If you have experience in running branded PMax campaigns for a while, you would have observed two main issues: the first is that PMax conversion data often overloads with branded search conversions, and the second is that it cannibalizes other Google Ads campaigns, taking credit for every conversion.
What does this mean?
When a user searches for your brand, clicks on your ad, and converts, that’s not the result of persuasive advertising—it means people are most likely searching for your brand. But PMax takes credit for those conversions, making you believe the campaign is successful and delivering high ROI. However, in reality, it’s rerouting conversions that would’ve happened anyway.
This phenomenon, known as brand term inflation, distorts PMax performance data. It eventually leads to poor decision-making, forcing advertisers like you to invest in reacquiring customers you have already won.
So, how do you solve this problem? Enter Brand exclusions.
Brand exclusions in PMax allow you to not show ads for specific brand search terms. For instance, you can restrict PMax ads from appearing when a user searches for your brand. This way, PMax can focus on converting new customers alone.
But what can you do to convert users searching for your brand? To answer questions like these and more, we have created this guide.
This guide will show you how to exclude brand from Performance Max Campaign, why you should still choose a branded campaign, the challenges with them, and some practical strategies to win high-intent users and acquire new customers.
We have a long way to go! Let’s get started.
Table of Contents
Overview of Excluding Brand from Performance Max
As mentioned earlier, Brand exclusions allow you to stop showing your PMax ads for specific branded queries. When you exclude a brand from your Performance Max campaign, Google automatically excludes all the variations and misspellings associated with the brand.
| Brand variations in Google Performance Max campaigns refer to different ways users search for a brand, including misspellings, abbreviations, translations, or related terms. Let’s take Louis Vuitton as an example, common misspellings include Louis Vitton, and Luis Vuitton. In Chinese, Louis Vuitton is “路易威登” (Lùyì Wēidēng) Therefore, if you wish to exclude Louis Vuitton in your PMax campaign, Google automatically excludes its variations. |
Note: For Performance Max, you can enable Brand exclusions for Search and Shopping ads alone and not for other channels such as Display, Discover, etc. Which means, when you enable Brand exclusions for PMax, they apply for Search and Shopping ads only. But, if you wish to show Shopping ads even for the brands you have excluded. Google provides you an option to do so. You can enable this option when applying the Brand exclusions to a PMax campaign.
Earlier, Google had two options to exclude branded queries (before Brand exclusions came into existence): contacting a Google representative or adding negative keywords. While adding negative keywords does the job, one has to add an endless list of all the variations and misspellings associated with the brand, which becomes a hectic and tedious process.
But, now, Google introduced a self-serve method, Brand exclusions, in December 2024. This method allows advertisers to prevent PMax from showing ads for branded searches. Thus, this solves a significant problem for advertisers in terms of improving conversions and ROI.
Importance and Benefits of Excluding Brand from Performance Max Campaigns
By now, we understand that you can use Brand exclusions to exclude brand from Performance Max campaigns and filter out branded traffic. Let’s learn more.
The role of excluding brand from Performance Max campaigns is vital; it helps you:
- Avoid skewed performance metrics: Brand exclusions help you isolate non-branded queries, providing you accurate conversion data.
- Improve attribution clarity: Separating branded and non-branded traffic provides in-depth insights into campaign performance. It helps you understand how your campaigns perform in acquiring new customers versus serving existing ones.
- Achieve new customer acquisition goals: If your objective is to reach a wider audience and attract new customers, excluding branded traffic ensures that PMax campaigns focus on attracting users unfamiliar with your brand, rather than targeting existing customers.
With that, let’s explore how to exclude brand from PMax campaigns by implementing Brand exclusions.
How to Exclude Brand from Performance Max
In this section, we will walk through how to exclude brand from Performance Max by adding or managing the brand list and applying it to your PMax campaign.
You can create, edit, and manage brand lists at the account level and apply Brand exclusions to individual campaigns.
1. Create a Brand List
Step 1: To create a Brand list, go to your Google Ads Account >> navigate to Tools & Settings >> click Shared library >> click Brand lists.
