Why a known name may need a lower ad position: brand, press and ad costs

In short

Two businesses can bid on the same Google keyword and end up with different costs per click.

Three bodies of evidence bear on this: the IPA's long-running work on brand building and activation, Google's own documentation on how ad quality affects what a click costs, and academic research on how brand familiarity changes search ad results. Read together, they bear on how brand recognition affects search ad results.

None of them measures cost per customer directly. What they show is where position, quality and recognition each matter.

What Binet and Field found about brand and activation

Les Binet and Peter Field's 2013 report, The Long and The Short of It, found an optimum budget ratio of 60:40 between brand building and activation. Their later report, Effectiveness in Context (2018), found 62:38. Both figures are given in a September 2023 IPA blog post by Alison Hoad of Publicis Poke, which marked the first report's tenth anniversary.

The post notes that the sweet spot stayed nearly constant between the two reports. It also says the original report warned that marketing was heading towards a dangerous over-reliance on short-term metrics.

Effectiveness in Context then showed that short-term campaigns were becoming more common. Field described this as a rising tide of activation, and as it grew, effectiveness fell. The post measures that by the number of very large business effects reported in IPA cases.

The post adds that this data predates COVID and the cost-of-living crisis, so it argues the trend may be stronger now. Across both reports, it says, the balance between long-term and short-term communication was key.

How Google's auction prices a click

Google's documentation on Ad Rank says it is a set of values that decides whether an ad is eligible to show and where it sits relative to other advertisers' ads. Separate auctions run for each ad location, and Ad Rank is calculated twice: once for eligibility and once for ranking.

Six factors feed it: the bid, ad and landing page quality, Ad Rank thresholds, auction competitiveness, search context and the expected impact of ad assets. Google's own example sets a minimum of 0 to show anywhere on the page and 40 for the top ad location, so an ad below the 0 minimum does not show at all, and one below 40 cannot show in the top location.

Quality is measured at auction time using expected click-through rate, ad relevance and landing page experience. Google defines expected click-through rate as the likelihood that your ad will be clicked when shown.

Google's page also says higher quality ads can often lead to lower costs per click, and that a bid is a maximum, so what an advertiser actually pays is often less. The page does not publish a cost formula.

Google's Quality Score page describes the 1 to 10 score as a diagnostic tool and states that it is not an input in the auction. Each of its three components is rated above average, average or below average against advertisers whose ads showed for the same exact search over the last 90 days. Ad Rank draws on the auction-time measurements instead.

The Ad Rank documentation also says a higher position can cost more: the higher-ranking ad is more likely to win but may pay a higher cost per click.

Why recognition changes how much position matters

Research on search ads suggests brand familiarity changes how much an ad's position matters. Sridhar Narayanan of Stanford Graduate School of Business and Kirthi Kalyanam of Santa Clara University studied Google search advertising data from four large consumer product retailers that had been competitors. The data covered bids, positions, click-through rates, sales and quality scores. The paper is titled 'Position Effects in Search Advertising: A Regression Discontinuity Approach'.

The method approximates a randomised experiment. The researchers found that true position effects are much smaller than correlational estimates suggest, in some cases only a third to a quarter of the size.

They found that less well-known advertisers gain the most from a high position, because it helps them catch a searcher's attention. Well-known brands such as Amazon are likely to catch attention at any position, so position matters less for them.

For a business, that cuts two ways. An unknown name gains most from a high position, because it helps catch the eye. A known name can be seen and still be clicked from a lower, cheaper position, because the searcher already recognises it.

The same paper adds a caution about paying for position at all. The top spot below the search box and the top right-side ad each drew about 20% more clicks than the spot directly beneath them. Moving from third to second produced no measurable click gain, even though advertisers paid much more for second place.

The pattern is uneven further down. In the right-hand column, third position drew 10.7% more clicks than fourth. Below the scroll point, moving from sixth to fifth gained 16.7% and seventh to sixth gained 19.5%, while eighth to seventh showed no gain. The study covers four retailers, so it is evidence of a pattern, not a price list for every market.

Where press coverage fits

If recognition is what lets an advertiser hold a lower position, the question is where recognition comes from. One source Blue Leopard Media points to is coverage a searcher finds when they look the business up.

Blue Leopard Media says each feature is built to show up when someone searches the client's name: the name goes in the headline, URL, first paragraph and image alt text, and the feature is submitted to Google Search Console the same day it goes live. It checks rankings at day 7 and day 30 and sends the results to the client. It does not promise a ranking position.

A feature is one sponsored article, labelled as such.

Cost matters here. Blue Leopard Media sells features from $249 for one publication, $499 for three and $999 for eight, paid once with no retainer. Card payments add a 3% processing fee shown at checkout. The client approves every word, and nothing is published until they say yes.

A feature that is not live on the agreed publication within 24 hours of written approval, counted on business days, is refunded in full. The clock starts when the client approves the final draft and cover in writing.

What each channel misses on its own

The IPA post's warning is about short-term spending: as the share of short-term campaigns grew, effectiveness fell. A search account run only on bids is activation by definition, and the 60:40 and 62:38 findings put activation at 40% and 38% of the optimum split.

The Stanford findings show the other side. A business that is not yet recognised gains most from a high position, which can cost more per click. Position alone does not supply the familiarity that would let it step down.

Press without ads has its own limit. Blue Leopard Media makes no promise about where a feature ranks.

How Blue Leopard Media combines them

Blue Leopard Media runs Meta Ads, Google Ads and press features as one team. Google Ads catch them when they search, and a feature is built to be what they find when they look the business up.

The sources above bear on that order. Google's Ad Rank includes expected click-through rate among its quality measures, and the Stanford research indicates that a recognised name can be clicked without paying for the top slot. Blue Leopard Media's view is that coverage is one way to build that recognition. A founder can start with a single feature at $249.

For a founder choosing who to hire, the test is simple. Ask each provider what happens to a searcher who clicks an ad and then looks the name up.