What is Branded Search Advertising?

Branded Search advertising refers to paid search campaigns that target keywords containing your brand name, product names, or other brand-specific terms. These campaigns appear when users search for your company or products directly, allowing you to control the search results experience and protect your brand presence.

Branded Search advertising is also often referred to as Branded Keyword Advertising, Branded PPC (Pay-Per-Click), Brand Keyword Campaigns.

How Branded Search Advertising Works

When customers search for terms like "Nike shoes," "Apple iPhone," or "Coca-Cola," branded search ads ensure your company appears prominently in the search results, even if competitors are also bidding on your brand terms. These ads typically appear above organic search results and can include additional information like site links, prices, and promotions. Below is an example of a Nike's Branded Search ad:

Key Characteristics of Branded Search

1. High Intent: Users searching for your brand already know about your company and are likely further down the purchase funnel.
2. Demand Capture channel: Large part of users clicking Branded Search ads are organic demand, or driven there by other channels. Typically 10-20% of attributed conversions are incremental
3. Defensive channel: Many businesses use branded search to protect themselves against competitors bidding on your brand terms.
4. Depends on brand awareness: Number of search made with brand and product names is dependent on the awareness of the brand
5. CPC & CTR: Shows lower CPC and higher CTR compared to non-branded search

Benefits of Branded Search Advertising

1. Drive revenue: Many businesses benefit from Branded Search as a revenue driver
   
2. Brand Protection: Prevents competitors from capturing clicks when users search for your brand, ensuring you maintain control over your brand's search presence.
3. Controlling the Narrative: Provides space to highlight promotions, new products, or key differentiators that may not appear in organic listings.
4. Enhanced SERP Real Estate: Allows you to occupy more space on search engine results pages, pushing competitors and potentially negative content further down.

Measuring the ROI of Branded Search

Traditionally, the effectiveness of Branded Search has been measured with ROAS reported by last-click attribution or advertising platforms' own attribution method. Today, the golden standard for measuring the ROI of Branded Search is to use an approach that is based on incrementality. This is especially relevant for Branded Search, because typically only 10-20% of conversions reported by the advertising platform for Branded Search are truly incremental.

When assessing tools for measuring Branded Search, a growth-minded digital marketer should look for a tool that provides:

• Incremental sales driven by Branded Search in all sales channels: eCommerce, offline stores, Marketplaces
• Continuous ROI tracking
• Campaign-level ROI measurement (for every Branded Search campaign)
  

In practice, this is only possible with a solution that combines Marketing Mix Modeling, Incrementality tests, and attribution data. Sellforte is an example of one such tool. Below is an example of an advertising channel level analysis from the Sellforte demo with Google Search Brand highlighted.

As another example from the Sellforte demo, the view below should campaign-level ROI and recommendations for branded search.

Measuring Branded Search with Media Metrics

To complement incrementality-based measurement, a digital marketer can also use Media Metrics reported by advertising platforms, which are illustrated in the picture below.  While incrementality-based measurement provides the single-source-of-truth for effectiveness, Media Metrics can provide additional insights into what's driving the ROI. As an example, an increase in ROI could be explained by an increase in Average Order Value due to reaching an audience that buys more on average.

Metrics in the full include:

• Funnel metrics
  • Impressions
  • Clicks
  • Conversions
  • Conversion Value
• Cost-efficiency metrics:
  • Cost Per Mille (CPM) 
  • Cost Per Click (CPC)
  • Cost Per Conversion
  • Return On Ad Spend (ROAS)
• Performance ratios:
  • Click-Through Rate (CTR)
  • Conversion Rate
  • Average Order Value

Optimizing branded search spend

Optimization of Branded Search should be done on three levels:

1. Optimize channel-level budget allocation: Determine allocation to branded search vs. other channels, such as non-Branded Search or Paid Social
2. Optimize channel-level budget allocation over time: Determine optimal weekly budgets
3. Optimize spend levels for each campaign: Determine optimal allocation to each Branded Search campaign

For each of these levels, its critical to leverage response curves. Advertising response curves capture the diminishing return effect of marketing, and determine whether the channel has room to scale or not, as illustrated below:

Because the response curves are dynamic and change every week based on the volume of available branded keyword searches, it is practically impossible to do the optimization manually. This is why there are optimization tools provided by measurement vendors, such as Sellforte. Below are examples of optimization views from the Sellforte demo.

1. Channel-level budget optimization scenarios:

2. Optimal spend allocation by week:

3. Recommended budget changes by campaign:

Criticisms of Branded Search Advertising

Despite its widespread adoption, branded search advertising faces several legitimate criticisms from marketers and industry experts:

1. Limited Incrementality: The most significant criticism centers on incrementality concerns. Since users searching for brand terms often have high purchase intent regardless of ads, many conversions would occur organically without paid intervention. Typically 10-20% of conversions reported by the Ad Platform for Branded Search are truly incremental. 
2. Over-attribution in Analytics: Traditional attribution models often give branded search undue credit for conversions, leading to inflated ROAS calculations and misguided budget allocation decisions.
3. Organic Traffic Cannibalization: Branded search ads may simply redirect traffic that would have clicked on organic listings, potentially reducing overall click-through rates to owned properties while increasing advertising costs.
4. Brand Dependency Risk: Heavy reliance on branded search may indicate insufficient investment in brand building and awareness generation, potentially limiting long-term growth prospects.

Branded Search vs. Non-Branded Search

Best Practices for Branded Search Campaigns

Campaign Structure

• Create separate campaigns for branded terms to better control budgets and bidding
• Use exact match keywords for precise targeting
• Include brand misspellings and variations

Ad Copy Optimization

• Emphasize unique value propositions
• Include current promotions or offers
• Use brand messaging that reinforces trust and quality

Landing Page Alignment

• Direct users to the most relevant pages for their search intent
• Ensure brand consistency between ads and landing pages
• Optimize for mobile experience

Measurement and Analysis

• When measuring effectiveness, focus on incremental ROI, instead of attributed ROAS 
• Monitor competitor activity on your brand terms

Common Challenges and Solutions

Challenge: Low Search Volume

Solution: Expand keyword lists to include product names, common misspellings, and branded + category combinations (e.g., "Nike running shoes").

Challenge: Competitor Bidding

Solution: Maintain consistent presence with competitive bids and compelling ad copy that emphasizes your unique advantages.

Challenge: Cannibalization Concerns

Solution: Test branded campaigns by measuring incremental lift over organic results, focusing on total brand traffic rather than just paid metrics.

Strategic Considerations

Branded search should be viewed as both a defensive and offensive marketing tactic. While it protects existing brand equity, it also provides opportunities to:

• Introduce new products to existing customers
• Cross-sell and upsell complementary offerings
• Reinforce brand messaging and positioning
• Gather valuable customer insights through search behavior

Conclusion

Branded Search advertising represents a fundamental component of every digital marketing strategy, offering opportunities to drive revenue, and protect and enhance brand presence in search results. When measured and optimized properly with tools able to account for true incrementality of marketing, Branded Search campaigns can drive business drive growth while strengthening overall brand equity and market position.

Authors

Lauri Potka is the Chief Operating Officer at Sellforte, with over 15 years of experience in Marketing Mix Modeling, marketing measurement, and media spend optimization. Before joining Sellforte, he worked as a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, advising some of the world’s largest advertisers on data-driven marketing optimization. Follow Lauri in LinkedIn, where he is one of the leading voices in MMM and marketing measurement.