Brand Awareness as a Structural Market Condition: Non-Branded Paid Search in B2B Markets

Abstract

Performance marketing is established as a dominant paradigm in terms of evaluating digital investments in markets. In this field, several efficiency measurements are used. Moreover, several of these are relative measures which cannot capture the absolute commercial outcomes and can lead to wrong insights into markets with different demand structures. This study examines absolute revenue from non branded paid search as the primary commercial outcome, instead of relative efficiency measures. The study investigates how brand awareness moderates the relation between ad spend and revenue in international B2B markets. The study finds that ad spend has a positive and significant effect on revenue, which is stable over all markets. The moderating effect of brand awareness was found to be positive but not significant in the primary model, however brand awareness was found to have a delayed effect. This indicates that brand awareness functions as an accumulated structural condition in markets instead of a primary driver. The study contributes theoretically by conceptualizing brand awareness as an accumulated structural market condition, rather than an immediate moderator, with implications for how customer-based brand equity (CBBE) frameworks should be applied in longitudinal B2B research contexts.