Ask HN: Why do companies buy ads when they are the top result in search?

It increases the clickable area that will result in a visit to your site, it blocks others from taking up any of that critical real estate (via ads or organic rank), and like others have said, it's probably relatively cheap for the brand owner to bid on their own brand.

I think increasing the clickable area is pretty important, especially with mobile users.

And customers, since they know it's an ad, might be nice and click on the organic link instead. :-)

This reflects the core argument to do this...but the truth is more subtle. Agencies and in house SEM teams are inherently biased to want to spend on brand terms because a) they can attribute more sales to their channel and b) Justify more spend which equals more revenue for most agencies...

I am not discounting the validity of the argument to bid on brand terms and I bid on brand terms for most of my clients...but I always disclose this inherent bias before making a recommendation...

In truth, every brand should test for themselves how it impacts their bottom line and if protecting their brand is worth the spend...

------ The cynical voice in my head thinks that most digital advertising today is really ad tech companies hijacking revenue that brands earned already...and if not for competitors using that same tech, no one really needs it... (i.e. remarketing, custom audiences, branded search, first party data, etc...)

In reality, I actively spend my clients money on these tactics and congratulate myself on the results I generate for them... but in the back of my mind I am waiting for the ad tech bubble to burst and media companies disappearing and being replaced by branded content, content marketing, etc...

Edit:spelling

If you don't advertise on your brand keywords, your competitor will. We spend quiet a lot on our brand keywords to avoid competitor siphoning off our brand traffic.

My experience with Google ads was that it is very easy to accidentally get them to display your ad in this way, without you knowing it.

You choose a list of terms you want to show your ad in, but by default Google will also put your ad up in "related" searches. If your company or product is already popular enough, it's likely to end up in the related searches for the terms you chose.

This cost me quite a bit of money before I found out I was wasting money on these ads by accident.

Isnt bidding on trademarked keywords forbidden on google these days?