Every Google Ads account has one campaign that outperforms everything else. It has the highest ROAS, the lowest CPA, and the best conversion rate. It makes the whole account look good. It is the campaign your agency highlights in every monthly report.

It is your brand campaign. And its performance metrics are a lie.

Not a small exaggeration. Not a minor distortion. A fundamental misrepresentation of what your advertising is actually achieving. The 10x ROAS on your brand campaign is measuring the wrong thing entirely, and the decisions you make based on that number are costing you real money.

The Core Problem: Demand Capture vs. Demand Creation

Advertising serves two distinct purposes. It can create demand — making people aware of your product who were not aware before, or persuading someone to choose you over a competitor. It can also capture demand — intercepting people who have already decided they want your product.

Non-brand campaigns do both. Someone searching for "best accounting software for small business" has demand, and your ad is competing to capture it. But the ad is also creating demand for your specific product by presenting it as an option the searcher might not have considered.

Brand campaigns only capture demand. Someone searching for "Xero login" or "Xero accounting software" has already decided they want Xero. The brand ad is not creating anything. It is simply intercepting a customer on a journey they were already taking — a journey that would have led them to the same destination through the organic listing sitting directly below the ad.

ROAS does not distinguish between these two functions. It treats a conversion from "best accounting software" and a conversion from "Xero login" as equally attributable to advertising. They are not.

What Brand ROAS Actually Measures

When Google Ads reports a 10x ROAS on your brand campaign, here is what it is actually telling you: "People who clicked your brand ad and subsequently converted spent ten times more than you paid for the clicks."

What it is not telling you: whether those conversions had anything to do with the ad.

Consider the customer journey. Someone hears about your product from a friend. They search your brand name. They see your ad and your organic listing. They click the ad. They buy your product.

Google Ads attributes that sale to the brand campaign. The ROAS calculation includes that revenue. But was the ad responsible for the sale? The customer was going to buy from you regardless. If the ad had not been there, they would have clicked the organic listing and made the same purchase.

This is not a theoretical problem. Studies consistently show that 60-90% of brand ad clicks would have occurred as organic clicks if the ad were not present. When you strip out these cannibalised clicks, the true ROAS of most brand campaigns drops dramatically. If you want to understand how to measure this properly, our guide on brand campaign incrementality testing walks through the methodology step by step.

A campaign reporting 10x ROAS might have a true incremental ROAS of 2-3x. In some cases, it drops below 1x — meaning the brand campaign actually costs more than the incremental revenue it generates.

The Numbers That Prove It

Google itself published research in 2011 (the oft-cited "Incremental Clicks" study) that found, on average, 89% of ad clicks are incremental for non-brand terms — but the picture changes dramatically for brand terms where the advertiser already has a strong organic presence.

Independent research is more damning. A frequently referenced eBay study conducted with economists from UC Berkeley found that brand advertising on search had near-zero incremental impact for the company. When eBay paused brand ads, organic traffic absorbed almost all of the lost paid traffic.

More recent analyses across hundreds of brand campaign tests show a consistent pattern:

Average organic recovery rate: 75-85%
Average incremental conversion lift from brand ads: 10-25%
Average true incremental ROAS (after adjusting for cannibalisation): 2-4x

Compare that to the 8-15x ROAS that most brand campaigns report. The gap between reported and incremental ROAS is enormous — and it distorts every decision you make about budget allocation.

How Brand ROAS Distorts Budget Decisions

The inflated ROAS on brand campaigns creates a cascade of bad decisions.

Budget allocation. If brand campaigns show 10x ROAS and non-brand campaigns show 3x ROAS, the "rational" decision is to allocate more budget to brand. But if the true incremental ROAS is 2x for brand and 2.5x for non-brand (with 80% incrementality), you should be doing the opposite. This is why the question of whether you should bid on your own brand deserves far more scrutiny than most agencies give it.

Performance targets. When brand campaigns inflate your blended ROAS, you set unrealistic targets for non-brand campaigns. You might demand a 5x ROAS on non-brand, which forces your team to pursue only high-intent keywords — missing the broader opportunity in mid-funnel and awareness campaigns.

Agency evaluation. Agencies that run large brand campaigns on your behalf look like they are delivering exceptional results. Agencies that focus on genuinely incremental non-brand activity look worse by comparison, even if they are creating far more actual value.

