Brand defense? Yes. Overpaying for shoppers who are already looking for you? No
By Elizabeth Greene Junglr · November 11, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
Brand defense? Yes.
Overpaying for shoppers who are already looking for you? No thanks.
I’m all for protecting branded searches.
We also use product targeting on our own listings to grab those cross-sells and upsells.
But here’s where a lot of accounts go wrong...
Branded traffic already converts well.
Cranking bids higher to capture even more of it doesn’t necessarily bring in new customers.
And it doesn’t necessarily help organic ranking either.
Meanwhile, every dollar spent defending branded terms is a dollar that can’t go toward non-branded discovery, new customer acquisition, or the keywords that actually drive growth.
So we treat branded differently.
If an account has a 30% target ACoS, I might set branded terms at 15%. Sometimes 20%.
The goal is to keep branded spend well below break-even.
But wait...there’s a catch.
We inherit accounts ALL the time where branded keywords are mixed right in with non-branded campaigns. So you can’t just set one campaign-level target and call it a day.
You have to look at search terms individually.
Our algorithm does this for us.
It identifies the branded terms and applies the lower ACoS target automatically.
Brand defense matters.
It just shouldn’t come at the expense of growth.
Not sure how much of your ad budget is going to branded traffic?
Let’s take a closer look at your account 👇
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