great use for SP ads.   10% of our clicks come from competitor keywords.

If you think that your Amazon PPC strategy should be the same for branded and non-branded keywords, think twice. In our weekly KAM meeting yesterday, we analyzed PPC performance across our portfolio of brands. The data was clear: brands that separate their PPC strategy into two distinct buckets—branded and non-branded—are seeing significantly better ROAS. Here's why this matters: For branded keywords (e.g., "Ridge Wallet"): - You've already paid for awareness through Meta or other channels - Someone searching your brand name already wants YOUR product - Your goal: spend as little as possible while maintaining 80%+ market share - Target ACOS: under 10% For non-branded keywords (e.g., "minimalist wallet"): - These are new customers who don't know your brand yet - Premium-priced DTC brands have larger margins to play with - Your goal: capture new customers profitably - Target ACOS: can be much higher (30-40% for premium brands) One of our clients was able to maintain the same sales volume while reducing ad spend on branded terms, allowing them to reinvest those savings into non-branded terms that brought in new customers. The result? A significant increase in new-to-brand purchases while maintaining the same ad budget. Look at your Amazon PPC account right now. Are your branded and non-branded keywords in separate campaigns with different goals? If not, you're leaving money on the table.

The 3 Types of Amazon PPC Campaigns Every DTC Brand Needs📈💰 After managing over $200M in Amazon ad spend for brands like Ridge Wallets and HexClad, I've found that most DTC brands make the same critical mistake: They run the same PPC strategy for all their keywords. This is costing you thousands in wasted ad spend and missed sales opportunities. Here's the framework we use for our 8 and 9-figure brands: 1. Branded Campaigns → Target your own brand terms (e.g., "Ridge wallet," "HexClad frying pan") → Goal: Maintain 80%+ market share efficiently → Target ACOS: 10% or lower → Why: You've already paid to create awareness through Meta ads or elsewhere Most agencies spend your entire budget here to artificially inflate results while cannibalizing organic sales you would have gotten anyway. 2. Non-Branded Campaigns → Target category keywords (e.g., "wallet," "frying pan") → Goal: Capture new customers who don't know your brand → Target ACOS: 40-50% (much higher than branded) → Why: These customers weren't planning to buy your product For premium-priced DTC products with higher margins, you can be much more aggressive here. PPC is the best lever to increase organic rank. 3. Defensive Campaigns → Target competitor brand terms (where allowed) → Goal: Capture comparison shoppers → Target ACOS: Variable based on competition → Why: These customers are actively researching alternatives The key is having different goals and metrics for each campaign type. What works for branded terms will fail miserably for non-branded terms. By separating these strategies, we've helped brands like HexClad generate $6.23M during Prime Day alone. What's your Amazon PPC strategy? Are you differentiating between these campaign types?

Most people never touch their branded search campaigns, and miss out on major savings. In our most recent check, we used Target Impression Share to cut brand CPC by 61.8% and freed up around 307k DKK a year. One of our accounts already had brand CPCs in the low single-digit cents across Europe. That's good. But I was curious whether it was actually the optimal level, or just low enough that nobody bothered to question it. Normally I run branded search on manual bidding. In this case there were too many accounts to keep track of by hand. I almost started building a script to optimize against impression share automatically, and then remembered that Target Impression Share already does exactly that. So we ran it with Target Impression Share and a tight max bid limit. The first week looked mixed. CPCs dropped, but four accounts also lost clicks. It took two rounds of adjusting the max bid limits to find the balance, and once we did, we held roughly 60% lower CPC across the year. It’s really important that you don’t miss the max bid limit part of this. It’s the max bid limit that does the real work. ➤ I wouldn't hand brand over to Target Impression Share to chase visibility. But with a tight max bid cap, I think it's a solid way to stop brand CPCs from drifting up when you have too many accounts to manage manually. PS. I still think it's dumb we even have to bid for brand, but there's no real choice for most advertisers.