Step 2: Select the ‘+’ icon. Add brands to start creating a brand list. Give the list a name and click ‘Save.’
Important: If you notice a particular brand isn’t listed (refer to the image above), you can request it by providing its website URL. Click on the ‘Request a brand’ option and proceed with the requesting process. Note that the process might take 4 to 6 weeks.
2. Apply Brand Exclusions to a PMax Campaign
We have created a brand list; let’s look at how to apply it to a PMax campaign.
Step 1: In your Google Ads account >> go to Campaigns >> click Campaigns >> select a PMax campaign >> click on Settings >> go to Brand exclusions.
Step 2: If you have an existing brand list, you can apply it or you can create a new list from here.
Step 3: As mentioned earlier, Google allows you to show Shopping ads for brands you have excluded. To enable it, click the “Allow Shopping ads on searches that mention excluded brands” checkbox and click Save.
Note: The process we have discussed so far is for an existing campaign. You can also enable brand settings while creating a new PMax campaign. To do so, when you reach the campaign settings page (during the campaign creation process), look for more settings options. There, you will find the Brand exclusions option. Apply and save it.
You can also apply Brand exclusions to multiple campaigns in bulk. To do so, go to Campaigns >> click Campaigns >> click Settings under the campaigns page >> click checkboxes of campaigns you wish to apply >> click ‘Edit’ >> click ‘Change brands’ >> select Brand exclusions >> add a new list and >> click save.
Important: Setting up brand settings does not incur an additional cost. However, applying Brand exclusions limits your reach and conversions. Hence, use them based on your conversion goals.
Best Practices when using Brand Exclusions for PMax
- Enable the “Allow Shopping ads on searches that mention excluded brands” checkbox if you’re targeting a broader audience, including those searching for competitor brands. Disable the option if your focus is on your brand and want to avoid irrelevant searches.
- If you remember, we raised a concern earlier about converting customers searching for your brand. For that, ensure you run a Search or Standard Shopping campaign targeting your brand. In addition, implement Brand exclusions in PMax. This way, you can reach new customers and users who are familiar with your brand.
- Remember that Brand exclusions in PMax apply only to Search and Shopping. Thus, implement negative keywords, placement exclusions, or content exclusions for other campaign types, such as Display or Video.
Speaking of content exclusions, Google introduced brand suitability features for PMax campaigns. These set of features give advertisers control over the context in which their ads appear and ensure that their brand associates with appropriate content.
Let’s take a look at PMax’s brand suitability features.
Brand Suitability Features
Brand suitability features help maintain alignment with your brand values and protect its reputation across Google Ads inventory.
Key Brand Suitability Features Include:
- Inventory type: Advertisers can choose from Expanded, Standard, or Limited to restrict ad placement near potentially sensitive content.
- Content exclusions: You can exclude topics like tragedy, mature content, or sensitive social issues.
- Placement exclusions: Block specific YouTube channels, videos, websites, or apps from showing your ads.
- Account-level settings: Set default brand safety rules across all campaigns, including PMax.
For detailed information, refer to Google’s official docs on brand and content suitability features.
In spite of all these protective layers and guardrails for branded PMax campaigns, there are still some challenges with branded traffic.
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Challenges with Branded Traffic in PMax
Let’s understand the difference between branded traffic and non-branded traffic.
| Aspect | Branded Traffic | Non-Branded Traffic |
| Definition | Visitors arriving via search queries that include your brand name or related terms. | Visitors arriving through generic search queries without specific brand mentions. |
| Search Volume | Generally lower, as searches are specific to your brand. | Higher with broader and more generic search terms. |
| Audience Intent | High purchase intent. | Varied intent. |
| Conversion Rates | Higher, due to established brand recognition and trust. | Conversion rates vary for non-branded searches and are generally low. |
| Cost-Per-Click (CPC) | Lower because of reduced competition. | Higher due to the broad search terms and heavy competition. |
| Example | “Aveeno baby wash” | “Best body wash for babies” |
Competitors Bidding for your Brand
In certain cases, competitors may bid on your brand name. This means that when a user searches for your brand, competitors are bidding on your brand name if the first search result is a sponsored ad from your competitor.
