• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, June 22, 2018

Do a search on Google or Bing to find there is no shortage of NBA Finals memorability being auctioned. In fact, JR Smith's jersey from Game One reportedly sold for a whopping $23,500. Stephen Curry's NBA Finals mouthguard from Game Four could sell for as much as $25,000.

The NBA Finals might have wrapped up on June 17, when the Golden State Warriors overtook the Cleveland Cavaliers to claim the 2018 championship. But Adthena kept the momentum. The company analyzed thousands of paid-search ads and organic listings across desktop and mobile in the week leading up to and throughout the NBA Finals. The idea was to find the winners and losers in search advertising and determine the terms that companies invested in.

Tying in the Cleveland Cavaliers' involvement in the final series, Kayak and Expedia came out the biggest winners in terms of click share during the Finals series for this term. Expedia dominated the term “Flights to Cleveland” with a click-share rate of at least 27% throughout the final games.

Expedia’s click share sank from a high of 34% on May 31 to a low of 27% on June 6. That’s when Kayak began making a bigger push on the search term.

As interest grew around the NBA and virtual reality, Intel dominated the term “NBA VR” with nearly 100% of the click-share from May 31 to June 5. Yet despite its early dominance, Intel’s click share fell. NextVR overtook on the “NBA VR” search term in just two days.

NextVR began competing on the “NBA VR” term on June 6, and immediately gained a click share of 32%. By June 8, NextVR briefly surpassing Intel in terms of click share on June 7 with 51% versus 48%, respectively, but Intel regained the lead on June 8 with 51% versus NextVR’s 49%.