Amazon’s newly launched Reserve Share of Voice for SB TOS might actually fix a lot of long-standing issues for advertisers, especially for those trying to protect their branded terms and avoid losing visibility to competitors. It helps brands lock in consistent TOS visibility for branded keywords by reserving fixed SB placements. That means predictable exposure, less volatility, and reduced risk of competitors hijacking your brand search results. It also brings better control with fixed pricing, self-service setup, and real-time keyword validation through the console or API, making planning and forecasting much easier. For account managers, the focus should be on reserving only the most impactful branded keywords, the ones driving strong volume and conversions backed by solid historical TOS data. Regular performance reviews will be key to prevent cannibalization, optimize bids, and maintain efficiency across ACOS, ROAS, and TACOS while reallocating budgets smartly. Day-to-day work will start shifting from constant bid tweaks to more strategic planning as reserved TOS placements bring stability to brand visibility and minimize auction volatility. #amazon #amazonadvertising #amazonads

‼️ Breaking: Reserve Share of Voice is here, and this is a true novelty on Amazon Ads 🔽 What it is: Reserve Share of Voice (RSOV) allows advertisers to buy a guaranteed top-of-search (TOS) Sponsored Brands placement for specific branded keywords at a fixed, upfront price rather than competing via auctions. In essence, it’s like pre-booking your brand’s own name at the top of search results for a set period (e.g., 1–3 months), ensuring consistent visibility when shoppers search for your brand for a fixed price. ✅ The Good for Advertisers 1. Guaranteed Brand Presence You can now lock in top-of-search visibility for your branded terms -> eliminating the volatility of daily auctions and competitor conquesting. 2. Brand Protection This effectively blocks competitors from stealing traffic on your brand name via Sponsored Brands at TOS (they may still appear lower on the page). 3. Predictable Costs Fixed, upfront pricing means you can budget more precisely -> no more daily CPC swings or budget caps interfering with brand presence. 4. Improved Shopper Experience Shoppers searching “MyBrand” will consistently see your content first which is a better brand consistency and click trust. 5. Operational Efficiency Fewer campaign adjustments and bid optimizations are needed. Once reserved, performance depends on the strength of your brand. ⚠️ The Bad 1. Loss of Auction Flexibility RSOV bypasses the CPC auction model, meaning if your normal CPCs would have been cheaper, you might overpay for the same traffic. 2. Upfront Fixed Costs Payment is fixed and prepaid (e.g., thousands of USD per reservation; see screenshot). If branded search volume is lower than expected, your effective CPC skyrockets. 3. Limited Scope (Branded Keywords Only) You can only reserve your own brand/trademark terms validated through Brand Registry. If people search for your brand in different ways, e.g. sub-brand names or misspellings, etc. you won't be able to secure them. 4. No Performance Guarantee “Most of the time” top-of-search means not 100% guaranteed. Amazon still reserves some variability in placements. (Why do I even pay then?!) 5. Risk of Inefficiency for Niche or Emerging Brands For brands with smaller branded search volume, the cost of reservation may far exceed auction-based spend, leading to poor Efficiency. 6. Reduced Competitive Data Since the placement isn’t auction-based, advertisers may lose insights into bid competition, CPC trends, and Share of Voice changes over time. Currently only available via API Most likely, we'll see very big brands start using this soon. If I were managing Coca-Cola, I would book my places right away ;) test for a month and compare costs vs. risk,s etc.

Page views won’t future-proof your publishing business; branded search will. AI-generated content has opened new doors for publishers. However, many are still relying on legacy metrics, such as page views, sessions, and impressions, to measure success. These numbers can indicate reach, but they don’t tell the full story, especially when it comes to long-term brand value. If you're not tracking branded search, you're missing the signal that really matters. Branded search reflects earned relevance. It shows that your audience isn’t just discovering your content; they’re seeking you out deliberately. That’s the kind of loyalty that fuels subscriptions, partnerships, and lasting growth. Page views can spike for the wrong reasons: clickbait headlines, trending topics, or even AI-generated content that’s overly generic. But branded queries come from people who already know you. They signal authority and familiarity. They’re also a strong indicator that your content, AI-assisted or not, is resonating at a deeper level. If your AI strategy focuses solely on traffic volume, it risks becoming just noise. But if it supports your brand’s credibility, tone, and voice, it becomes a tool for amplification. Don’t let your team get lost in shallow performance data. Instead, create systems that connect AI content to brand trust: • Monitor branded search volume in Google Search Console. Track month-over-month changes and look for patterns around key content or campaigns. • Segment return users engaging with AI-generated content. Use analytics platforms like GA4 or Chartbeat to see whether AI outputs are encouraging deeper engagement. • Track direct visits, scroll depth, and engaged time. These are stronger indicators of trust than bounce rate or session count. 3 tactical shifts to amplify branded search ✅ Use branded keywords naturally. Mention your brand 3–5 times per 1,000 words where it fits. Include bylines that reinforce institutional expertise (e.g., “By [Name], State of Digital Publishing”). ✅ Transform generic content into brand-owned frameworks: Instead of “5 SEO Tips,” write “SODP’s 5-Point Local SEO Audit Framework.” Brand your approaches and repeat them across channels. ✅ Prioritise transparency and quality in AI workflows: Clearly label AI-assisted content. Include editor’s notes or expert reviews to signal trust. Don’t hide the human touch, highlight it. Here are the takeaways 1. Branded search is a forward-looking metric. It tells you whether you’re building something worth remembering. 2. Page views show trends. Branded queries show trust. 3. AI should support your editorial vision, not dilute it. 4. Winning in publishing today requires more than content volume; it requires content value. If you’re thinking about how to build a future-proof publishing model that uses AI without losing your audience’s trust, let’s talk in the comments. #DigitalPublishing #AIinPublishing #BrandedSearch #PublishingStrategy #SEO #ContentStrategy

