Brand Exclusions (PMax)

Brand Exclusions are a Performance Max campaign setting that prevents your ads from appearing on search queries that contain specified brand names. This allows advertisers to block their own brand terms (to avoid cannibalizing organic or branded Search campaigns) or competitor brand terms (to prevent irrelevant or high-cost traffic).

Key Takeaways

• Block Performance Max ads from appearing on branded search queries
• Commonly used to protect existing branded Search campaigns from PMax cannibalization
• Uses Google’s brand list database for matching, not manual keyword entry
• Available at the campaign level under campaign settings
• Critical for agencies running both branded Search and Performance Max simultaneously

What Are Brand Exclusions

Brand Exclusions address one of the most significant concerns with Performance Max: the tendency of PMax campaigns to pick up branded search traffic that would otherwise be handled by dedicated Search campaigns at a lower cost. Before brand exclusions were introduced, Performance Max would frequently show ads on brand queries, inflating its reported performance while cannibalizing cheaper branded Search traffic.

Use Case	Brands to Exclude	Reason
Own brand	Your company name and variations	Prevent PMax from cannibalizing branded Search
Competitor brands	Direct competitor names	Avoid irrelevant traffic and trademark issues
Parent/sibling brands	Related brands in your portfolio	Prevent cross-campaign overlap

How It Works

Brand exclusions are configured in the 2026 Google Ads interface:

1. Navigate to Campaign settings for your Performance Max campaign
2. Find Brand exclusions under the Additional settings section
3. Search Google’s brand database to find the brand you want to exclude
4. Select the brand — Google automatically identifies search queries associated with that brand
5. Save — exclusions take effect for all search themes in the campaign

Unlike negative keywords (which are not available in Performance Max), brand exclusions use Google’s brand entity matching system. This means:

• Google matches against brand variations, abbreviations, and common misspellings
• You do not need to enter every possible brand variation manually
• The matching is broader than exact keyword exclusion
• Google’s brand database must include the brand for it to be excludable

Limitations:

• Brands not in Google’s database cannot be excluded through this feature
• Very small or new brands may not be available in the brand list
• Brand exclusions only affect the Search component of Performance Max, not Display or YouTube
• You cannot exclude generic terms that happen to contain brand words

Practical Example

An electronics retailer runs both a branded Search campaign and Performance Max:

Before brand exclusions:

Campaign	Brand Query Conversions	CPA	Cost
Branded Search	200	$5	$1,000
Performance Max	150 (brand queries)	$12	$1,800
Performance Max	100 (non-brand queries)	$35	$3,500

Performance Max is intercepting 150 branded conversions at $12 CPA that the branded Search campaign would have captured at $5 CPA. Excess cost: 150 x ($12 - $5) = $1,050/month wasted.

After excluding own brand from Performance Max:

Campaign	Brand Query Conversions	CPA	Cost
Branded Search	340	$5	$1,700
Performance Max	0 (brand queries)	—	$0
Performance Max	130 (non-brand queries)	$32	$4,160

Total conversions: 470 (vs. 450 before). Total cost: $5,860 (vs. $6,300 before). Net savings: $440/month with more conversions.

Why It Matters

Brand Exclusions are essential for accurate Performance Max reporting and efficient budget allocation. Without them, Performance Max inflates its own ROAS by claiming branded conversions that would have happened anyway through organic search or cheaper branded campaigns. For agencies, brand exclusions are a standard best practice that should be configured during campaign setup. Reviewing the Search Terms Report alongside brand exclusion settings ensures that PMax is generating genuinely incremental conversions rather than cannibalizing existing brand equity.