WebProNews

Dear Jason, for those of us that do advertising ( from 10.00 per day to 25000+ ) there is no secret that Google looks at whom is ranking highest to get accounts or to increase our spends ....

it's rather simple, if you are the owner of a brand and you rank #1 on the serps, then you want to protect that rank with advertising, you want that advertising to be #1 also.

Now if you are a marketer, you would spend the 10 minutes to research that brand and find out where they don't protect "the brand" that's where you get your clicks from.

Now it's just common sense, the guy that buy the top slot of "the brand" most likely will also invest in keeping that keyword ranking.

take a look at what shoe-money did. He owns the "shoe-money" trademark, filed to Google for protection against abuse as a biddable keyword, owns the slot now for shoe-money and does not even have to compete anymore.

another good example is Godiva chocolate, ( this is a category that I have to compete in ). they own the entire page above the fold, they defend their brand by owning # 1 spot ( even at 50.00 per click on search they still own it ) .... anyway best of luck -mojomike