When a competitor does this, they try to steal some conversions from you by appearing in the top spot. Eventually, they win over your customers because most users click on the first search result. This way, you lose your customers.
An example of this strategy is Shein and Temu bidding on competitors’ brand search terms during Black Friday, resulting in higher cost-per-click (CPC) rates for those keywords.
Limited Reach
With branded search terms, you target customers already familiar with your brand, thus limiting your exposure to new customers. Relying solely on branded search terms can also negatively impact your growth by not attracting customers at various stages of their customer journey.
Lack of Brand Recognition and Negative Reviews
If you’re new to the market, appearing for branded search terms is also difficult due to a lack of recognition. On the other hand, when a user searches for your brand, Google might also populate negative reviews (if there are any), impacting brand reputation.
Wasted Ad Spend
Investing in ads for branded terms when your site already ranks organically leads to wasted ad spend.
Challenges in Measuring Incremental Value
It is difficult to determine the incremental value when measuring branded search term performance. This is because, some users may have visited your site regardless of the paid ad, making it challenging to assess the return on investment (ROI) for branded campaigns.
| What is incremental value? In Google Ads’ PMax campaigns, incremental value refers to the additional conversions or revenue that can be directly attributed to the campaign, conversions that wouldn’t have occurred without it. |
Another issue with branded search terms in PMax is Brand term inflation. In the following section, we will understand it in depth.
Brand Term Inflation in PMax
As mentioned earlier, Brand term inflation occurs when PMax takes credit for conversions from branded searches that would have occurred regardless of the PMax campaign.
It can largely affect PMax performance metrics such as ROAS and CPA, hiding the true cost of acquiring new customers or driving demand for generic terms.
| Why does it happen? PMax is optimized to drive conversions across Google Ads inventory. It doesn’t distinguish between branded and non-branded traffic unless explicitly told (like we do in Brand exclusions). Since branded queries convert faster, the algorithm prioritizes them to maximize performance. |
Suppose you don’t spot brand term inflation in PMax. This can lead to misleading performance data, inefficient budget allocation, and reduced transparency, making it difficult to understand where the true value comes from.
Indicators of Brand Term Inflation in PMax
Let’s look at indicators of brand term inflation in PMax:
High ROAS/Low CPA in PMax
If your overall account’s new customer acquisition and non-branded sales are not growing at the same rate as PMax campaigns, it’s a sign of brand term inflation. For an e-commerce merchant, this translates to stagnant new customer sales, even when PMax performance data looks great.
| Read More: How to increase e-commerce sales E-commerce marketing & its tools Multi-channel e-commerce marketing |
Significant Conversions from Branded Search Terms
If you observe a significant amount of PMax conversions coming from search terms highly related to your brand, such as specific product names, or direct brand searches you didn’t target initially, it’s inflation.
How to identify brand terms?
In your Google Ads account >> go to Campaigns >> select a specific PMax campaign >> click Insights and reports >> and click Insights.
In the Search terms insights section, look for “Search terms” or “Search categories.” While you won’t be able to access granular keyword data, you can infer branded intent from the categories.
In addition to the Search terms report, PMax offers various reporting features to monitor key performance metrics. We have a detailed guide on PMax reporting features to help you analyze PMax campaigns’ performance.
Huge Traffic to Product Pages/Homepage from PMax
You can also spot brand term inflation in the Landing pages report.
If you notice that a high percentage of PMax traffic is going to the home page or a specific product page, it suggests that PMax is capturing branded intent.
If your best-selling, branded product pages receive disproportionate traffic from PMax, this is a strong indicator of brand term inflation for eCommerce merchants
You can access the Landing pages report from the Insights and reports section.
Note: Remember to view landing pages report applicable for all campaign types. Don’t select a specific PMax campaign as you can’t access the Landing pages report for PMax campaigns directly.
How to Mitigate Brand Term Inflation in PMax?
- You can overcome brand term inflation effectively by implementing Brand exclusions in PMax.
