Google Ads brand settings: What you need to know about inclusion & exclusion

Today, we’re exploring Google Ads brand settings, specifically brand inclusion and brand exclusion for Search and Performance Max. We’ll cover:

• What is Brand Inclusion in Google Ads?
• When should you use Brand Inclusion for Search?
• What is Brand Exclusion in Google Ads?
• When should you use Brand Exclusion?
• How to create and manage brand lists for brand settings
• Should you use Brand Settings in Google Ads?

What is Brand Inclusion in Google Ads?

Brand inclusion is a setting that restricts your Search campaign to only show ads on searches for specific brands.

In fact, it used to be called “brand restriction.”

You can include your own brand, competitors’ brands, or whatever brands you’d like.

When should you use Brand Inclusion for Search?

Brand inclusion only works with Search campaigns that use the broad match keywords setting.

Practically, this means that the brand inclusion setting lets you run branded search campaigns or competitor conquesting campaigns using broad match keywords.

This can be a valuable testing ground if you’re looking to expand your reach.

Remember, though, that you should only use brand inclusion with a Smart Bidding strategy, because broad match keywords are only designed to work with AI-powered Smart Bidding.

Think of brand exclusion as a complement or substitute for negative keywords.

In a Search campaign, excluding certain brands can save you time and money by not having to play “search term whack-a-mole.” But brand exclusion truly shines in a Performance Max campaign because you don’t have the same search term visibility as in Search, and you can only add up to 100 negative keywords per PMax campaign.

Within your PMax settings, you have the option to apply brand exclusions to Shopping and Search inventory, or just Search inventory.

While brand exclusion is a great tool for keeping your brand (or competitors’ brands) out of your search terms, it isn’t perfect.

You’ll still need to monitor your search terms (or search categories) regularly and potentially add negative keywords as needed.

How to create and manage brand lists for brand settings

Both brand inclusion and exclusion rely on brand lists to work.

Google provides pre-populated lists for many common brands. However, if your brand isn’t listed, you can easily create your own within the campaign setup process or through your Shared Library.

What exactly constitutes a brand? It’s not necessarily just the main company name. 

For example, while “Nike” is a brand, so are sub-brands like “Air Max” and “Air Jordan.” You might need to create separate brand lists for each if you want to include or exclude them individually.

Should you use Brand Settings in Google Ads?

If your brand search impression share is 90%+ and you have budget to spare, it’s worth testing brand inclusion to see if you can get incremental conversions at similar CPA or ROAS.

Also, if your competitor conquesting campaigns aren’t getting the performance you’d like, it may be worth testing brand inclusion with brand lists featuring your competitors.

Brand exclusion for Search can’t hurt as an add-on to all of your nonbrand search campaigns. If you don’t want to show ads on competitor names, feel free to use it for that purpose as well.

The use case for brand exclusion for Performance Max is clearer:

• PMax will always try to eat up your brand traffic, which is neither a good thing nor a bad thing – it’s simply the fastest way to driving good performance.
• If you’d like to nip that behavior in the bud, you should definitely try the brand exclusion setting.
• If you don’t mind your branded search traffic coming in through PMax, then leave this setting turned off.

This article is part of our ongoing weekly Search Engine Land series, Everything you need to know about Google Ads in less than 3 minutes. Every Wednesday, Jyll highlights a different Google Ads feature, and what you need to know to get the best results from it – all in a quick 3-minute read.