13 April 2026 , Blackgate
Account structure exists so budgets, intent, and measurement stay legible. When brand Search, non-brand Search, and Performance Max (PMax) all chase the same queries without rules, you get cannibalised performance, muddled reports, and optimisations that help one channel while hiding damage in another.
In practice we see teams celebrate a “cheap CPA” on Search while PMax quietly absorbs the same searches with a higher effective cost—because nobody could see overlap in one place. Structure is how you make that visible.
Brand in its own campaign
Brand terms (your name, obvious variants) usually deserve a dedicated Search campaign with tight exact (or controlled phrase) coverage and a stability-first goal: presence, direct response, and cheap defence against competitors. Why separate? So generic and exploratory spend does not get masked by cheap brand clicks, and you can defend against conquesting without relearning every account filter.
A brand campaign is not exciting to optimise; it is the line item that tells you whether your name still converts when competitors bid on you. That signal disappears when it is mixed into the same report as “discovery” terms.
Non-brand Search: one clear job
Non-brand Search should map to specific commercial intents - services, “near me,” problem-led queries. Use tight ad groups around themes, not 200 loosely related terms in one ad group. Negatives at campaign or list level should strip irrelevant and out-of-range terms early.
Think of non-brand as the place you argue for new demand: who is not searching your name yet but should be. If that intent is a blur, your ad copy and landing pages will be too, and no bid strategy fixes that.
Performance Max: guardrails, not a black box
PMax is one way to use Google’s inventory across its surfaces with goals and assets you provide. The trade-off is less query control than classic Search. Treat it as a system you steer with assets, feeds, and exclusions—not a set-and-forget replacement for a clear value proposition on site.
- Segment PMax for clear goals (e.g. new customer / feed-heavy / lead form) and separate from pure Search if budgets need clarity.
- Brand exclusions (where available) and search themes to steer - not to pretend it is full Search query control.
- Feed and creative health matters as much as bidding - PMax is not a substitute for a weak value proposition on site.
Conversion measurement that you trust is non-negotiable: GA4 conversion tracking and QA for lead gen.
Negatives: where cannibalism usually hides
The uncomfortable truth is that accounts rarely break because of one bad keyword; they break because the same person’s journey is being bought twice under different campaign names. Negatives are how you reintroduce a single story about who owns which intent.
- Add negatives so brand campaigns do not buy generic, and generic does not siphon obvious brand if that is not the plan.
- Share negative lists for repeated junk patterns, but review for each campaign - auto-apply with care.
- Re-run search term / insight reports after structural changes; structure is live not static.
Reporting that matches structure
Labels and naming (campaign, account) should make C-level questions possible: how much to capture existing demand vs grow new? If every answer requires a custom pivot, the structure is still wrong.
A quick sanity check: can someone new to the account answer “where did we spend on brand last month?” in under two minutes? If the answer is “it depends on which report,” the naming layer still needs work before you tune bids again.
Remarketing and frequency sit in a different layer: remarketing - frequency, messaging, and audience hygiene.
Frequently asked questions
Should PMax and Search run the same product queries?
Only with intent rules and negatives; otherwise, compare incrementality and overlap in Experiments, not only last-click.
One PMax or many?
Split when goals, margins, or creative are meaningfully different; avoid ten tiny PMax campaigns with the same learning budget.
Do I need a separate DSA or broad?
If you add broad/DSA, document what job it has vs PMax, or you duplicate exploration.
Brand CPC went up - is that structure?
Could be competitors or quality; separate brand helps you see it without mixing.
When do we get help?
When overlap and mystery spend outrank internal time to test - a short audit often pays for itself.