Is branded search ad spend incremental? How to test it
It depends on whether anyone else bids on your brand name: in Bing experiments, brand ads added little where nobody competed and defended clicks where rivals did. A pause test on your own account shows which case you are in.
By Joris van Huët, Founder & CEOUpdated 5 min read
Run the numbers for your store: the free break-even ROAS calculator.
It depends on whether anyone else bids on your brand name, and a pause test on your own account shows which case you are in. In eBay's field experiments, brand keyword ads had no measurable short-term benefits (Blake, Nosko and Tadelis, Econometrica, 2015). In Bing experiments covering thousands of brands, brand ads had a positive, statistically significant impact of 1% to 4% when no competitor was present, while competitors took 18% to 42% of the clicks of brands that faced them and chose not to advertise (Simonov, Nosko and Rao, Marketing Science, 2018).
What do the experiments say about brand keywords?
Two peer-reviewed sets of field experiments gave two answers, and both can be right. The eBay experiments measured the causal effect of paid search ads. They found that returns were a fraction of non-experimental estimates, with brand keyword ads the extreme case. The Bing experiments split the question by competition. With no competitor present, brand ads had a small positive effect, at a cost per incremental click significantly higher than what brands typically pay on other keywords. For brands that faced competition on their own name and did not advertise, the authors found the return on defensive advertising strongly positive.
Google has published a third number. Google statisticians ran over 400 studies on paused accounts and reported that 89% of the traffic generated by search ads was not replaced by organic clicks when the ads were paused (Google Research, 2011, published by Google and not independently audited). That measures clicks across verticals, not orders, and the abstract doesn't split out brand keywords, so it can't settle your brand line. Every platform grades its own homework, and this is Google grading Google's. No public experiment on a small Shopify store's brand search turned up in the sources read for this page, so your own pause test is how you find out.
Who else is serving on your brand queries?
Check this before you pause anything. Google's help recommends brand exclusions to keep a Performance Max campaign off specific brand searches, such as your own, when you manage brand traffic in a separate campaign. It says they let you avoid paying for clicks from users who are already navigating to your site, and that in Performance Max they apply to both Search and Shopping ads. If Performance Max or a Shopping campaign also serves your brand queries, pausing the brand campaign moves the spend instead of testing it.
How do you run a pause test?
This is a simple version of the design Google's own pause studies used, run on your account:
- Link Search Console to Google Ads first. The paid and organic report only holds organic data from the date you start importing it.
- Put brand queries in one campaign. Use brand exclusions on the others, then pick whole weeks with no promotion, launch or email send.
- Pause that campaign and change nothing else.
- Each week, read three things: combined brand-query clicks, ad plus organic, in the paid and organic report; branded-query impressions in Search Console as your demand control; and Shopify orders for the same days.
- Know what each report leaves out. The paid and organic report counts text ads only, not Shopping ads. Search Console's branded filter isn't available for sites with a low number of impressions, and filtering by query can change report totals because anonymized queries are omitted. Use a "queries containing" filter on your brand name if the branded filter is missing.
A regional split is a cleaner control than before and after, but Google says organic listings aren't limited by your ad targeting, so organic numbers in the paid and organic report can include regions where your ads were never paused. If you split by region, read Shopify orders by shipping region instead.
How do you read the result?
- Ads mostly collected demand: organic brand clicks rise by about what ad clicks fell, combined clicks hold, branded impressions stay level and orders stay in their usual weekly range.
- Ads were causing or defending sales: combined brand clicks fall by about the ad clicks you lost, organic clicks don't rise, and a rival's ad now sits above your listing.
- Inconclusive: branded impressions moved, or anything else changed during the test.
Orders are the noisy measure. In Lewis and Rao's 25 field experiments (Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2015), the median confidence interval on return on investment was over 100 percentage points wide, because individual-level sales are so volatile. That was digital advertising at large retailers and brokerages, not your store, but it shows how noisy sales outcomes are. A small store's order count may be too noisy to show a drop, so trust the click numbers first and read a flat order line as not shown, not as no effect.
If organic clicks absorbed the ad clicks, cap or cut the brand line and look again in a month. If they didn't, keep it, and check the results page for the competitor who took your spot.
Sources, 30 September 2026: Consumer Heterogeneity and Paid Search Effectiveness: A Large-Scale Field Experiment (Blake, Nosko and Tadelis, Econometrica, 2015, via EconPapers); Competition and Crowd-Out for Brand Keywords in Sponsored Search (Simonov, Nosko and Rao, Marketing Science, 2018, via IDEAS); Incremental Clicks Impact Of Search Advertising (Google Research, 2011, vendor-published); The Unfavorable Economics of Measuring the Returns to Advertising (Lewis and Rao, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2015, via EconPapers); About measuring paid and organic search results (Google Ads Help, 2026); About brand exclusions (Google Ads Help, 2026); Performance report (Search results): Common tasks and use cases (Search Console Help, 2026); Performance report (Search results): Advanced filtering and comparison (Search Console Help, 2026).
Related answers
Frequently asked questions
Should I turn off my branded search ads?
Not on a hunch. Pause the brand campaign for whole weeks while nothing else changes, then compare combined brand clicks and orders. If organic clicks absorbed the lost ad clicks, cut or cap the line. If they did not, or a rival took your spot, keep it.Do brand keyword ads cannibalise organic clicks?
Sometimes. With no competitor on the brand name, the Bing experiments found only a small positive effect of brand ads. Where competitors were present, ads defended clicks. Your own pause test shows which case applies.Is Search Console's branded queries filter reliable?
Treat it as a guide. Google says some queries might be incorrectly identified as branded or non-branded, and filtering by query can change report totals because anonymized queries are omitted.
Go deeper: Causal attribution, explained.
Sixty-second versions of these ideas: Causality Engine on YouTube Shorts.
Have an audience of ecommerce operators? Earn 20% recurring commission by recommending the €99 read.
Keep reading
Terms in this article
- Confidence IntervalConfidence Interval is a statistical range of values that likely contains the true value of a metric. In marketing analytics, it quantifies uncertainty around estimates, indicating the precision of an outcome or causal effect.
- ExperimentsExperiments are scientific procedures that test hypotheses or demonstrate facts. In marketing, experiments like A/B tests determine the causal effect of campaign changes, enabling data-driven decisions.
- Google AdsGoogle Ads is an online advertising platform where advertisers bid to display ads, service offerings, and product listings.
- ImpressionAn Impression counts each time an ad or content displays on a user's screen. It measures exposure, not engagement.
- IncrementalityIncrementality is the part of an outcome, such as orders or revenue, that a marketing activity caused: the extra results compared with what would have happened without it. It is a causal effect, not the number of conversions credited to a channel.
- Incrementality TestingIncrementality Testing measures the additional impact of a marketing campaign. It compares exposed and control groups to determine causal effect.
- RetargetingRetargeting is online advertising that targets users who have previously interacted with your website or content. Attribution analysis shows the causal role of retargeting in driving conversions and improving ad spend.
- ShopifyShopify is an ecommerce platform for creating online stores and selling products. Attribution modeling shows which marketing channels drive traffic and conversions within Shopify.