Every business that runs Google Ads eventually asks the same question. Someone searches your exact business name, your website already appears first in the free results, and yet you are paying for an ad above it. Why pay for a click you would probably get anyway?
It is a fair question, and the honest answer is that sometimes you should not. But “sometimes” is doing a lot of work there. This post walks through what the research actually shows, when brand ads earn their keep, and how to test it with your own numbers rather than relying on anyone’s opinion, including ours.
The Case Against Brand Ads
You May Be Paying for Clicks You Already Own
If someone types your business name, they are already looking for you. The free result is right there. Every paid click from that search might simply be a click that would otherwise have gone to your organic listing at no cost.
The eBay Experiment
The best-known evidence comes from a large field experiment at eBay, published as an NBER working paper on paid search effectiveness. eBay stopped its brand keyword ads on some search engines while keeping them on others as a comparison. The researchers found that brand keyword ads had no measurable short-term benefit, because nearly all of that traffic simply arrived through the organic result instead.
For a household name with almost no competition on its own brand, that finding makes intuitive sense.
The Case for Brand Ads
Google’s Pause Studies Found the Opposite, on Average
Google’s researchers analysed 390 studies where advertisers paused their search ads, in a paper on how organic ranking affects the incrementality of search ads. On average, half of the ad clicks were incremental even when the advertiser’s organic result already ranked first. The share of incremental clicks rose sharply as organic rank fell.
In plain terms: for a typical advertiser, switching off the ad did not mean the organic result picked up every lost click. Many of those visits simply disappeared.
Competitors Are Allowed to Bid on Your Name
This is the part many business owners do not know. Google’s trademark policy does not restrict using trademarks as keywords. A competitor can target searches for your business name, and their ad can appear above your organic result.
If you have no ad on your own name, the top of the page is left open for them.
You Control the Message
A brand ad lets you choose what someone sees first: a current offer, your phone number, sitelinks to your most useful pages. Your organic result shows whatever Google picks from your site.
Brand Clicks Are Usually Cheap
Searches for your own name are about as relevant to your ads as a search can be. That relevance feeds into Quality Score, which is why brand clicks typically cost a fraction of what generic keywords do.
Why Both Findings Can Be True
Your Business Is Probably Not eBay
eBay’s brand was so dominant that nobody else competed for it in a meaningful way. Most Dubai businesses are in a very different position. They have competitors willing to target their name, directories and review sites ranking around them, and customers comparing options even after typing a specific name.
The more crowded your brand search results are, the more likely brand ads are to be doing real work.
Averages Hide the Detail
Google’s research reports an average across many advertisers. Your result could be well above or well below it. That is exactly why the right answer comes from testing rather than from any study.
How to Find Out for Your Own Business
Look at What Appears When People Search for You
Search your business name in a private browser window, from the areas where your customers are. Note every ad and every result that is not yours. Google’s Ads Transparency Center also lets you see the ads that specific advertisers are running.
Check Auction Insights on Your Brand Campaign
If you already run brand ads, the Auction insights report shows which other advertisers appear in the same auctions and how often. If nobody else shows up on your brand terms, your brand ads may be doing less than you think.
Run a Proper Pause Test
Pause brand ads for a fixed period, ideally several weeks, and compare it with a similar period when they were running. The key is to measure the right thing: not paid brand clicks, which will obviously fall to zero, but total brand clicks across paid and organic, and above all total enquiries or sales.
If total enquiries hold steady without the ads, you have your answer. If they drop, the ads were earning their keep. Without reliable conversion tracking, this test is guesswork, so fix tracking first.
Setting Up Brand Ads Properly
Keep Brand in Its Own Campaign
Put brand keywords in a separate Search campaign with its own budget. This keeps cheap, high-converting brand traffic from hiding how your other campaigns really perform.
Stop Other Campaigns From Spending on Your Name
Add your brand name as a negative keyword in your non-brand Search campaigns. Our guide to negative keywords explains the match types. For Performance Max, Google offers brand exclusions that stop the campaign serving on searches for the brands you list.
Report Brand Separately
Brand campaigns almost always show excellent results, because the people clicking were already looking for you. If those results are blended into the account total, the whole account looks better than it is. A good monthly report separates them, as we describe in what a PPC agency should report every month.
Common Mistakes With Brand Campaigns
Paying Too Much for a Position You Would Win Anyway
When nobody else bids on your name, you can usually hold the top spot cheaply. A brand campaign set to bid aggressively, with no ceiling, can end up paying far more per click than it needs to. Check the actual cost per click on brand terms against your generic campaigns. If brand clicks are not dramatically cheaper, something is set up wrong.
Brand Keywords That Catch Other Searches
A loosely matched brand keyword can trigger on searches that are not really about you, such as a similarly named business, a different product, or “alternatives to” searches. Review the search terms report for your brand campaign regularly and tighten the match types if irrelevant searches appear.
Sending Everyone to the Homepage
Someone searching your name plus “location”, “contact” or a specific service already knows what they want. Use sitelinks and, where it makes sense, separate ad groups, so they land on the page that answers that exact search instead of starting again from the homepage.
Letting the Budget Run Dry
If your brand campaign shares a limited budget or runs out by midday, competitors win your brand searches every afternoon. Brand budgets are usually small, so give the campaign enough to stay on all day.
When a Competitor Uses Your Name in Their Ad Text
Bidding on your name as a keyword is allowed, but using your trademark in the ad text itself is restricted under Google’s trademark policy, particularly for direct competitors. If a competitor’s ad text uses your registered trademark, the policy explains how trademark owners can submit a complaint.
The Bottom Line
Brand ads are neither always wasteful nor always essential. eBay found them worthless for itself. Google’s pause studies found that, for a typical advertiser, half of brand ad clicks were genuinely additional even with a first-place organic result.
The deciding factors are how crowded your brand search results are, whether competitors target your name, and, most of all, what happens to total enquiries when you pause. Test it, measure total results rather than paid clicks, and keep brand reporting separate.
If you want a clear answer for your own account, our Google Ads services for Dubai businesses can set up the test and read the results with you. When you are choosing who manages that, our guide on how to choose a Google Ads agency in Dubai is worth a read first.
WhatsApp Hameed for a quick question, or call +971 56 544 6241 for a free consultation.
The right answer on brand bidding is not in any study. It is in what happens to your enquiries when the ads go quiet.