Most sellers completely ignore the most powerful indexing tool on Amazon Below the fold content has just as much ranking power as above the fold But hardly anyone uses it correctly The brand story section in your A+ content is the biggest untapped opportunity for keyword indexing on the entire platform Why? Because of alt text Every image in your brand story can have alt text and most sellers either leave it blank or just describe what's in the image That's a massive mistake You can have up to 90 images in your brand story which means you can have up to 9,000 characters of alt text That's 9,000 characters of indexable keyword real estate that Amazon reads and uses for ranking Let that sink in for a second Your title gives you 200 characters, your bullets give you around 1,000 characters, your backend gives you 250 bytes But your brand story alt text gives you 9,000 characters and most people ignore it completely Every single image in your brand story should have unique alt text optimized for different keyword variations Not the same generic description copied across every image Strategic keyword placement that helps you rank for long tail searches your competitors aren't even thinking about I use an alt text viewer extension to audit listings and I can't tell you how many brands have blank alt text or the same phrase repeated 90 times It's free ranking power sitting right there and nobody's using it If you have brand registry and you're not maxing out your brand story with keyword optimized alt text You're leaving rankings on the table Go check your brand story right now and look at the alt text on every image I guarantee most of it is either empty or wasted Fix that and watch your indexing improve for keywords you couldn't rank for before This isn't a hack, it's just understanding how Amazon's algorithm actually works And using every tool they give you

Most brands are chasing AI visibility for category terms like "best project management software" while LLMs aren't yet consistently getting their core brand details correct. I've been working on AI visibility long enough to see a pattern: everyone wants offensive wins (appearing in category searches), but almost no one has fixed their defensive foundation first. I get how we got here. No one starts an SEO project by going after branded terms. But AI Search is built different. Very few brands have accurate representation across LLMs of what they do, who they are, who's in charge, where they serve, and what they serve. For Seer alone I continue to see: > We have a San Diego office (we don't anymore) > We have an issue with employee retention (our churn rates are well above agency average) > We have over 250 employees (we're under 200) Here's the counterintuitive part: fixing this requires skills many SEOs outsourced to dashboards years ago. You can't tool your way to brand accuracy. You have to know what's right, what's unfortunately phrased poorly but fair, and what's downright wrong. > Run the same prompts daily across multiple LLMs. Remember, these models are probabilistic. What attributes are always mentioned? What features are sometimes cited? Build your spidey sense so you know which threads to pull on > Check every citation and return to Google SERPs manually. Map where inaccuracies propagate across the web. > Run deep research to identify as many sources of false information as possible And understand this: even after you fix everything on your site, LLMs may cite old information for months because they're trained on historical datasets. We're swimming upstream here, so channel your inner salmon and jump in. The maturity model I use with clients has four stages, but most should start at stage one: pure branded queries about your company. Step 1: Document 50+ critical brand attributes Step 2: Create 100+ test prompts that map back to those brand attributes Step 3: Calculate your accuracy percentage. That number becomes your leading indicator. Optimize there before you optimize for nonbranded category visibility. You're not just fixing today's outputs, you're shaping tomorrow's training data.