If you’re running a performance max (pmax) campaign on google ads, there’s a hidden money pit you might not even be aware of: branded search cannibalization.
And if you care about incrementality—and trust me, you should—this is a big deal.
How pmax works
- Pmax campaigns are google’s way of using ai to distribute your budget across multiple placements: search, shopping, display, youtube, discover—the whole google ecosystem.
- Sounds great in theory. But here’s the catch: without brand exclusions, google’s ai may prioritize your budget toward branded searches—people already looking for your company.
The problem with branded searches
- What does that mean? It means you could be paying for conversions that were going to happen anyway.
- That’s not incremental growth—that’s a tax on your own brand.
- Marketing dollars should drive incremental growth, not just reinforce behavior that was going to happen anyway.
Consequences of not using brand exclusions
Without brand exclusions, your performance max campaigns can lead to:
- Cannibalized spend: Paying for clicks that would have come organically.
- Inflated roas: A false sense of performance because branded searches convert at higher rates.
- Lower profitability: Ad spend that could be acquiring net-new customers gets funneled into redundant conversions.
- In short, without exclusions, you might be patting yourself on the back for a strong roas, when in reality, you're just moving budget from organic to paid without growing your business. That’s bad for the bottom line.
Why cmos should care about brand exclusions
- Protect your budget from wasted spend: Every dollar spent on someone searching for your brand name is a dollar not spent on acquiring net-new customers. If you’re using pmax for growth, allowing brand searches to eat up your budget is counterproductive.
- Better roas and incrementality: Your return on ad spend (roas) might look artificially good when you’re scooping up easy branded conversions, but the real question is: are you growing your business? Excluding brand terms lets your budget work harder to drive true incremental revenue.
- More control over your acquisition strategy: Excluding brand terms ensures that pmax is actually doing what it should: capturing demand you wouldn’t have otherwise. You still have search campaigns to handle branded queries—no need to double dip.
How to apply brand exclusions to your pmax campaigns
Google has (finally) rolled out brand exclusions for pmax, giving advertisers more control over where their ads show up. Here’s how to do it.
Applying brand exclusions to an existing pmax campaign
- In google ads, go to campaigns.
- Select the performance max campaign you want to update.
- Click the settings tab.
- Scroll down to additional settings.
- Click brand exclusions and select your brand list or create a new one.
- Hit save.
The bottom line
- If you’re serious about growth, you should be serious about incrementality.
- Google’s ai is powerful, but it’s also designed to make you spend.
- Brand exclusions are an easy lever to ensure your pmax budget is focused on what really matters: acquiring net-new customers.
- Take a few minutes to apply brand exclusions right now. Your cfo will thank you.
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