The True Cost of
Brand Campaigns
Most businesses waste 60-80% of their brand ad spend. Calculate your hidden cost — and see what happens when you redirect it into growth.
The Brand Campaign Trap
Your best-performing campaign might be your worst investment
Open any Google Ads account and the brand campaign is almost always the star performer. ROAS of 10x, 15x, sometimes 20x. Cost-per-click pennies on the pound. It looks brilliant on a dashboard. But that dashboard is lying to you.
Brand campaigns measure demand capture, not demand creation. When someone types your business name into Google, they already know who you are. They already want to visit your website. The ad is not convincing them of anything — it is simply intercepting a journey that was already headed your way.
80% of those clicks were coming anyway
Multiple studies — including research from Google themselves and eBay's landmark 2014 analysis — have demonstrated that roughly 80% of brand ad clicks are incremental zero. Turn off the ad and those visitors still arrive through your organic listing. The ad is not driving traffic; it is taxing traffic you already own.
That means for every £1 you spend on brand ads, approximately £0.20 generates genuinely incremental value. The other £0.80 pays Google for clicks you would have received for free. It is a rounding error dressed up as a high-performing campaign.
The competitor fear that keeps you spending
The standard defence for brand campaigns is competitor bidding: “If we don't bid on our own name, competitors will steal our traffic.” And yes, Google does allow competitors to bid on your brand terms. But here is what most businesses never check — whether anyone actually is.
In many cases, brand campaigns run month after month defending against a threat that does not exist. The fear of competitors is enough to keep the budget flowing, even when the auction insights tab shows zero competitor impression share. You are paying insurance premiums on a house that has never been burgled, in a street with no crime.
The real cost: opportunity
Even at modest budgets, the opportunity cost compounds fast. Spending £1,000 per month on brand defence means £1,000 per month not acquiring new customers. That is £12,000 a year redirected away from non-brand keywords, product category terms, and competitor conquesting — campaigns that put your business in front of people who have never heard of you.
Non-brand campaigns have lower ROAS by definition — they target cold audiences. But they generate genuinely new revenue. A non-brand campaign at 5x ROAS is infinitely more valuable than a brand campaign at 15x ROAS if the brand campaign is not creating any incremental value. You cannot grow a business by repeatedly selling to people who were already buying.
Brand ROAS is artificially inflated
When you report a brand ROAS of 12x, you are measuring every conversion that touched a brand ad — including the customer who Googled your name, clicked the ad out of convenience, and would have purchased regardless. Strip away those organic-anyway conversions and your true incremental brand ROAS drops to 2-3x at best. For many businesses, it falls below 1x.
The uncomfortable truth: brand campaigns exist in most accounts because they make the overall numbers look good. They inflate blended ROAS, bring down average CPA, and give account managers a nice story to tell. But they do not grow your business. The calculator below shows you exactly what you are leaving on the table.
Calculate Your Brand Campaign Waste
Walk through each step to see how much budget you could redirect into campaigns that actually grow your business.
What do you spend monthly on brand campaigns?
The Alternative: Monitor and React
Instead of paying to defend your brand around the clock, let SerpAlert watch for you — and only act when there is a real threat.
We monitor your brand SERPs
SerpAlert checks Google for your brand keywords every hour, 24 times a day. Full SERP screenshots captured and stored as evidence each time.
Alert in <60 minutes when competitors appear
The moment a competitor ad shows up on your brand terms, you get an alert via email or Slack — complete with screenshot proof, ad copy, and competitor details.
Redirect your budget into growth
With SerpAlert as your safety net, confidently pause brand campaigns and redirect that budget into non-brand campaigns that actually grow your business.
Ready to stop wasting brand budget?
Use the audit to see whether competitor bidding is the real threat. Start the trial when you want SerpAlert watching every hour.