Is your brand spend masking a collapsing non-brand ROAS?

Yes, in most cases — but the justification has to be either defensive (competitors are bidding on your brand and you need to keep them below your listing) or incremental (a measurable share of your brand clicks would not have been captured organically). The Dellaripa analysis of Google's own research shows that paid brand search delivers only 5–15% incremental lift on top of organic brand conversions in most accounts, meaning 85–95% of brand-campaign conversions would have happened regardless. This means the reported brand CPA (often £4–£8) translates to a true incremental CPA closer to £30–£80. The Brand Leakage Audit calculates your incrementality cost — the share of brand-campaign spend going to demand organic would have captured anyway.

It depends on two conditions — (1) are competitors bidding on your brand, and (2) is your organic listing competing with a crowded SERP (local pack, shopping ads, knowledge panel). If both answers are no, pure brand bidding is close to pure cannibalisation of your own organic traffic and largely wasted. If either is yes, defensive brand bidding has genuine incremental value because without it, a meaningful share of branded clicks goes to competitors or SERP features. The Brand Leakage Audit runs Auction Insights analysis to show which competitors are bidding on your brand and measures your specific cannibalisation rate via the click-share-on-branded-queries metric.

Run a pause-test: disable the brand campaign for 7 days in a randomly selected geographic region and compare total branded traffic (paid + organic combined) in that region against a control region where brand ads remained on. The delta shows what the brand campaign was genuinely incremental for. Running a full geo test is blocked when PMax is active because you cannot exclude brand from PMax per-geo — pause PMax during the test or widen your confidence intervals. A 5–15% lift is Google's own benchmark; below that, the brand campaign is largely cannibalising organic. The Brand Leakage Audit includes the test design template and the expected lift range for your account size.

You can significantly reduce brand spend — specifically, drop to a Target Impression Share bid strategy set to 60–70% instead of 100%, which lets you appear on the highest-intent branded queries while spending 40–60% less. Full pause is justified only if you've confirmed via Auction Insights that no competitors bid on your brand AND your organic listing dominates the SERP (your result plus sitelinks, no Shopping ads, no local pack interrupting). Re-check quarterly — competitor landscapes shift. The Brand Leakage Audit checks Auction Insights, SERP composition, and incrementality estimates to produce a specific recommendation: maintain, reduce, or pause.

Brand dependency above 50% of total Google Ads conversions is a warning sign; above 70% the account is not a paid-acquisition engine, it is a paid-retention engine. Healthy accounts sit at 20–40% brand dependency — enough to capture high-intent branded traffic but with a meaningful non-brand prospecting layer. High brand dependency masks weak non-brand performance and makes blended ROAS a vanity metric because it inflates with demand you already owned. The Brand Leakage Audit calculates your brand dependency ratio and issues a verdict: healthy (under 30%), elevated (30–50%), or dependent (over 50%).

Because blended CPA averages cheap brand conversions (typically £2–£10 CPA) with expensive non-brand conversions (often £50–£200 CPA), producing a middle number that hides how unprofitable non-brand prospecting actually is. If 60% of your conversions are brand at £5 CPA and 40% are non-brand at £150 CPA, your blended CPA is £63 — which looks fine but contains a non-brand segment that may be fundamentally unprofitable. This is how agencies obscure weak prospecting performance. The Brand Leakage Audit always reports CPA and ROAS split into Brand and Non-Brand columns so the real non-brand economics are visible.

Isolate three campaign layers: (1) Brand Search — your brand keywords as Exact/Phrase match; (2) Non-Brand Search — everything else with your brand added as campaign-level negative; (3) PMax — run with brand exclusions active AND the New Customer Acquisition goal set to 'Bid higher for new customers only' or 'Only bid for new customers'. Track each layer's CPA separately. Without this separation you cannot isolate true acquisition cost — brand and existing-customer conversions inflate the numbers. The Brand Leakage Audit checks whether these three layers exist and are properly configured in your account.

Two effects: competitors appearing above your organic listing capture a share of users who intended to visit your site (typically 5–15% of branded clicks go to competitor ads when they bid), and their bidding raises the auction floor for your own brand campaign, increasing your brand CPC by 2–5x compared to a competitor-free auction. Without a brand campaign active, competitors win disproportionately because nobody is defending Position 1. With a brand campaign, you pay more than you otherwise would to maintain position. The Brand Leakage Audit's Auction Insights section shows which specific competitors are bidding on your brand terms, their overlap rate, and how often they appear above you.

Yes, even more defensively than a unique-brand account — when users search 'your brand name', they might be looking for you or the other company, and whoever doesn't bid loses the ambiguous-intent users to whoever does. Add modifying keywords to your brand campaign (your brand + 'login', 'UK', product name, industry) so your ads show for disambiguated brand queries. Avoid using the other company's brand name as a keyword (trademark risk). The Brand Leakage Audit identifies shared-name competitor bidding patterns and recommends the disambiguation keyword set to add.

Both, but with different strategic purposes and budget allocation — brand keywords for capture and defence (typically 15–25% of total budget), non-brand for growth and acquisition (the remaining 75–85%). Accounts over-indexed on brand (above 50% of budget) are usually running expensive brand campaigns on keywords that convert at high rates from organic anyway, while starving the non-brand prospecting that would actually grow the customer base. The right mix depends on your funnel maturity: established brands can reduce brand spend to 10–15%, new brands may need 30–40% to defend what little brand awareness exists. The Brand Leakage Audit recommends your specific brand/non-brand split based on your account size, industry, and dependency ratio.

Isolate it in a tightly-scoped Brand campaign with Exact and Phrase match only, set Target Impression Share at 80–90% (not 100% — the last 10% is typically low-value repeat queries), use ad copy that differentiates from competitors and reinforces trust signals, and add every non-brand term as a campaign-level negative. The goal is to own position 1 for branded queries with minimum spend. Keep it entirely separate from non-brand campaigns so the bidding signal stays clean. The Brand Leakage Audit verifies this structure is in place and flags campaigns where brand and non-brand keywords are mixing.

15–25% brand, 75–85% non-brand is the healthy range for most accounts — brand defends existing demand, non-brand drives growth. Mature brands with dominant organic presence can drop to 10–15% brand; new or contested brands may need 30–40% for defensive positioning. Above 50% brand share signals that your account is not funding acquisition adequately. The Brand Leakage Audit produces your current split, benchmarks it against industry norms, and recommends the rebalance direction with estimated non-brand revenue upside from reallocating brand budget.