Every marketer has asked this million-dirham question at some point: Am I just burning money bidding on my own brand name? Branded search campaigns – where you pay for clicks on keywords featuring your company’s brand – can feel like a strange proposition.
On one hand, they can deliver sky-high click-through rates and cheap conversions. On the other, you might wonder if you’re essentially paying Google for traffic you would have gotten for free.
In the UAE’s competitive and fast-growing market, this debate is especially lively. Let’s break down when branded search is worth every dirham, when it’s a waste, and how to decide for businesses large and small.
Branded search campaigns are pay-per-click (PPC) ads targeting your own brand name and related terms.
For example, if your company is called “Desert Luxe Hotels,” a branded campaign bids on searches like “Desert Luxe Hotels Dubai.”
The idea is that when someone searches your brand, your paid ad will appear – usually at the very top of the search results – even if your website is already the top organic result.
Why would anyone pay for their own name? There are a few common reasons marketers run branded campaigns:
In short, businesses run branded campaigns as a form of defensive marketing and SERP real estate strategy. It’s about owning your brand’s narrative on Google (or Bing) and not leaving anything to chance – or to competitors.
But does that justify the spend? Let’s look at when bidding on your own name makes sense and when it’s likely throwing money away.
There are situations where branded PPC campaigns are not only justifiable – they’re downright critical. Here are some scenarios when investing in branded search is worth it:
If competitors (or affiliates, resellers, online travel agencies, etc.) are bidding on your brand, you can’t afford to sit out. Sneaky competitors will use this tactic, and it’s estimated that about one-third of all brand queries have a competitor’s ad showing up (Marketing Dive).
For example, if someone searches your company name on Google and sees a rival’s ad first, you risk losing that click (and customer). This is especially true on mobile devices, where a top ad can fill the entire screen. A user might not even see your organic result without scrolling.
Bidding on your brand keeps poachers at bay and maintains your visibility at the very top. As Search Engine Land put it, having a paid brand ad can prevent competitors from poaching users who are “actually looking for you by name”. In fact, research by Adthena found many brands aren’t aware how much competitive brand bidding is inflating their own brand CPCs – so defending your turf with your own ad can keep those costs and lost clicks down.
Even if you rank #1 organically, a paid ad ensures you own more of the results page. This is about dominating mindshare.
A Bing Ads study in the travel sector showed:
In other words, a competitor’s ad can steal nearly half the clicks meant for you, but running your own ad slashes that loss dramatically.
Another analysis for hotels found that without a brand ad, the hotel’s organic result got only 30–40% of clicks, with 60–70% of clicks going to OTAs or other competitors; by adding a brand ad, hotels captured about 60–70% of total click share.
That’s a massive difference in traffic and revenue.
In high-stakes industries (like travel, finance, education), competitors are very willing to bid on each other’s brand terms if the customer lifetime value is high – meaning if you snooze, you lose. Running a brand campaign is worth it to secure those would-be lost clicks and keep control of your brand’s search journey.
If your brand name is a common word or overlaps with other meanings, an organic #1 might not be guaranteed or as obvious to users. For example, a search for “Galaxy” could mean the Samsung phone– if your brand is “Galaxy Widgets,” your site might not automatically be the top result.
A branded ad can ensure you appear prominently for your intended audience. Similarly, if your brand name is often misspelled or has variants (think “Aluminium FZE” vs “Aluminum” spelling differences), you can bid on those to capture traffic that organic search might miss.
There are times you want to show a specific message to brand searchers – maybe you’re running a Ramadan sale or a big event (“Desert Luxe Hotels – 50% Off Eid Sale!”). Your organic result might not reflect that timely offer.
A branded ad lets you:
This can boost conversion by aligning what the user sees in search with what you want to promote. Branded campaigns give you flexibility to customise the user’s path when they search your name.
In the UAE, mobile search is king – about over 90% of internet users in the UAE access the web via mobile devices, and mobile accounts for roughly 75% of the country’s web traffic (Bydd). On a smartphone screen, paid ads take up prime real estate. If you rely on just your organic listing, it could be pushed below other content (ads, maps, etc.). A branded ad ensures you’re front-and-center on that tiny screen.
Given that UAE consumers often use their phones, capturing the top spot on mobile searches for your brand can significantly impact whether a user clicks on you or a competitor. High mobile usage is a point in favour of branded campaigns, especially if a rival could sneak above you.
