Reach Competitor Shoppers With Search Conquesting

Use conquesting to grow reach and market share rather than to improve efficiency:

• Acquire new customers. Reach shoppers who are currently considering a competitor, and drive new-to-brand sales.

• Reach shoppers with strong purchase intent. A shopper searching a competitor brand is close to buying, so your ad reaches them while they are still deciding.

• Grow share against specific competitors. Direct spend at the competitor brands you want to compete with.

• Increase visibility in crowded categories. Where the retailer allows it, conquesting makes your ads eligible on additional high-intent searches, increasing the inventory you can access beyond your own branded and generic coverage.

Conquesting works in both directions. Your competitors can bid on your branded keywords in the same way you bid on theirs.

Bidding on your own branded terms does three things:

• Reduces the risk of losing shoppers on your own brand terms. A shopper searching your brand is ready to buy, and a competitor's ad can reach them before you do.

• Controls which of your products appear on your branded searches. You choose what shows, such as top sellers, higher-margin items, or seasonal priorities, rather than leaving it to the retailer's organic ranking.

• Usually costs less. Where competition on your brand terms is limited, branded CPCs are typically low.

To learn more, please see Best Practices for Keyword Bidding for branded versus non-branded bidding strategy.

In Step 2 of line item creation you choose which types of keywords your line item targets. There are three options:

You cannot change a line item's keyword targeting strategy after it has launched. In the line item editing workflow the three options will be greyed out.

We recommend deciding before you launch. If you need a different strategy later, create a new line item, or duplicate the existing one and set the strategy on the copy.

What you can still change at any time:

• Negative keywords: add or remove them whenever you like.

• Submitted keywords: add custom keywords for retailer approval.

To learn more, please see Edit or Duplicate a Sponsored Products Line Item for the editing workflow.

The three options give you two practical setup approaches.

Option 1: One Consolidated Line Item

Create a single line item with the strategy set to Generic, Branded, and Conquesting.

• Fewer line items to manage.

• Simple, and suitable for smaller or early-stage programmes.

The limitation: Conquesting keywords often receive very little spend in a consolidated setup. They tend to have a lower predicted click-through and conversion rate than the brand the shopper actually searched for, so the engine directs spend elsewhere within the line item. This can prevent your conquesting activity from scaling.

If you take this route, apply higher keyword bid overrides on the conquesting keywords specifically. That bids up only the conquesting terms without inflating your generic and branded bids.

Option 2 (Recommended): Two Parallel Line Items

Create two line items that run alongside each other: one set to Generic and Branded, one set to Conquesting.

We recommend this approach because conquesting and non-conquesting keywords serve different purposes and need different bids. Separating them gives you:

• Control by objective. Manage budget, bidding and optimization independently for generic and branded intent versus conquesting intent.

• Appropriate bidding for conquesting. Conquesting needs higher CPCs, because the brand the shopper searched for is more relevant to that query than yours. A dedicated line item lets you bid higher without affecting your other keyword types.

• Simpler reporting. Conquesting results are easier to read when they are not combined with branded and generic activity.

• Compatibility with Adaptive CPC. On a dedicated conquesting line item you can use Adaptive CPC and set a higher Max CPC at line item level, with no keyword overrides needed.

Conquesting line items usually need higher cost-per-click bids than your generic and branded activity, because a shopper searching for a competitor is less likely to click your ad.

On a conquesting-only line item:

• With Standard bidding, set a higher line item CPC than the CPC on your generic and branded line item.

• With Adaptive CPC, set a higher Max CPC.

On a consolidated line item, use keyword bid overrides on the conquesting keywords rather than raising the line item CPC for everything.

On your generic and branded line item:

• Set bids and budgets from observed performance, as you would normally, segmenting by keyword or category performance and adjusting over time.

• Keep branded coverage always-on, at the relatively low CPCs that limited competition usually allows.

• Raise bids or budgets on branded keywords if competitors start conquesting your brand.

To learn more, please see Choose a Bidding Strategy for Sponsored Products for how to set your opening bid, and Adjust Your Sponsored Products Bids for keyword bid overrides.

Create separate line items for each product category. Do not mix unrelated categories, such as TVs, fridges, and headphones in one line item.

Keywords must be relevant to every product in the line item, or they are rejected:

• What if I submit a conquesting keyword for a line item with multiple categories? If it is approved, it applies to every product in the line item, which can cause irrelevant targeting.

• Will a keyword be approved if it is relevant to only some products? No. It must be relevant to all of them.

• Could I use "Bose" on a Samsung line item holding both fridges and headphones? No. Even though it matches the headphones, it will be rejected.

Conquesting performs best in single-category line items, where every keyword is relevant to every product. If you want different keyword rules for different product types, put those products in their own line items.

Commerce Max does not detect when two brands belong to the same parent company, such as Maybelline and NYX Cosmetics under L'Oréal. Without negative keywords, your own brands can bid against each other.

If you do not want to bid on a sister brand's branded keywords, add those keywords as negatives on your conquesting line items.

We recommend the following routine:

• Review keyword-level reporting regularly, and exclude any terms you do not want.

• Set a recurring audit every two weeks, or monthly.

• Check the retailer's site periodically to see which competitors are bidding on your brand terms, or on the same competitor terms as you.

• Use what you find to maintain coverage on your own brand terms and to prioritise the most competitive keywords.

To learn more, please see Exclude Keywords With Negative Keyword Targeting for how to add them.

Every Sponsored Products impression is classified as it serves, by the type of keyword that triggered it:

• Generic: non-branded, category-level searches such as "soft drinks" or "sparkling water".

• Branded: your own brand or product name, such as "Pepsi".

• Conquesting: a competitor brand search, such as "Coca-Cola".

You can report on performance by keyword type, which lets you see what conquesting delivered separately from the rest of your activity. To learn more, please see Share of Voice by Keyword.

What Conquesting Metrics Cannot Tell You

Conquesting metrics have limits that affect how you read the results.

They do not prove incrementality. The metrics show what conquesting delivered, not whether that revenue was additional or would have come to you anyway. Comparing periods before and after launch gives an indication, not proof.

Brand detection is not perfect. Terms are classified by automated brand detection. Some terms that look generic may be classified as branded, and some brand variations or abbreviations may be missed.

New-to-brand is not a like-for-like measure. New-to-brand data is available in some retailer contexts but is not consistent or comparable across retailers, and definitions differ. Do not compare it between retailers as though it were one metric.