Brand Term Targeting is now available on Walmart - here’s what you need to know

Key Takeaways:

• Flywheel recommends taking a careful approach to brand term targeting, actively reviewing competitor ad strategy and potential investment size before beginning any brand term targeting strategies.
• Brands now have an additional method to reach new consumers, but this can come at the cost of media efficiency as CPC’s will quickly rise against brand keywords if brand term targeting occurs within your branded search traffic. 
• As brand term targeting is an exact match only capability, brands will know if they are actively being targeted and bidding wars can easily begin. In order to retain spend efficiency on branded keywords, thoughtful and strategic use of competitor keyword bidding is recommended.

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Here’s what we know:

Suppliers and Sellers can now advertise their products on competitor brand keywords with search investments. Relevancy hurdles operate differently for brand term targeting, and your item does NOT need to be organically visible on the keyword of choice to be able to serve an ad against it unlike traditional sponsored products. As long as the item advertised is relevant to the category of competitor branded keyword bid against, it can potentially serve.

The specifics:

• Ad Slots 1 and 2 are protected, and brand term targeting cannot occur here
• Brand term targeting can only happen with Exact match bidding
• Technically any keyword can be bid against, but category must be relevant to have the ad serve
• CPC’s to serve on a competitor keyword that the brand is actively protecting (placing their own ads) are expected to be quite high

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What should my brand be doing?

While defending your brand from competitors and increasing your share and new to brand consumers via brand targeting seem attractive, Flywheel recommends taking a careful approach to brand term targeting, actively reviewing competitor ad strategy and potential investment size before beginning any brand term targeting strategies. We expect media efficiency to be impacted by rising CPCs on branded keywords as brand term targeting occurs within your branded search traffic.

Flywheel also expects defending your own brand to be significantly less expensive than to brand target others which means that granular monitoring of Paid SOV will be critical. Brands should additionally keep a close eye on their digital shelf, looking for competitive activity on products facing any operational weaknesses such as pricing or inventory. We do not expect search grids to be impacted right away as brand term targeting will require notable investment and shifting of non-branded media funds.

For help implementing a strategic competitor keyword targeting strategy focused on new to brand acquisition and protecting your digital shelf from competitive brand term targeting, reach out to Flywheel’s experts today.