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Clients and Results
”Launching a startup airline comes with big challenges, especially in growth and marketing. Partnering with Search Machines was the best decision we made. Their expert team and ATLAS software helped us scale efficiently with multilingual ads reaching markets as far as Brazil and Canada. Thanks to their paid search expertise, Arajet has already experienced 40% growth in revenue year on year
Tania MancillaVP of Marketing, Arajet
Does brand PPC actually add value?
If someone searches for your brand and you already sit at the top organically, why pay for the click?
This is a question we hear regularly from clients and often test. Recently we decided to test it for a global e-commerce company to make sure they were seeing genuine incremental sales from brand ads.
The setup
We ran a simple on / off day-parting experiment.
A Google Ads brand campaign was switched on and off on alternating days.
Day 1 – campaign active
Day 2 – campaign paused
Day 3 – campaign active
Day 4 – campaign paused
This pattern continued for two weeks.
If brand PPC added no incremental value, total clicks should stay roughly the same across both conditions.
If it did add value, days with both paid and organic listings should show higher traffic.
Why Australia
The test ran in Australia.
Our client operates globally, but Australia worked well for a few practical reasons.
The market is large enough to produce meaningful data, and performance there is generally stable. At the same time, the company’s commercial focus during the period was on the US and Canada, which meant we could run the test without risking key markets.
What happened
Days when the brand campaign was active generated 21.7% more clicks than days when it was paused.
Conversion rates between paid brand traffic and organic brand traffic were broadly similar.
Applying those conversion rates to the additional traffic suggests roughly 350 extra conversions per month if brand campaigns run continuously in Australia.
The incremental cost per conversion was higher than the account average, but the additional volume justified the spend.
Following the test, the client decided to run brand campaigns continuously in Australia and later rolled them out across other markets.
What might explain the effect
The above test correlates with the majority of other brand campaigns we’ve run. We have two comments as to why this might be the case:
First, organic listings increasingly appear lower on the results page. On mobile devices in particular, ads, extensions, shopping results and AI summaries often occupy most of the first screen.
Second, competitors can appear on brand searches even if they are not deliberately targeting those terms. Campaign types such as Performance Max don’t rely on strict keyword targeting, which means brand queries can trigger competitor ads.
Both factors make it easier for brand traffic to leak away unless the brand itself occupies the paid space.
What this test showed
In this account, organic rankings alone did not capture all brand demand.
When paid and organic listings appeared together, total clicks increased.
The two channels behaved less like substitutes and more like overlapping coverage of the same search demand.
If you’d like to explore further:
– Our case studies show how similar tests have played out in other accounts.
– Our services section explains how we approach accounts.
– Or schedule a free strategy session to talk through your specific context.