On the flip side, there are plenty of instances where bidding on your own name can be a wasteful use of budget. It’s not a given that branded campaigns always add value. Consider these situations where you might be pouring dirhams down the drain:
If nobody else is bidding on your brand terms and you consistently hold the top organic spot with rich sitelinks, then your paid ad is likely cannibalising your organic traffic. In this scenario, users searching your brand already intend to find you – Google isn’t magically creating new customers, it’s just charging you for the ones you already had.
A famous study by eBay demonstrated this: when eBay paused its branded search ads, it saw no drop in site traffic from those queries, because 99.5% of the clicks they would have paid for came through organic results anyway. In other words, almost everyone who would have clicked the ad clicked the organic link when the ad wasn’t there (Chicago Booth). If your brand is well-known and your SEO is on point, a branded campaign might be an unnecessary “tax.”
Similar to the above, your ad isn’t doing much if your customers:
For instance, if someone searches “Emirates Airline official site,” they’re not likely to be swayed by another ad – they’ll scroll until they find Emirates. Paying for that click doesn’t change the outcome, except to charge you a fee.
One PPC veteran argued that Google and agencies often overhype branded ads to “claim” easy conversions that the brand’s own strength generated. “The person typed in YOUR BRAND NAME. They WANT to get to your site… Google just collects & ‘claims’ it,” they wrote, after deciding to stop brand bidding when no competitors were active. If that rings true for your situation, you might scale back your spend.
For small businesses or startups with very limited marketing budgets, every dirham must pull in new business. Spending a big chunk of your budget to capture people who already know you (and would find you organically) can be inefficient. Those funds might work harder in non-brand campaigns that generate awareness or acquire new customers.
If you’re a local boutique and anyone searching your name will see your Google Business Profile and website listing immediately, do you need to pay for an ad? Often, the answer is no – especially if there’s zero competition on your name and search volume for your brand is low. In this case, branded campaigns could simply be eating budget that could otherwise go to reaching new audiences.
The ultimate way to know if your brand ads are a waste is to test it. Some companies have done holdout experiments (more on that later) and found the extra conversions from brand ads were negligible.
One study found that running brand ads yielded only about a 5% increase in sessions compared to when ads were off, meaning 95% of the traffic was coming organically anyway. How did they find this out? They tested it.
If you run an experiment and see that turning off brand ads doesn’t significantly hurt your traffic or sales, that’s a strong sign you’ve been wasting money. (Better to find out sooner rather than later!)
Sometimes, brands find their branded CPCs are higher than expected – even without competitors. Google’s auction system might still charge you, say, AED 2 per click for your own name, depending on quality score and other factors. If you’re paying a lot for brand clicks that convert in the same session, the math might still work out.
But if you’re paying a substantial CPC and most of those clicks would convert via organic, it’s doubly wasteful. It’s worth investigating why your brand CPC is high (poor ad relevance? using broad match pulling unrelated queries?) and whether those clicks are bringing incremental revenue. If not, pause the campaign and see if your cost-per-acquisition (CPA) improves overall.
Branded search can be wasteful if it’s not driving incremental value, for example, when it simply diverts users who would have clicked your organic listing anyway. If your analytics show that turning off the campaign doesn’t reduce conversions, or your branded CPA is absurdly high relative to other channels, that spend is better allocated elsewhere.
And remember: Google won’t shed a tear if you keep paying them for zero gain. It’s on you as the marketer to ensure you’re not bidding against yourself for nothing.
At the end of the day, the question of “Should I keep spending on branded search?” boils down to your specific data and circumstances. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer – and anyone who tells you “always do it” or “never do it” is oversimplifying. Use this framework to guide your decision:
Bottom line: Branded search campaigns are neither inherently good nor evil – it’s all about context. Take a hard look at your own situation, run the numbers, and you’ll arrive at a strategy that either confidently backs your branded campaigns or saves you from a potential budget sinkhole. In the fast-paced world of search marketing, that kind of clarity is gold.
So, are you wasting budget on branded search? Now you have the tools to find out – and ensure that, whatever you choose, your decision is justified by solid evidence and strategy rather than guesswork. Need a second opinion on your branded search strategy, or help managing your campaigns? Feel free to contact us and let our experts handle everything.