We ran this study to find out if running paid ads cannibalize organic traffic or not.
Most SEOs are against bidding on branded terms because it is believed that buying paid ads cannibalizes organic traffic and it can also impact attribution for conversions and revenue. Paid advertisers believe there is an uplift in overall traffic. Who is right?
Let’s dig in and see what the data says, but first I want to give a huge thanks to our data scientist Xibeijia Guan for doing all the hard data parts of this study and to our CMO Tim Soulo for his input.
We looked at 3 months of ad data in Ahrefs across ~2.3 million keywords from June 1, 2024, to August 31, 2024.
Quick facts:
- 46.7% of the queries were branded
- 59.5% of companies bid on their own branded terms
- In 63.9% of cases, the brand was the only bidder
![running ads results in more overall traffic](https://ahrefs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/word-image-184665-1.png)
Paid ads substantially increase the median traffic, though the variability also increases.
![paid ads boost total traffic for branded queries](https://ahrefs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/word-image-184665-3.png)
There’s not much difference in standardized values.
![median standard traffic is about the same](https://ahrefs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/word-image-184665-5.png)
Ads do not significantly increase the median standardized traffic for non-branded queries.
![no evidence of traffic uplift or traffic cannibalization](https://ahrefs.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/word-image-184665-6.png)