Counterfeiters Lowering CPC’s

Big brands are facing increasing competition from counterfeit products appearing in the PPC listings. Despite efforts to stop the sellers of counterfeit goods advertising in AdWords, fake goods are still able to make their way into the listings.

Try typing ‘ghd’ or ‘ugg boots’ into Google. You will see many PPC ads (usually using slightly dubious domains), undercutting the selling price of the rest of the market.

’75% Sale!!!’ . . . Really??? If it’s too good to be true, it’s probably counterfeit.

How do these ads influence consumer behaviour? Are consumers clicking on yours ad more due to confusion in the market place? Or are they pushing genuine resellers of your products out of the Adwords listings? Are they artificially inflating your CPC’s? These are all common questions brands that have become victim to counterfeiters fraud ask themselves regularly.

But can counterfeiters actually be helping you? At Jam Search we are investigating the relationship between these ads & the genuine brands CPC. In theory competition should drive the entire markets CPC’s higher, however what if the CTR for these ads are so low it’s actually helping you?

Confused? If the counterfeiters relative CTR is very low, the difference between your brand CTR and the rest of the market is greater, so does this mean you have a better Quality Score? If you follow Adwords logic, this seems to make sense. We are seeing such a patten with one of our current clients. We will update you soon after more investigation!