- As of 2024, Google has introduced the ability to add negative keywords at the campaign level. With this strategy, you can overcome brand term inflation and gain precise control over Search and Shopping ad campaigns.
- Another strategy is to run branded campaigns separately (more on this later).
- Continuously track and monitor impression shares and cost-per-clicks for your branded terms to identify inflation patterns.
Maintaining Separate Branded Search Campaigns
So far, we are clear that applying Brand exclusions is crucial in directing PMax campaigns to focus on new customers. This also means that you should capture high-intent customers actively looking for your brand. For that, you must run separate branded Search campaigns along with PMax Brand exclusions.
This strategy helps advertisers allocate budget efficiently, prevent cannibalization, and understand which campaigns are driving conversions. It also lowers CPCs and captures accurate performance metrics.
How to implement this strategy?
- After creating brand lists and applying Brand exclusions to the PMax campaign, create a separate branded Search campaign and target branded keywords with exact or phrase match.
- Ensure that your brand name and its variations serve as the primary keyword to capture all kinds of branded search terms.
Benefits of Branded Search campaigns
- Branded keywords are highly relevant and have good quality scores, leading to lower CPCs than non-branded terms.
- Increase the brand’s visibility on SERP’s (Search Engine Results Page) by occupying more space on the search results page and pushing unrelated content further down the page.
- When you run a branded campaign, you ensure you occupy the top spot in search results even when competitors bid on your brand terms.
- Branded keywords have a lower cost-per-click and higher click-through rate due to their high relevance.
- Unlike organic results, that redirect users to a homepage, you can use paid ads to curate a persuasive Google ad copy, highlighting a product or promotion and redirecting them to a high-performing landing page.
- Branded ads allow you to convert Bottom of the Funnel customers who have done their research, gone through reviews, and are ready to buy from you.
- Another benefit for running a branded Search campaign is, if you’re running a brand-plus campaign and combine branded search terms with the phrases relevant to your product offerings, you can identify combinations that perform well. You can use these combinations as keywords for your non-branded campaigns.
| What is the difference between a brand and brand-plus campaign in Google Ads? In Google Ads, a brand campaign mainly targets branded keywords, whereas a brand-plus campaign focuses on branded and non-branded keywords to reach a wider audience. |
Control and Insights with Branded Search campaigns
- With branded Search campaigns, advertisers gain granular control over targeting audiences based on demographics, geographic location, customer behavior, device, and custom audiences.
- Unlike PMax campaigns, advertisers have full control over bidding strategies when using Search Campaigns. They can modify bids, allocate budget for dedicated branded Search campaigns, and test and reiterate various bidding strategies.
- Isolating branded from non-branded traffic also allows advertisers to evaluate performance accurately and make informed decisions.
Tips to Implement Branded Search Campaigns
- Allocate Separate Budgets: Assign dedicated budgets to branded Search campaigns. Without a separate budget, a combined campaign (especially a broad one like PMax) might overspend on branded terms, taking budget away from non-branded efforts to acquire new customers.
- Use Targeted Landing pages: Redirect users to the most relevant Landing pages based on their branded search.
- For example, when a user searches for a branded product, provide a link directly to the product page. Ensure you optimize these Landing pages for mobile, load quickly, and have clear calls to action (CTAs). This practice enhances user experience, improving conversion rates.
- Brand exclusions: Implement Brand exclusions to prevent your Performance Max (PMax) campaigns from serving ads for specific brand queries.
- Monitor campaign performance: Regularly monitor your branded Search campaign performance and your PMax campaigns. Analyze the Search term report to ensure no irrelevant terms trigger your ads.
- For PMax campaigns, look for any instances where your brand terms might still appear despite exclusions (although this is rare if you set up Brand exclusions correctly). Analyze performance metrics and compare CPC, conversion rates, and CPAs between branded and non-branded campaigns.
| Read More: Performance Max Vs. Search Campaign |
Brand Inclusions for Brand-Only Campaigns
Understanding Brand-Only Campaigns
Branded Search or Brand-only campaigns in Google Ads allow businesses to target their own brand name and variations, ensuring their ads appear when a user searches for a particular brand.
| Note: Branded campaigns target users already searching for your brand, while brand inclusions help you capture branded searches even when users enter broader Search terms. |
Now let’s talk about Brand inclusions in branded campaigns.
