Analysing A Real PPC Campaign – eBay

With the internet growing at a rapid rate of knots, it could be seen that online auctions have benefited the most from the recent recession due to the fact more and more people are looking to cheaper alternatives than high street RRP prices. When it comes to the biggest online auction website, eBay, and PPC campaigns, I did scratch my head and wonder why they made one to begin with. Surely, if you are ranked number one on Google, you don’t need to pay extra for a PPC campaign? I feel that analysing eBay’s PPC campaign will prove to be a lot valuable to advertisers than analysing other businesses such as and Apple.
 
To begin with, I will explain to you the situation. When I search (from the UK) ‘eBay’ on Google, this is what I see:

 
As you can see, the highest ranked page/s is from eBay.co.uk with six categories below the homepage. To begin with, this is great news for eBay. They have achieved an impressive 6/10 page rank which is clear from eBay being ranked first for their own keywords. As well as this, from having such a strong page rank will result in eBay being the highest in Google search results for less related keywords meaning that ultimately, they will gain more traffic and therefore more potential sales.
 
The part that was confusing was the fact that eBay thought it was necessary to bid for their own keyword being ‘eBay’. I thought this primarily because:

• There are no other competitors –  This makes clear it is not a defence strategy from eBay. If there were other companies that were bidding for the keyword ‘eBay’, then it makes sense to outbid them: you can’t let competitors gain traffic from your own keywords.
• They have the #1 spot on organic Google – The first search result is eBay themselves with six categories. Therefore, why does eBay need to create a PPC campaign to become placed higher than the #1 organic spot on Google?
• They are wasting money – If the PPC advert was not there, the traffic from the keyword ‘eBay’ will click onto the organic free search result for eBay. However, the fact that they have a PPC advert above it means that the free traffic to their website from Google searching for ‘eBay’ might turn out to have a cost involved with it if the traffic decides to click on the PPC advert rather than the organic link.

However, there is some logic to their campaign. From making themselves the highest bidder for their own keywords, they will have stopped others from gaining the number one spot. It may seem like I am contradicting the first bullet point but I’m not. From eBay bidding for eBay, it will put competitors off bidding for the same keyword because it is extremely unlikely they will outbid eBay. Therefore, from the competitor’s perspective, there is no point in attempting to compete.
 
As well as this, eBay’s PPC advert displays information which organic traffic cannot. For a start, there is a 4/5 star rating for eBay from 1,716 reviewers making clear that eBay is a good website. They have as their description, ‘We are behind you all the way eBay Buyer Protection’. Fraud on the internet happens very often. From eBay portraying themselves as a secure and cheap website will help bring more people onto their website. Ultimately, a PPC can display more informative, persuasive and useful information to web users that will encourage them to visit the webpage.