The Hidden Pitfalls of Brand Bidding in Google Ads

Brand bidding gets talked about in very simplistic terms: “You have to protect your brand.” or “It’s a waste of money.”

The truth, is always is more nuanced than that. Over the years, I have believed that there’s a balance to be struck, yet we consistently see the balance to be off.

Brand bidding is important in 2026

Let’s start with balance, brand bidding can absolutely be effective. With aggressive competitors, broad match expansion, and the ever-widening reach of Performance Max, it is easier than ever for other advertisers to appear on your branded searches.

If someone searches your company name and sees:

• A competitor ad
• A marketplace listing
• A comparison site

It’s not a neutral search results any more. It’s a competitive space where you’re fighting for visibility.

Strategically bidding on your brand can:

• Protect high-intent traffic
• Control messaging
• Defend against competitors
• Improve SERP real estate

In many industries, it’s simply smart defensive marketing, yet this strategy is where things can get dangerous.

The Over-Investment Trap

Brand search is the easiest traffic to capture in your performance account as we know it converts well, has lower CPAs, is cheaper generally and can really add sparkle to the monthly reporting figures.

Though, herein lies the problem. Brand traffic is the results of wider marketing activity, the upper funnel work done by display, audio, TV, print, point of sale activity. Brand demand is not the driver of marketing – I would argue that brand search is a valuable KPI for these other activities. For example, if you run TV or YouTube, do we see an uplift in brand searches; this can then be used to measure the impact of that activity.

So from a performance marketing perspective, if your account becomes overly reliant on brand searches:

• You aren’t growing demand.
• You’re capitalising on existing demand.
• Your visibility outside brand stagnates.

If brand search volume isn’t increasing over time, your total growth ceiling has a limit, you, therefore are not scaling within the boundaries of the entire marketplace.

Performance Max: The Silent Brand Vacuum

This is where things get more subtle.

Performance Max (and broad match search) are extremely good at finding conversions, so if your brand terms convert best, which it almost always does, the algorithm will gravitate towards it but this can be dangerous as the system optimises budget towards brand spend the results begin to skew. Your results start to look fantastic on your reporting dashboards, you’re getting more traffic that is converting and CPA is lowering but in reality you’re not acquiring new customers only those that already know of you. In PPC terms, I call this strategic stagnation, the algorithm isn’t working hard enough for you. All it is thinking is, ‘where is conversion probability the highest?’ It’s no surprise, brand traffic will win this game every time. Unfortunately this creates a negative feedback loop, which pushes the account into a downward spiral:

1. Brand converts best
2. Algorithm pushes more budget there
3. Performance improves
4. Budget increases
5. Algorithm doubles down on brand

During this time, non-brand visibility quietly shrinks, competitors get a march on your brand, hoovering up new customers and bringing them into their sphere of influence. Further to this, these competitors are build up data, which as per my recent presentation about the importance of data gives them a huge competitive advantage.

Yet no one notices, because unless the account is really being scrutinised and properly reported on, the numbers look good, however the growth begins to stall as the business hits a ceiling.

The Bigger Question: Are You Building Demand?

This is where the real conversation starts and in my opinion, it’s one of the most important steps: if brand search volume isn’t growing what should you do? The good news is that, it’s not complicated, but you should start by asking the following questions

• Are we investing in upper funnel?
• Are we visible outside our own name?
• Are we reaching new audiences?
• Are we educating the market?

If the answer to these questions is no, it’s time for a rethink. At the forefront of your mind remember that Google Ads, particularly brand search is mostly demand capture. So if you don’t build demand elsewhere, you are competing over the same finite pool forever.

Sustainable Performance Growth Requires More Than Brand

To grow beyond brand, I advise our clients that non-brand search must be properly funded and optimised, while Performance Max campaigns need to be structured with care, including the use of exclusions where appropriate.

Brand and non-brand performance should always be reported separately to ensure true growth is clearly understood. At the same time, I advocate tirelessly for upper-funnel channels that support visibility and demand creation. As a small sample, these can be paid social, YouTube, display, PR, audio, organic content, and thought leadership.

I understand, however, that this can be tricky for businesses especially those that are heavily commercially focussed. I’d never deny that brand search growth typically laggs and is harder to measure. What I always emphasise is that over time if brand volume is rising, your marketing is working. If it remains flat while PPC performance appears strong, you may simply be recycling existing demand rather than creating new growth.

The Strategic View

Over my twenty plus years in the industry, I’ve seen the world of paid search marketing, evolve and the changes we’ve seen in the last two to three years have been staggering when compared to the prevailing seventeen. The topics covered in this article are ones I feel strongly about yet unfortunately they are all too often apparent when we inherit or are asked to audit accounts.

To summarise, bidding on your brand, isn’t the villain, but it can be the joker that impacts the true picture of performance and stalls growth.I’m consistently guiding our client partners to split budgets to allow for use to generate demand outside of brand that will provide sustainable growth. We’ve seen this work effectively across automotive finance and the use of targeted influencer relationships and in national childcare providers where being hyper-local is hugely important whilst presenting awareness for the moment when their services are needs, and with demand set

If any of the above has piqued your interest and you’d like to chat more, drop us a message or get in touch with our team of experts.