Branded search ads are divisive in the PPC world. Half of advertisers are convinced you must bid on your brand to defend it. The other half sees it as paying Google for clicks you'd get anyway. We at Prospect Knight found that the answer sits somewhere in the middle. But here's the real issue: most advertisers aren't bidding on their brand correctly, leading to wasted budget.
When Brand Bidding Wastes Budget
If nobody's competing for your brand name, you can turn off those branded search ads. Nothing bad will happen.
When someone googles your business name, they're looking for you specifically. They're already considering your product. Paying for that click doesn't increase their likelihood to convert. It just increases Google's revenue.
There's one scenario where you might need those ads: if your organic listing isn't ranking first. This happens in travel, where sites like TripAdvisor or Booking.com sometimes rank above the actual hotel's website. In cases like that, running the ad helps reclaim your position. But for most businesses, you're paying for traffic that was already coming your way.
You can check who’s on your brand term by simply googling your brand name yourself or, if you’re super concerned about paid competition, check the Auction Insights tab on Google Ads.
When You Actually Need to Protect Your Brand
Things change when competitors start bidding on your name. That's when branded search shifts from unnecessary to strategic. But even then, most people still mess it up.
The common mistake? Running branded campaigns on Target CPA or Target ROAS.
When you use a performance bidding strategy on branded search, Google treats every click like it's a new customer acquisition. It starts optimising and predicting, essentially competing with itself. You end up paying significantly more per click for people who were already searching for you by name.
The Smarter Way: Target Impression Share
If you're going to bid on your brand, treat it less like performance marketing and more like media buying.
Switch to Target Impression Share. You're not asking Google to predict who's going to convert. You're just telling it: "Show up every time someone searches for us." Because there's no need for algorithmic guesswork here, you'll often pay 50–80% less per click than you would with Target CPA or ROAS.
It's straightforward. Same traffic, lower cost, without getting tangled in Google's optimisation complexity.
Plus, branded search volumes are usually small enough that hitting 95–100% impression share is actually doable. You're not trying to dominate a massive keyword. You're just covering your own name.
When It Doesn't Work
Target Impression Share isn't a perfect solution. If your budget's too tight to maintain high impression share, you're going to end up with patchy coverage, which defeats the whole point.
And unlike performance bidding, it doesn't care about user quality. It's not prioritising people who've visited your site three times and are clearly ready to buy. It just buys impressions. So if you've got repeat visitors who need a few touches before converting, performance bidding might actually value those users better.
Bottom line: if you can't afford to show up consistently for your brand, don't half-commit. Either go all-in on impression share or stick with performance bidding until your budget allows for more.
Test It Yourself
This isn't some theory from a whitepaper. You can prove it works in your own account.
Set up a simple A/B test. Split your branded campaign into two. Leave one running on Target ROAS or Target CPA. Switch the other to Target Impression Share. Let it run for a few weeks.
Check your CPC and conversion volume. If your conversions stay steady (and they usually do) while your cost per click drops, you've just identified wasted budget.
We have run multiple tests like this and had some great results. The most recent one dropped CPCs by -77% when we changed the campaign from Target CPA to Target Impression Share. Not too bad!
The Real Takeaway
Most advertisers bid on their brand because everyone else does, or because they set it up years ago and never questioned it. But if you're going to do it, at least do it in a way that doesn't hand Google extra margin for no reason.
Think like a media buyer. Buy visibility at the lowest price you can and protect your turf. Don't let the algorithm "optimise" your budget into oblivion.
Bid on your brand when it actually makes sense. And when you do, do it on your terms.