The Complete Guide to Brand Bidding in PPC in 2025

Brand bidding, or brand advertising, is a key part to any paid media strategy and should be implemented by any brand tackling PPC in 2025. Essentially, brand bidding means you are bidding on keywords that include your own brand name or a competitor’s brand name.

Why Try Brand Bidding?

By bidding on your own brand’s keywords, advertisers can ensure their brand, products, or services appear at the top of search results.

This allows you to capture users searching specifically for your brand, directing them to relevant ads and landing pages and in turn increasing the likelihood of conversion from that click.

Another positive of brand bidding is that it can help secure the top search result, ahead of your competitor brands, who will also be bidding on your brand name.

Brand bidding strategy is not something all businesses will choose to do, and you can read our full guide on whether it is the right path for you here.

But if it is something you’d like to try, or are interested in learning more about, this guide is here to help! I’ll summarise the advantages and disadvantages of this approach before taking you through brand bidding with affiliate partners and best practices.

Five Reasons To Try Brand Bidding:

1) You Want To Increase Your Brand’s Visibility

As mentioned above, brand bidding can mean your site appears at the top of SERPs when a potential customer searches for your brand. This increased visibility can lead to higher click-through rates and conversions, ahead of any competition.

2) Your Competitor Is Bidding on Your Brand Terms

Your competitors may already be bidding on your brand terms, meaning they are stealing traffic, clicks and conversions from your site. Running your own ads can help reinforce your brand’s presence and lessen the impact of competitor ads.

3) Users Who Search Your Brand Likely Have Higher Intent

Capturing users searching for brand-specific terms will often lead to higher-quality traffic with a higher purchase intent. Capturing these high-intent shoppers also reinforces brand presence, ensuring engagement with your site, products or services first.

4) It Can Protect Your Brand

Brand protection is provided when you bid on your brand terms, as it prevents competitors from occupying the top positions on search results. If your competitors are bidding above you, it can potentially redirect your customers away from your website and offerings and to competitors instead.

5) You Can Dominate the Search Terms

Showcasing your brand across organic listings, paid ads, and even shopping results can increase your visibility on a single page. This enables your business to dominate in the search results. Brand bidding domination can boost brand exposure, build trust with your customers, and create a stronger, more credible presence.

By owning more of the search results space, you can keep your brand top of mind and capture your customers’ attention at every turn.

What Are the Disadvantages of Brand Bidding?

As with everything, brand bidding does come with disadvantages. PPC strategies can be especially difficult for those with low budgets or high competition. Because of this, understanding the disadvantages of brand bidding allows you to make an informed decision about whether or not this is the right path for your brand.

The main disadvantage of brand bidding is the possibility of increased ad spend and higher cost-per-clicks (CPC), especially if there is high competition bidding on your brand terms.

The Main Disadvantage: Bidding Wars

Bidding wars with competitors can raise your CPC bids, and in some cases can lead to higher ad spends, brand confusion or worst case, financial losses.

Along with this, if affiliates bid on your brand terms, this can increase costs and complicate tracking issues between paid search and affiliate marketing channels. Read more about Affiliate Partners and Brand Bidding below.

Some Say, ‘It’s a Waste of Money’

Some advertisers may argue that if their organic listings already appear high in search result positions, there is no need to invest in paid ads. Advertisers could see this as a waste of money, driving up costs unnecessarily.

While this can be the case, it’s important to understand that brand bidding is an investment in brand awareness, credibility, trust and securing valuable search engine real estate. By dominating the search results, you can reinforce your brand’s presence and capture your customers’ attention at every turn.

Affiliate Partners and Brand Bidding

Affiliate partners are a great way for businesses (especially small or new ones) to expand their reach, encourage brand awareness and build those important back links.

However, managing brand bidding with affiliate partners requires a controlled and balanced approach, which will ensure your brand is protected and you’re not competing with your affiliates.

Balancing Brand Bidding and Affiliate Partners

Begin by aligning your goals and setting clear guidelines. Specify who can and cannot bid on branded keywords and under which conditions. Create a clear distinction between your brand’s ad copy and that of your affiliates, helping prevent customer confusion and reinforcing your brand identity. 

Regularly monitoring affiliate activity ensures they are complying with your guidelines, which will minimise any potential negative impact on your brand’s reputation.

Measuring performance and conversions ensures the affiliate brand bidding is providing a high level of return. It should result in an enhanced brand experience and strengthened customer loyalty.

Top Six Brand Bidding Best Practices

So, now you know about the advantages and disadvantages of brand bidding, here are my top six best practice recommendations:

1) Set Clear Objectives

By setting clear objectives and goals at the beginning of your brand bidding journey, you can ensure they align with your overall marketing strategy.

2) Continually Monitor and Track Campaign Performance

Monitor not only your brand ad campaigns’ effectiveness but also any increase in traffic from direct and organic channels. Brand ads can help funnel customers to your site through other channels, and by understanding the role your brand ads play in these conversion pathways will allow you to refine your strategy over time.

For example, track whether customers click on brand ads initially but later return to complete a conversion directly on your site. This approach provides a clearer picture of how effectively brand ads support conversions across channels.

3) Separate the Budget for Brand Bidding Campaigns

Always separate the brand bidding budget from other ad budgets and monitor the CPC of your brand terms. This ensures you’re not overspending on these ad sets.

4) Switch Up the Ad Copy

By monitoring the effectiveness of different copy on both ads and landing pages, you can experiment with what drives the most conversions. This will help you learn what resonates with your audience and drives conversions. By focusing your ad copy on your unique brand value, you can help direct high-quality traffic to your site.

5) Consider Dedicated Landing Pages for Brand Terms

A dedicated landing page can be tailored to the ad the user clicked on. It can show your customer unique information, features and benefits of your brand, and why they should convert with you.

6) Regularly Monitor Those Bidding on Your Brand Terms

By regularly monitoring who is bidding on your brand, you can stay one step ahead. Also, you should consider registering with Google’s trademark policy and other ad platform policies.

If your brand name is trademarked, these measures can prevent unauthorised use of your brand name by other advertisers in their ads. This can protect your brand image.

Conclusion

Brand bidding is something all brands, big or small, should consider. With a strong strategy and consistent observation, your brand could see increased visibility, higher-quality website traffic, and wider brand recognition! 

While CPC could increase with a rise in competition, and brand affiliates could complicate things, this should not deter you entirely. Instead, take steps to mitigate their impact by constantly monitoring competitors and setting boundaries with affiliates. 

Worried you don’t have the capacity or tools to do your PPC justice? We have an excellent in-house PPC team dedicated to helping our clients build their brand and push high-intent users to their websites.

Find out more about how we can assist you by contacting us today.