The Amazon Curveball in Orthofeet’s Brand Search Test

Brand search is a common source of skepticism for growth marketers. If someone is already searching for your brand and no other competitors are bidding on your terms, a branded ad is typically only competing with your own organic results. So when footwear brand, Orthofeet, kicked off their incrementality practice with Haus, brand search was the first channel they put to the test. As an omnichannel brand selling primarily through Shopify and Amazon, they designed their test to measure the true incremental impact of branded search across both platforms.

Orthofeet set up a two-cell geo test with a holdout via the Haus app. Brand search remained active in 70% of the U.S. (the treatment group) and was paused in the remaining 30% (the control group) for two weeks. Haus then measured the incremental revenue generated in the regions where brand search remained active.

Orthofeet saw a 1.36% lift in revenue at a positive iROAS (> $1). But when you zoom in on the Amazon side of the equation, a bigger story unfolds. In the treatment regions, Amazon saw a -2.7% lift (negative lift is not something we see everyday). In total, omnichannel business lift was only 0.26% with an inefficient iROAS (less than $1). 

What does that mean? In the control regions where brand search was turned off, Amazon aggressively bid on "Orthofeet" terms, swooping in to capture demand and drive purchases on their platform. But in the treatment regions, where DTC brand search remained active, Orthofeet was able to defend those branded searches—keeping more shoppers on their Shopify site instead of losing them to Amazon.

With these results in mind, Measurement Strategy Lead at Haus, Hoon Hong, reminds us that tracking impact across all your channels is paramount for an omnichannel brand.

"If you're not tracking lift across both Amazon and DTC, it could easily lead to a false positive on a branded search test. Negative lift on a sales channel isn't something we see often, but it intuitively makes sense when you think about the interplay between dot com and Amazon."
— Hoon Hong, Measurement Strategist at Haus. 

Many consider brand search a defense tactic against competitor brands but now we see it also can be a margin defense strategy as well. Since Amazon bidding isn’t within a brand’s control, keeping DTC brand search active may be a strategic way to protect margins and retain direct customer relationships. At the end of the day, it comes down to understanding the incrementality of brand search across all your sales channels and weighing that against your margin profile to make an informed decision about whether it’s worth the spend.