Do you need a Brand campaign in Google Ads?

By: Jyll Saskin Gales, Google Ads Coach

Should you be paying for ads when people are already searching for your business by name? It’s a question I hear often from small business owners and marketers alike. While I can guess how you feel about paying the "brand tax," the decision to run a brand campaign shouldn't be based on a gut feeling.

Instead, it should be a strategic choice to protect your brand, maximize visibility, and ensure potential customers find you easily.

What is a Brand Campaign in Google Ads?

A brand campaign in Google Ads is a Search campaign with keywords related to your brand name. For instance, if someone searches for "Disney+," an ad for Disney+ might appear above the organic search result. This is different from a competitor campaign, where you bid on your competitor's brand name (like Disney bidding on "Netflix").

How to Decide Whether You Need a Brand Campaign

Rather than relying on opinion, you can use your own account data to decide if a brand campaign is necessary. Go to Insights and Reports > Auction Insights to see who else is appearing when your brand terms are searched.

• When to bid: If you see a lot of competition—specifically, at least five different domains or at least two domains with 20-30% impression share—you should be advertising on your brand. If you don't, you make it much cheaper for competitors to steal your bottom-of-funnel leads.

• When to pause: If it’s just you and perhaps one or two others with less than 10% impression share, you likely don't need a dedicated brand campaign.

Why Run a Brand Campaign?

If people are already searching for you, why pay for the click? Here is what the data tells us:

1. Competitor Defense and Incrementality

A study by Haus found that branded search ads provide "incremental lift" (actual extra value) depending on the auction. In auctions with high competition, 82% of brands saw incremental value from advertising on their own name. In low-competition auctions, that number dropped to 35%. When you've spent time and effort making people like you, it is a shame to lose them at the last minute to a competitor over a few pennies.

2. Maximized Visibility (The Shopping Gap)

Even with strong SEO, organic results aren't guaranteed to be at the top, especially with the latest updates to Google's search result layouts. Furthermore, if you are an e-commerce advertiser, remember that Products often appear above Search ads. If you have a branded Search campaign but no branded Shopping presence, a customer searching for you might see a grid of competitor products first.

3. Controlling the Narrative

Brand search isn't just about your name; it’s about variants like "Brand Reviews" or "Brand A vs. Brand B." You want to control the narrative on these terms. In most regions, it is completely legal to use competitor names in your ad text for comparison purposes, provided you aren't pretending to be them. If people are trying to decide between you and a rival, a dedicated campaign can help them make the right choice.

Don't Forget Performance Max

You may be bidding on your brand without even knowing it. Performance Max (PMax) campaigns naturally pick up branded searches.

When you’re just starting a PMax campaign, keep your brand terms in there. PMax needs conversion data to learn, and branded searches provide high-quality signals that help the algorithm understand which audiences and assets work best. If you eventually decide to exclude brand from PMax to have more control, just ensure you have dedicated Search and Shopping campaigns ready to capture that demand elsewhere.