Brand searches and category searches arrive with different context. Someone looking for your company already knows something about it. Someone searching for a solution may be deciding which company to consider.
Combining both into one efficiency number can hide how much the account depends on demand created elsewhere. I want that distinction visible before making a growth claim.
Define the categories consistently
Document what counts as brand, including common variations and relevant product names. Define how mixed queries are handled. Keep the classification stable enough to compare periods, and record changes when the brand or product portfolio evolves.
The purpose is analysis. The exact campaign structure should still reflect management needs and the platform’s current controls.
Inspect the blended result
Consider a hypothetical account spending $2,000 on brand traffic and $8,000 on nonbrand traffic. Suppose the attributed customer counts are twenty and ten. The blended media cost per customer is about $333, while the nonbrand figure is $800.
Those figures describe different questions. Neither proves incrementality. The blend does not establish that another $10,000 invested in new demand will produce customers at $333 each.
Ask where demand originated
Brand interest can be influenced by product experience, referrals, content, events, other ads, or prior sales activity. Attribution may assign credit near the end of a journey without explaining everything that created it.
That does not make brand advertising inherently wasteful. It makes the decision more specific: what role does it play, what happens when its presence changes, and what evidence can the company gather responsibly?
Report both views
Show brand, nonbrand, and combined results with the same outcome definitions and maturity windows. Explain changes in the mix. A better blended number caused by more brand demand is a different story from improved nonbrand acquisition.
Budget for the question you are answering
If the goal is acquiring additional customers, examine marginal nonbrand opportunities and the wider demand-generation process. If the goal is managing existing brand demand, evaluate that role on its own terms.
Use the attribution guide to keep credited outcomes separate from causal claims. A useful report makes the source of apparent efficiency easier to understand.
Co-founder and CEO of Stackmatix, startup advisor, and former Head of Sales at MightyHive. Connect with Matt on LinkedIn ↗ · More about Matt →