When Performance Max Buys Your Brand: How to Spot It

Performance Max is Google's campaign type that shows ads in Search, Shopping, YouTube, Display, Gmail and Maps from a single campaign. The campaign decides for itself where the ads appear. Without a block, it can therefore also show when someone searches for your company name.

That affects how you read the results. Someone searching for your name has already decided to look you up and would probably have found you anyway through your brand campaign or the ordinary link in the search results. When Performance Max gets the sale, the campaign looks better than it is and budget can move there for the wrong reasons.

My recommendation is to give your brand its own Search campaign and exclude it from Performance Max with a brand list. Start by checking in the reports how much of the campaign's sales come from searches for your name.

Why your brand ends up in Performance Max

Searches for your own brand often bring cheap clicks and many sales. A campaign optimised for conversions finds them quickly, because that is where sales are easiest to get. A separate brand campaign, on the other hand, gives you control over the copy and shows the brand's results on their own.

If you have a Search campaign with your brand as an exact match keyword, it takes priority over Performance Max when the search is identical to the keyword. This is set out in Google's help page on how Performance Max interacts with other campaigns. When the name appears together with other words, Ad Rank decides which campaign is shown, and then Performance Max can win. It can also happen when the brand campaign is paused or has run out of budget.

How to see the problem in the reports

There are four places to look. Go through them in this order.

1. The search terms report. Since 2025 Google has shown the actual searches for Performance Max too. Open Search terms under Insights and reports and choose the Performance Max view in the list above the table. Filter on your name and compare the conversions from those searches with the campaign's total.
2. The channel report. The channel performance report in Performance Max shows how cost and conversions are split between Search, YouTube, Display and the other channels. If most of it comes from Search, it is even more important to read the search terms.
3. The brand campaign. Compare impressions and clicks before and after Performance Max started. If they fall while searches for your name in Search Console stay at the same level, Performance Max may have taken them over.
4. The account as a whole. Add up the sales from the brand campaign and Performance Max. If the total does not grow as Performance Max grows, the campaign is probably mostly moving sales that already existed.

If you also see competitors advertising on your name, it shows up in the auction insights for the brand campaign. I explain how to read it in the article on how to read your competitors in Auction Insights.

Switch off your brand with a brand list

Brand exclusions stop the campaign from showing on searches related to the brands you choose. In Performance Max they apply to both text ads and Shopping ads on searches. According to Google's help page on brand settings a brand list also catches misspellings, variants and the name in other languages. You do not have to add those yourself.

1. Go to Tools and Shared library and choose Brand lists.
2. Create a list and search for your brand. If it is not in Google's register, you can request that it be added. According to Google the review takes a few weeks, and in the meantime reach may be limited.
3. Add every name your company goes by. If your products have their own names that customers search for, they need to be included too.
4. Open the campaign settings in Performance Max and choose the list under Brand exclusions.
5. Decide whether Shopping ads should still be allowed on searches for your name. It is a separate checkbox in the same setting.

The last choice is worth thinking through. For an online shop, Shopping ads on your own name can be reasonable because they show the products with an image and a price. My assessment is that text ads on the brand belong in a separate Search campaign where you control the copy and follow the results on their own.

Negative keywords as a complement

Since early 2025 it has also been possible to add negative keywords directly to a Performance Max campaign. Account-level negative keywords also apply to Performance Max. They work for individual searches, but every spelling and variant has to be added separately. For your own brand, the list is therefore the safer choice. The article on negative keywords as a daily routine describes how we work with negative keywords.

When the brand can stay

Google itself recommends using brand settings only in campaigns that really need them, because they limit reach. My assessment is that there are two situations where the brand can stay in Performance Max. One is when you have no brand campaign of your own and still want to appear when someone searches for your name. The other is a small account where the brand brings in so few sales that separating it does not change the picture.

What happens after the exclusion

Results in Performance Max will probably drop when the brand is removed, because the campaign loses the easiest sales. Google itself says that brand settings limit reach and that performance may decrease. What matters is what happens to the account as a whole.

1. Check that the brand campaign has budget for all searches for your name.
2. Follow sales in the brand campaign and Performance Max together for a few weeks.
3. Recalculate the return target in Performance Max based on results without the brand. A target built on brand numbers will be too high and can make the campaign almost stop showing.
4. Compare with the same period before the change and allow for season and promotions.

The numbers without the brand show what Performance Max actually adds. That is why the brand and the rest should be reported separately for management too. The article on a dashboard management actually reads shows what such a report can look like.

Next step

Open the search terms report for Performance Max and filter on your name. Within a few minutes you will see how much of the campaign's sales came from people who were already looking for you.

When we run Google Ads, we measure the brand separately. We give the brand its own Search campaign, add brand lists to Performance Max and follow sales across the whole account so that budget goes where it adds something.

Do you know how much of the sales in your Performance Max campaign come from searches for your own name?