We ran an audit for a brand last month.
By Elizabeth Greene · September 23, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
We ran an audit for a brand last month.
They were sitting at 12% total ACoS and their agency kept telling them to spend more.
They didn't want to go higher.
But they also couldn't grow.
Those two things felt like a contradiction to them.
We dug in.
Almost all of the spend was concentrated on their own brand name.
Branded campaigns buy back the market share you already have.
You're converting shoppers who already typed your name into the search bar, so the efficiency number looks beautiful.
Most accounts make it worse from there.
They segment branded into its own campaigns, feel good about it, and then run the exact same optimization target across everything, the same rules and the same ACoS goal.
So the algorithm keeps feeding the campaigns that convert easiest, which are the branded ones, and starves the non-branded terms that were supposed to bring you new customers.
I never want to lose money converting a shopper who was already interested in my brand.
I want that spend tight and conservative.
What percentage of your spend last month went to terms with your brand name in them?