We opened an account last month and their ad spend was piled onto branded keywor
By Elizabeth Greene · October 8, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
We opened an account last month and their ad spend was piled onto branded keywords.
Brand name, brand name plus product, brand name misspelled, brand name plus a size.
All of it sitting inside campaigns labeled for ranking.
And of course it looked amazing.
People searching your brand name buy.
Half the keywords in your ranking campaign are your own brand name in a costume, and that's where the budget is going.
You've been on Amazon long enough to build a reputation, and now you're bidding against your own organic listing for the shoppers who already typed your name.
Then the other half of it.
The part where someone decides the fix is top of search.
There is some genuinely bad strategy floating around the PPC space that says you focus on top of search placement to rank, and I'm here to tell you that's a bold-faced lie.
It'll hurt you more than it helps.
Placement percentages are useful, in the right spot, used carefully.
As the lever you pull to rank, they'll destroy your ranking potential while your spend goes vertical.
Order velocity from non-branded terms is what you rank on.
So get more aggressive on the bid, win more auctions, and if the performance actually holds up, then maybe layer on a small top of search percentage, rest of search sometimes, kept small.
Though honestly, before any of that: pull your ranking campaigns and read the converting search terms one by one.
You might just have a very expensive way of getting credit for sales you already had.
What percentage of your ranking campaign spend is going to terms with your brand name in them?