What's the cost for every click?

A new study has been released that demonstrates spend on branded keywords is far higher than it needs to be.

The research comes from Atlas, now a division of Microsoft. It finds that money spent on branded keywords, which point to an official corporate  website, are often wasted. That's because people are often looking for that site anyway and would have found it just an inch below in the organic search results.

The study's conclusions include advising buyers not to focus as sharply on branded keywords in future campaigns. While they are an important part of an overall package, the bids on such keywords do not need to be as high.

Instead, companies should concentrate on raising the organic search rankings for searches on branded terms.