For most marketers, a paid search campaign on your brand and trademark terms is pretty much a sure thing. Between the benefits of brand reinforcement, the ability to control messaging, and the additional real estate offered by an ad itself along with additional elements now available in Google like site links and product extensions, this type of campaign should typically be one of your most efficient and powerful marketing channels.
But… the successfulness of your brand and trademark terms also makes them very attractive to others who may want to take away your traffic. Resellers, affiliates, and competitors all have reasons to potentially bid on your trademark terms, and each can damage the effectiveness of your campaign in different ways (either purposefully or not.)
Let’s start with resellers. If products with your brand(s) are available at other online merchants, it makes sense that these merchants would want to advertise on searches for relevant terms so that they can generate sales from their sites. The problem is that their ads could start to outrank yours or start to drive up your CPCs if not monitored. And there’s a risk that potential buyers may not purchase your product from a reseller if it has strong competition from other brands on that site.