Brand campaign

Brand clicks are cheap because the ad is exactly what the person searched for. The reason to buy them is that competitors can bid on your name, and without your ad theirs can be the first thing people see on a search where they had already chosen you.

Brand results also flatter every number they are mixed with, so keeping them in their own campaign keeps the rest of the account honest.

1. Open Keywords and search for your brand name to find which campaigns bid on it.
2. Check the campaign's bid strategy and its cost per click.
3. Run Auction insights on it to see who else bids on your name.
4. Search your brand on Google to see what appears.

A bakery chain runs a brand campaign at a few cents per click, with sitelinks to its shops and order page. When a delivery app starts bidding on its name, the brand ad usually stays on top and the sitelinks send people straight to its own ordering page.

• Mixing brand keywords into generic campaigns, which makes them look better than they are.
• Running brand on Smart Bidding with no cap, paying conversion prices for people who would have come anyway.
• Counting brand conversions as growth.

The audit checks Oppy runs on this, each with its own page.

• No Search keyword bids on the brand
• A brand campaign letting Google decide what your own name is worth
• How much of the budget buys the account's own name

• Brand exclusions: A list of brands a Performance Max or Search campaign must not serve on.
• Auction insights: A Google Ads report showing the other advertisers in your auctions, with overlap rate, position above rate and their impression share.
• Impression share: The share of searches your ads showed on, out of all the searches they were eligible for.