Some merchants are still not convinced that they should be bidding on their own brand keywords when running a PPC campaign. I believe they should, but don’t take my word for it, take Google’s. When searching recently for some of Google’s applications, i noticed the following ad:

One could argue that it doesn’t cost Google anything to advertise on its own site but there is still an opportunity cost involved in not having someone else’s ad displayed there. Yet Google obviously thinks it is worth it because the ad stands out a lot more than the organic listing and they are able to control the message they convey to the user a lot better. When you are looking for a place to download Google talk, which link would you prefer?