Are Google Ads Brand Campaigns Worth The Investment?

Running a brand campaign is traditionally recommended by PPC managers to protect the brand and company name, and capture high intent customers at lower cost. At the same time, some studies have put the value of brand campaigns into question, while clients may ask why they should be paying for clicks that they may get anyways.

To consider this question, we analyzed 12 months of Google Ads performance across three illustrative client accounts, along with industry research. We find that though there may be narrow examples of cases where a brand campaign is not warranted, a brand campaign still remains a highly valuable, low-cost and high return investment appropriate for most clients as part of their Google Ads account and advertising strategy. The rise of AI further underscores the importance of brand visibility, as AI overviews have further crowded out and reduced the visibility of traditional search. 

What Is a Brand Campaign and Why Do Advertisers Run It?

A brand campaign is a campaign that uses keywords that contain your company name. For example, a hypothetical company called "Acme Furniture" would use keywords with this name, such as “Acme furniture store near me” in its brand campaign. A non-brand campaign would target searches such as ‘furniture store near me.” The brand search is originated by people familiar with the company, while the non-brand search is people more generally searching for the product or service. 

PPC agencies generally recommend running a separate brand campaign alongside non-brand campaigns in order to: 

• Capture searches among customers looking for that specific business who are more likely to convert.

• Protect against competitors who may be bidding on your name, with your organic listing buried underneath.

• Control search messaging, highlighting specific promos and products, and ensure the ability to use specific landing pages and CTA which are not easily controlled or updated with organic listings.   

• Keep up with the AI driven evolution, given that AI overviews may appear above organic listings, pushing organic listings further down the page. 

• Generate higher and more efficient conversions compared to generic searches. 

• Control reputation, in cases when you may have low ratings that you want to suppress with an ad.

  
  

What Does Research Say About Brand Campaigns?

Multiple studies show the value of brand ads. In particular, research shows that appearing in both paid and organic search results can generate more traffic and conversions than relying on organic listings alone. A study found that displaying paid and organic listings together increased combined click-through rates from 20.1% to 25.2%, improved conversion rates by 12%, and revenue by 54% compared with organic listings alone. 

At the same time, some research suggests that branded advertising is not always equally valuable. For example, a 2015 study of eBay found that paid search advertising on its brand name generated little incremental traffic or sales, as most customers would have reached eBay through organic search results anyway. However, an attempt to replicate this study with a less well known but still established company found markedly different results, with more than half the traffic lost when paid search was turned off. 

It is also important to consider that commonly cited studies predate AI overviews, which are increasingly putting organic listings down the page and are reducing click-through rates for organic results. 

Study	Key findings	Implications for brand campaigns
Organic and Sponsored Search Advertising	Displaying paid and organic listings together increased click-through rates from 20.1% to 25.2%, improved conversions by about 12%, and revenue by 54% compared with organic listings alone.	Paid and organic listings can reinforce one another, potentially generating additional traffic and conversions.
Search Ad Incrementality	Across 390 experiments, 50% of paid search clicks were incremental even when advertisers ranked first organically.	A top organic ranking doesn't necessarily eliminate the benefits of paid search.
Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Ads	An eBay study found that brand keyword advertising had no statistically significant impact on sales, as organic traffic substituted for paid clicks.	Well-known brands with strong organic presence may see limited incremental benefit from branded ads.
Paid Search Advertising Field Experiment	Trying to replicate the eBay experiment, this study found that about half of the traffic going to Edmunds.com through branded search still flowed when it relied only on organic search.	Brand campaigns can generate substantial additional traffic, even for established companies.
Brand Keyword Competition	Brand ads increased clicks by only 1–4% without competing ads. But in competitive settings without advertising, competitors captured 18–42% of clicks.	Brand campaigns may have less value without competition but provide important benefits when competitors advertise.
Do Brands Need Search Advertising?	Field experiments involving 8 small brands found no statistically significant sales impact from pausing branded search advertising.	Some advertisers may be able to reduce brand spending without impact on sales.

What Does Our Own Client Data Show?

To review the impact of brand campaigns in our own account, we analyzed 12 months of Google Ads data for 3 client accounts in different industries- e-commerce, professional services, and hospitality. The search compared brand search campaigns versus non-brand search campaigns, excluding other campaign types such as Pmax or Demand Gen. 

Our data shows that Brand campaigns delivered markedly higher performance compared to non-brand campaigns across the three industries analyzed.

Brand Search also generated about 20% more reported conversions while spending 47% less than non-brand Search across the three accounts.

When A Brand Campaign May Be Less Valuable

While the above results are compelling, there are a few narrow instances in which a brand campaign may be less valuable, including: 

• When you're a large brand with dominant brand name recognition, a highly loyal customer base, and dominant organic search rankings. In these cases, a customer is typing in your name in search instead of going to your site directly, costing you an unnecessary click since they would have gone to your site anyway.

• The budget is highly constrained.

• When facing rising brand cost-per-clicks (CPCs), especially through PMAX

• When limited brand volume makes running a campaign not worth it.

  
  

If you are running a brand campaign and want to know how you would do without it, a good way to test this is through a controlled experiment, in which you pause the brand campaign either entirely or for specific geographies for a defined period of time (say 2 weeks). This is best done during a low season period for your business or industry to minimize potential negative impact.

Key Considerations for Brand Campaigns

As you consider whether to run a brand campaign and what share of advertising budget to allocate to it, here are key questions to consider:  

Factor	Key Questions to Ask
Competitors	Are competitors bidding on your brand name or appearing above your organic listings?
Organic Visibility & AI	Does your business rank prominently, and how do you retain visibility amidst the rise of AI overviews?
Campaign Performance	How do brand conversion rates, CPA, and ROAS compare between brand and non-brand campaigns?
Incremental Value	Do you have concrete data to assess how likely customers are to convert through organic search without clicking a paid brand ad?
Budget Allocation	Could additional spending on non-brand campaigns generate more new customers? Would reducing spend on a brand campaign lose customers?
Brand Control & Image	Do you need to highlight offers, products, or specific landing pages? Are there reputational considerations that warrant greater control?
Cross-Campaign Effects	To what extent are Performance Max, Shopping, or other Search campaigns capturing branded traffic?

In Conclusion

Overall, our data makes a compelling case for the value of brand campaigns, though their relative weight and importance in a particular account will depend on multiple factors, including, among others, competitor behavior, organic search visibility, and available budget.

If you’d like to discuss how best to structure your account with a Google Ads expert, including how the brand campaign should fit into your strategy, we’d be happy to talk.