Paid Search Leads to Competitive 'Drafting' and 'Hijacking' Strategies

[mandy]

Competitiveness in the emerging paid search landscape spawns controversial tactics such as the two practices loosely termed "hijacking" and "drafting" by some industry insiders. While some search engine marketing (SEM) firms object to the strategies, others say they're fair game.

The two terms are used almost interchangeably in reference to search; subtleties differentiate one from the other. Peter Hershberg, managing partner at Reprise Media, defines hijacking as when a competitor outranks an advertiser's campaign by outbidding them. He views drafting as a case where an advertiser conducts a search marketing campaign and a competitor takes advantage of the traffic by bidding on related terms.

full article: http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3590596