Keywords & Targeting
Brand Exclusions
Brand exclusions are a Performance Max and Search campaign setting that prevents ads from serving on queries containing specified brand names, most commonly your own brand.
In practice
Left alone, Performance Max will happily bid on searches for your own brand name. Those clicks are cheap, they convert at a high rate, and they would mostly have converted through organic results or a dedicated brand campaign anyway. The result is a PMax campaign that reports a beautiful ROAS while contributing little incremental revenue.
Brand exclusions fix this. You add your brand (and any brands you sell but do not want PMax to compete on) to a brand list at the account level, then attach that list to the campaign. Google maintains the brand entities, so misspellings and variants are covered without you enumerating them. The same brand lists can be applied to broad match Search campaigns to keep them off competitor or partner brand terms.
We treat brand exclusions on every PMax campaign as mandatory, then run brand traffic through a separate Search campaign where it can be measured and bid on its own terms.
Why it matters
Without them, PMax cannibalizes your cheapest traffic and takes credit for revenue you already had.
RELATED TERMS
Performance Max (PMax)
Performance Max is a Google Ads campaign type that serves across Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Discover, Gmail, and Maps from a single campaign using automated bidding and asset-based creative.
Search Themes
Search themes are keyword-like phrases added to a Performance Max asset group that tell Google which search queries the campaign should reach, supplementing what it infers from assets and landing pages.
Negative Keywords
Negative keywords are terms added to a campaign, ad group, or shared list that prevent ads from showing on searches containing them.
Written by Ilya Bulychev, Founder, Live PPC Ads. Part of the PPC Glossary.
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