How long will the Mexican standoff last?

It was reported in this week’s Marketing that PPC managers are locked & loaded, following Google’s abolition of brand protection on keyword bidding in April this year, but are yet to draw their weapons.

There are a few choices. Start bidding on your competitors' brand terms to proliferate some of their traffic. This appears to have more appeal for the smaller businesses with less brand awareness, particularly where generic click costs are high, as we see in financial services, insurance, and specialist cosmetic surgery such as laser eye surgery.

Another option is to keep the guns holstered and all play nicely, which is happening, at the moment, in the majority of cases. What we are seeing is respect amongst the bigger players and, as a result, CPCs are remaining as low as they were pre-April's rule change.

With smaller players we're seeing increased competition on brand terms and, as you would expect, this is driving up the click costs without necessarily increasing conversions at the other end, in most instances.

Where we are seeing it work is with clients who have a powerful comparison message and therefore have a legitimate reason to be bidding on the competitions' brand terms and, if this is the case, it can yield returns as good as the generic phrases.

Our only concern is this, for how much longer will the big players sit aside whilst the smaller companies continue their aggression on competitive brand terms?

If the point comes where all bets are off, the guns are unleashed and all-out war is waged across brand terms, the Google Corral could play host to one of the biggest showdowns of all time, and I've a feeling they won't do too bad out of it!