Business case for paid search. If your CFO sees a blended 7x ROAS on Google Ads, they approve the budget. Remove brand campaigns and that blended ROAS might drop to 3x. Suddenly the business case for paid search looks very different — even though the true incremental value has not changed.

The Performance Max Problem

Performance Max has made the brand ROAS problem significantly worse. PMax campaigns cannot be segmented by brand vs. non-brand at the keyword level. The algorithm naturally gravitates toward brand traffic because it converts easily and makes the campaign metrics look strong.

This means a PMax campaign reporting 8x ROAS might be achieving most of that return from brand searches, while non-brand performance is mediocre. You cannot see this in the standard reporting. The brand traffic inflates the overall numbers and masks underperformance elsewhere.

Google has introduced brand exclusion lists for PMax, but adoption is low and the implementation has limitations. Many advertisers are unknowingly paying for brand clicks through PMax without realising it — and congratulating themselves on the campaign's "efficiency."

If you are running Performance Max alongside brand search campaigns, you may be double-counting brand conversions or, worse, competing against yourself in brand auctions. The ROAS you see in PMax reporting is almost certainly inflated by brand traffic.

What You Should Measure Instead

If brand ROAS is misleading, what should you measure?

Incremental ROAS. This requires an incrementality test — pausing brand ads in a test region and measuring the actual revenue impact. It is the only way to know the true return on your brand investment.

Incremental CPA. Divide your brand spend by the number of conversions you would actually lose if you paused the campaign. This is your real cost per acquisition, and it is typically 3-5x higher than the reported CPA.

Organic recovery rate. What percentage of paid brand clicks convert to organic clicks when ads are paused? This single metric tells you how much of your brand spend is being wasted.

Competitor brand impression share. Are competitors actually bidding on your brand terms? If not, the defensive argument for brand ads collapses. Use tools like Google Ads Auction Insights or our free brand bidding audit to check.

Incremental revenue per pound spent. Compare the incremental revenue from brand campaigns against the incremental revenue from non-brand campaigns, normalised by spend. This tells you where each additional pound generates the most genuine return.

The Uncomfortable Conversation

Brand ROAS is a comfortable metric. It tells everyone what they want to hear. The marketing team is delivering exceptional returns. The agency is doing a great job. The budget is being spent wisely.

Incremental ROAS is an uncomfortable metric. It reveals that the best-performing campaign in your account is mostly buying traffic you already own. It suggests your agency might be optimising for the wrong thing. It means your true paid search ROI is lower than you thought.

But uncomfortable truths are the foundation of good decision-making. You would not run a business on inaccurate financial statements. You should not run a marketing budget on inflated ROAS figures.

What to Do About It

Run the numbers on your own account. Use our brand bidding calculator to estimate the gap between your reported and incremental brand ROAS. Even a rough estimate reveals the scale of the problem. Our analysis of how much brand ad spend is wasted breaks down the typical waste across different industries.

Run an incrementality test. Pause brand ads in one geographic region for 2-4 weeks. Measure the actual impact on traffic, conversions, and revenue. Replace estimates with data.

Separate brand and non-brand reporting. If your agency reports blended metrics, ask for brand and non-brand performance separately. Any resistance to this request is a red flag.

Challenge PMax reporting. Ask your agency to implement brand exclusions in Performance Max. If they cannot show you non-brand PMax performance separately, the reported ROAS is unreliable.

Reallocate based on incrementality. Move budget from low-incrementality brand campaigns to high-incrementality non-brand campaigns. The reported ROAS will go down. The actual value generated will go up.

The Bottom Line

A 10x ROAS on your brand campaign is not evidence of a well-run campaign. It is evidence that you are paying for traffic that was already free. The metric sounds impressive because it is measuring the wrong thing.

Your brand campaign is not your best investment. It is your most expensive way of capturing demand that already existed. Every pound you spend on brand ads that cannibalise organic traffic is a pound that could have been spent creating genuinely new demand elsewhere in your account.

The lie is not malicious. Google's attribution model was not designed to deceive you. But it was not designed to help you make optimal budget decisions either. That responsibility falls to you.

Stop celebrating brand ROAS. Start measuring what actually matters.

Brand ROAS Is a Lie: Why Your Best-Performing Campaign Is Your Worst Investment