Brand Shopping Campaigns Made Simple

Most Shopping and Performance Max campaigns make no distinction between branded and generic search queries. Someone who’s already searching for your brand goes through the same campaign as someone who’s never heard of you. That mix hurts you in two ways. Cheap branded searches make your ROAS look better than it is, and you overpay on the generic queries.

In this post, I’ll explain why you should split the two and show you the setup with two Standard Shopping campaigns and the campaign priority setting.

The short version

• Why split? Branded and generic queries come from two audiences at very different stages of the buying process. Keep them in one campaign and Smart Bidding hits its target off the easy branded conversions while paying too much for generic clicks.
• How does it work? Your product feed determines which queries trigger Shopping ads; the only direct control you have is exclusions. So the split relies on a workaround: campaign priority plus your brand terms as negative keywords.
• What do you actually set up? A brand negative keyword list, a proxy campaign on high priority with a very low CPC, and the brand campaign on low priority with a low manual CPC. If you’re running PMax, add brand exclusions there.

What is a brand Shopping campaign and why is it worth it?

A brand Shopping campaign is a Shopping campaign that serves only queries containing your brand or store name. All generic queries run in a second campaign alongside it. There’s more to this than a tidy account: you’re dealing with two audiences at different points in their buying journey.

What makes branded searches different from generic ones?

The two query types represent two audiences with very different levels of purchase intent. Marketers call these awareness stages.

Someone typing your brand or store name into Google already knows you. They’ve been on your site, heard about you from a friend, or bought from you before. Half the buying decision is already made, the click is cheap, and it converts well.

Someone searching “men’s hiking boots” is much earlier in the process. They don’t know you or your brand, they’re comparing offers, and they’ll click through several stores before they buy anything.

Same products, same ads, but two audiences that are worth very different amounts and deserve to be treated differently.

Does this hold for big brands like Nike?

Only partly. What a branded search is worth depends on who’s behind the brand.

If you sell your brand exclusively in your own store, or people search for your store name, the math above holds up completely. For a big brand carried by many retailers, the picture shifts. “nike shoes” behaves like a category of its own: the search is about the brand, the purchase goes to whichever retailer has the best offer, and dozens of resellers bid on that click.

That audience is brand-aware but nowhere near as decided as someone searching for your store name. The split is still worth it, but set the brand campaign’s targets around that competition instead of expecting store-name margins.

What happens without the split?

With both audiences in one campaign, Smart Bidding only sees the average. Your reported ROAS is a blend of cheap branded conversions and expensive generic clicks. A target set on that blend fits neither group: too loose for brand, too strict for generic.

The real damage happens in how the traffic gets bought, and the reason is simple. Google’s algorithm, Smart Bidding specifically, always takes the path of least resistance. It hits the target off the easy branded conversions while it keeps paying generic click prices that would never pencil out on their own.

Your branded searches end up subsidizing the part of the campaign that’s supposed to drive growth and should prove itself on its own.

When I look at new accounts, a missing brand split is one of the most common findings. Brand and generic run together, ROAS looks fine, and nobody can say what the generic side actually delivers.

What do you gain from the split?

Once split, you can target and manage both audiences separately.

For the brand campaign, I’d go with a low manual CPC. That audience is already looking for you, and paying more per click barely buys you any extra orders.

Your generic Shopping, which for most accounts means PMax, finally shows honest numbers. That’s the basis for deciding how much growth you can afford, and you’ll see in black and white how much revenue Shopping drives without your branded searches.

How does the split work technically?

In a Search campaign, this would be quick: you’d add your brand terms as keywords in a dedicated campaign, done. Shopping has no targeting keywords. Google decides which queries trigger a Shopping ad based on your product feed, that is, your titles, descriptions, and attributes.

That leaves you two levers. Campaign priority (high, medium, low) determines which of several eligible Shopping campaigns enters the auction first. And negative keywords let you decide directly which queries a campaign rejects.

Every common approach combines these two levers, and how you combine them determines whether the split holds.

What are the ways to separate brand and non-brand?

My preferred way is the priority structure with two Standard Shopping campaigns, so that’s the one I’ll walk through in full below. Two other approaches are common: brand exclusions in Performance Max, and scripts that keep the search terms clean automatically. At its core, that’s all there is. Every variant out there combines priorities, negative keywords, and brand exclusions.

Standard Shopping splits via campaign priorities (my recommendation)

Dutch PPC specialist Nils Rooijmans popularized this structure. You create two Standard Shopping campaigns with the same product scope, and only one of them is a real campaign.

The first gets high priority, your brand terms as negative keywords, and a very low manual CPC of a few cents. It’s a pure proxy campaign; some call it a dummy. It’s not supposed to get traffic or budget. Its only job is routing.

The second is the actual brand campaign. It gets low priority, no brand exclusions, and a low manual CPC.

Together they form a switch. Every query hits the proxy campaign first because it has the higher priority. Branded searches bounce off its negative keywords and fall through to the brand campaign, which serves them at its normal bid. Generic searches stay with the proxy, where the tiny CPC means they almost never win an auction. In practice, even after weeks the proxy sits at a handful of impressions and a few cents in spend, and that’s exactly where it should be.

The counterintuitive part is the role reversal. The high-priority campaign is the unimportant one, existing only to make the switch work. Your valuable brand campaign sits on the lowest priority. If you’re seeing this logic for the first time, it’s easy to set the priorities backwards.

