Reading SEM Tea Leaves

I think you can tell a lot about a company from who's trying to glob onto their brand keyword traffic. My latest perousal of SEM firms' brand keyword searches revealed the following:

SEMs bidding on AtlasOnePoint
SearchForce
KeywordMa
BidHero
BetterPPC
Blackfoot
Adisem
Atlas itself (positions 5 & 7)

SEMs bidding on Efficient Frontier
SearchForce (stopped since this blog posting)
iCrossing
SearchRev (stopped since I asked them, thanks!)
Adisem

SEMs bidding on Did-It
SearchForce
KeywordMax
Did-It itself

SEMs bidding on BidBuddy (UK SEM tool from The Search Works)
SearchForce
Adisem

I applaud Performics, Did-It and my own firm Efficient Frontier for being the only major SEMs not resorting to such dishonorable tactics. We SEM's should be the moral compass in the unpoliced world that is search engine marketing, not spineless jellyfishes like the firms listed above.