Super Bowl Advertisers Support Campaigns by Bidding on Themes in Paid Search

Posted by Dan Malachowski, Product Marketing Manager

It’s always important to support major offline ad campaigns with paid search.  This means bidding on your brand and product name, as well as the themes around your campaign.  Bidding on campaign themes is particularly important because you’re not likely to have coverage on those themes in natural search, like you would on your brand or product names. 

For instance, E*TRADE supported its baby commercials by bidding on the term “milkaholic,” a term that ETRADE.com is not likely to rank for in natural search.  By bidding on “milkaholic,” E*TRADE was able to capture the search demand created by its ad by helping consumers easily find what they were looking for through paid search:

 

Google supported its “Search On” ad by bidding on the term “search on” and sending searchers to a YouTube landing page with more search stories like the one featured in the commercial:

Dockers helped people figure out how to get their free pants by bidding on “wear the pants,” the theme of its commercial:

And Denny’s helped people find free breakfast by bidding on “free breakfast”:

Cars.com—after learning its lesson from last year—bid on “Timothy Richman,” the main character of their Super Bowl commercial.  “Timothy Richman” ranked #20 on Google Trends’ hottest searchers during the fourth quarter of the game:

 

These examples show that when planning a Super Bowl campaign, it’s important to imagine how your consumers will express interest in that campaign—one way being searching on themes around the campaign.