Your generic Shopping keeps running wherever it ran before. For most accounts, that’s PMax with brand exclusions. If your generic Shopping runs through a Standard Shopping campaign with a real budget, that campaign takes over the proxy role: high priority plus brand negatives at normal bids.

Here’s the setup in four steps:

Step 1: Build the brand negative keyword list

Under Tools > Shared library > Negative keyword lists, create a list, for example “Brand terms.” It should include your brand or store name, common misspellings, and brand-plus-product combinations.

Use broad match, meaning no quotes or brackets. Broad catches the variations and combinations you’d never think to list. With exact or phrase, they slip through.

You’ll never know all your customers’ typos up front. The search terms report will show you which variations people actually type. Keep adding those to the list.

Step 2: Create the proxy campaign

Create a Standard Shopping campaign with your full product scope, priority “High,” and attach the brand negative list. Set a manual CPC of a few cents and a small daily budget.

This campaign isn’t supposed to deliver anything. If it picks up real traffic or costs, something’s off in the setup. Never pause it, though: without the proxy, the switch collapses.

Step 3: Create the brand campaign

Create the second Standard Shopping campaign with the same product scope, priority “Low,” without the brand negative list. It receives the branded searches that bounce off the proxy.

For bidding, I recommend a low manual CPC in line with your historical brand click prices; you’ll find those in the search terms report of your existing campaigns. That way you cap click prices yourself, and the campaign wins next to no generic auctions if a query does slip through.

Keep the budget small, since branded search volume is limited.

Step 4: Protect PMax and verify the routing

If a PMax campaign runs with the same products, priorities don’t apply there. In a head-to-head, Ad Rank decides the winner, and PMax with Smart Bidding beats your penny-CPC campaigns almost every time. So add your brand terms to the PMax brand exclusions as well, or the split falls apart.

To verify, open the search terms report of both Shopping campaigns after two or three days. The brand campaign should show almost nothing but branded searches, and the proxy should be nearly empty. Branded searches showing up anywhere else point to a gap in the negative list or missing PMax exclusions.

Performance Max splits via brand exclusions

If your generic Shopping runs through PMax, for instance as a feed-only setup, priority logic doesn’t apply. Priorities only work between Standard Shopping campaigns. When PMax and Standard Shopping compete for the same query, Ad Rank decides the winner, and campaigns with penny CPCs lose that comparison almost every time.

PMax has its own setting for this, called brand exclusions. You add your brand there, and PMax leaves branded searches alone. Google uses its own brand detection, and you can add custom brand names. The brand campaign itself stays a Standard Shopping campaign with a low manual CPC, just like in the priority variant, since PMax has no priority setting and no way to serve only branded searches.

So the core structure stays the same; only the routing runs through the brand exclusion. As a side effect, your PMax numbers get more honest, because that ROAS is no longer propped up by cheap branded conversions.

Scripts keep the split clean automatically

A third approach skips the priorities and works with negative keywords on both sides. The generic campaign excludes the brand terms, and the brand campaign excludes the generic queries. The obvious problem: you can never list all generic queries up front.

That’s where Google Ads scripts come in. Tibbe van Asten’s Exclude Non-Brand script reads the brand campaign’s search terms every hour and automatically excludes every query that doesn’t contain your brand terms. There’s also a multi-brand version based on the product feed.

Rooijmans publishes matching alert scripts, like a warning when negative keywords collide with active keywords, and a script that shows you the brand share inside PMax campaigns.

The scripts are useful even if you run the priority variant. They run alongside it as a safety net for anything that slips through.

Why should you still check your search terms?

Whichever implementation you choose, the split is never completely airtight. Priority is a right-of-way rule, not a guarantee, and individual queries keep slipping to the wrong side.

You still need to review both campaigns’ search terms reports regularly, even with a perfect setup. Everything that gets past the proxy lands in the brand campaign, and generic noise accumulates there over time.

A short weekly check is enough. Exclude anything that doesn’t belong, right there in the campaign, and let one of the scripts above handle the recurring part if you’d rather not do it by hand.

FAQ: Common questions about brand Shopping campaigns

Does the priority structure work with Performance Max?

Campaign priorities only exist in Standard Shopping; PMax ignores them. When both compete for the same query, Ad Rank decides who serves, and PMax usually wins in practice. That’s why the split runs through the brand exclusions in your PMax settings plus a separate brand campaign in Standard Shopping.

Which campaign gets which priority?

The proxy campaign gets high, the brand campaign gets low. High priority means that campaign gets first look at every query. The proxy is supposed to see every query first and reject the branded ones so they fall through to the brand campaign.

Do I need this as a reseller without my own brand?

For your store name, yes: resellers have repeat customers who search for the store directly. The manufacturer brands in your catalog are a different story. Someone searching “garmin forerunner” is comparing retailers and counts as generic traffic, even though there’s a brand name in the query.

Conclusion

As long as brand and generic run together, Smart Bidding hits its target off the easy conversions, and the generic side spends more than it could ever justify on its own. The split costs you a negative keyword list, two small Shopping campaigns, and the brand exclusions in PMax. After that, you reach both audiences separately, control branded demand with a low manual CPC, and see for the first time what your generic Shopping really delivers.

The switch is never fully airtight. Keep an eye on the search terms, or let a script take over that part.

Thanks for reading this far. Good luck putting it into practice!

Work smart with Clicks in Mind