Brand Inclusions (formerly, Brand Restrictions) for Search
In Google Ads, Brand Inclusions (formerly known as Brand Restrictions) for Search is a feature that allows advertisers to show ads only for searches that mention specific brands.
In contrast to Brand exclusions, brand inclusions tell a campaign to only show ads for specific brands.
Note: Brand exclusions are applicable for Search and PMax campaigns. Brand inclusions are available only for search campaigns. This means you cannot tell a PMax ad to appear only for specific brands, but you can do so for a Search ad.
How do you Set Up Brand Inclusions for Search?
You can set up Brand inclusions for a new Search campaign or an existing one. Follow the process below to apply Brand inclusions to an existing Search campaign.
Go to Campaigns >> click Campaigns >> Click Settings tab >> go to the Settings page of a specific Search campaign >> scroll down to click ‘additional settings’ >>
Click ‘Brand inclusions.’
Once on the Brand inclusions search bar, select and apply the brand list or create a new one. And click ‘Save.’
You can also apply Brand inclusions to a new Search campaign. You can do so by accessing the Brand inclusions option in the campaign settings page.
Note: After May 27, 2025, brand settings appear in the AI Max settings panel for Search campaigns.
When to Use Brand-Only Campaigns
Let’s discuss a few scenarios where you must run a Brand-only campaign.
Competitors’ bidding on your brand: As we discussed earlier, competitors might bid on your brand name. In instances like this, you must advertise your brand name and take the top spot in search results to ensure customers find you.
You might ask, should I run brand-only campaign even when none of my competitors are bidding for it? According to Google Ads Experts, “you can still advertise for your brand name even though there’s no competition.” This is because running brand-only campaigns is much cheaper, with reduced CPC. Additionally, you get highest quality score due to high relevance when compared to your competitors.
Guaranteed brand presence: You cannot guarantee complete control over brand terms even when using Brand exclusions if no other campaign is capturing branded traffic. Hence, it is essential to run a dedicated branded campaign that ensures your ad always appears for branded terms.
Fine-tune Messaging: Although PMax ads optimize ads to suit users’ search queries, they may not align with your brand values, tone, or messaging. Therefore, with a separate brand campaign, you gain complete control over ad copy and messaging, increasing engagement and conversions.
Landing page experience: With a dedicated brand campaign, you can redirect traffic to a specific product or promotional landing page for maximum conversions.
Conclusion
By excluding brand terms from Performance Max (PMax) campaigns, you prevent brand term inflation and skewed performance metrics, ensuring that your PMax campaigns optimize for acquiring new customers. Simultaneously, branded Search campaigns maintain brand visibility, allow for tailored ad copy and messaging, and effectively convert high-purchase-intent users.
On a final note, combining Brand exclusions in PMax and branded-only campaigns in Search empowers you to segment traffic, manage ad spend, and achieve a better return on investment.
We wish you luck in this process!
FAQs
How can I exclude specific brand terms from performance max campaigns in Google Ads?
To exclude specific brands from a PMax campaign, you should create a brand list first. To do so, log in to your Google Ads account, navigate to Tools & settings >> Shared library >> Brand list >> start creating a list. And apply Brand exclusions to a PMax campaign by selecting a brand list.
Why should I exclude certain brands from my Performance Max campaigns?
Excluding brands in the PMax campaign enables advertisers to acquire new customers and avoid cannibalizing clicks on branded queries.
What are the risks of excluding brands from Performance Max campaigns?
Reduced conversion volume, brand visibility, and increased customer acquisition costs are some risks associated with Brand exclusions in PMax campaigns.
How do I decide which brands to exclude from my Performance Max campaigns?
You can consider your competitors’ brands, your own brand, and other brands you don’t want to partner with to exclude from your PMax campaign.
Can excluding brands affect my ad quality score?
Yes, excluding brands can impact quality score, especially with PMax campaigns, as they rely on conversion data.
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