“Branded” keywords are usually your most profitable segment in a Google Ads account. Your Branded keywords can easily account for more than 75%+ of your Google Ads revenue, while costing relatively very little.
| Cost | Revenue | ROAS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand | $ 3,500 | $ 85,000 | 24.0 |
| Non-Brand | $17,500 | $ 35,000 | 2.0 |
| Total | $21,000 | $120,000 | 5.7 |
Branded keywords usually have a great ROAS that makes the account as a whole look like it’s performing amazing! Plus, it makes you look like a marketing genius.
You are not a Genius
The performance is an illusion
The revenue is not real
The bad news, unfortunately, is that you are not a genius. All that extra money you think you’re making is an illusion. It is not real. It is revenue you have stolen from Organic Search.
You just shifted revenue from one bucket into another. You didn’t make any “new” money. This is NOT incremental revenue for your business.
You would have captured this revenue anyway, for free, via your organic search results. You probably rank #1 organically for your own brand, and most users will click on your organic link in the absence of a paid ad.
When you turn off your ad spend, your Branded search revenue gets re-allocated to the Organic Search bucket:
Organic vs Paid Revenue when ad spend goes to zero
So when spending on Branded search terms, you’re just paying for customers that would have purchased anyway. And Google Ads is taking the credit.
But that DOES NOT mean you should turn off your Branded search campaigns…
Playing Defence
Branded campaigns are a good defense against competitors getting an easy and cheap placement on your Brand search term.
So keep them running, but don’t pay too much.
Reduce your bids and budgets, and keep a close eye on your Cost of Aquisition and Return on Ad Spend.
Remember, it’s not making you money, but it’s good protection against competitors. So keep them running.
Get Real with your Reporting
Never include Brand Revenue when reporting on your digital marketing performance.
Including Branded search revenue in your reporting will create a distorted view of reality. Everything looks better. But you are fooling yourself, and misleading anyone reading the reports.
Segment your
Campaigns Properly
Your need separate Brand vs Non-Brand Campaigns to easily separate branded spend & revenue vs non-brand spend & revenue.
Make sure there are no overlaps. Explicitly exclude your Brand search terms from your non-brand campaigns
Give PMax a punch in the gut…
PMax campaigns often seem to perform well, but they’re actually just generating all this fake-performance via Branded search.
So be sure to explicitly exclude your Brand terms from PMax.
Sure, PMax performance will suffer, and will suck, but that’s what PMax deserves. So don’t feel bad. Make PMax work for its sales…
See also: Performance Max Sucks
Working with Agencies
Don’t be a Sucker
Most agencies will leverage Brand search terms to try to inflate their performance results. It makes them look good, which makes you foolishly spend more money with them. Don’t be a sucker — force them to exclude Brand search from their reporting.
See also: 5 Red Flags that your Ad Agency is ripping you off
The Opportunity
Non-Branded Search
Non-Branded Search and Shopping is where your true incremental growth opportunity lies. Focus on that. It’s hard to do profitably, but most good things are.
Ad Heretic 
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