“Brand” is the Last Refuge of Luddites in Google Ads
Every time automation in Google Ads comes up – Performance Max, AI Max, AI-generated headlines – you'll hear the same tired objection:
“We can’t do that. We need to protect the brand.”
Sounds noble, right? It isn’t. It’s cope.
What “Brand” Really Means in 2025
When someone says brand in the context of Google Ads, what they usually mean is:
- Loss of control: “I don’t like the idea of a machine choosing copy or placements without me approving every comma.”
- Fear of bad optics: “What if an AI headline is off-tone? What if my logo shows up on a website I wouldn’t show my mother?”
- Agency job security: “If Google automates targeting and creative, what’s left for me to bill for?”
None of these are about brand. They’re about ego, fear, and legacy process.
The Truth: Distribution Beats Branding
Let’s be blunt: Google Ads is distribution infrastructure, not a brand platform. It’s about pipes, not polish.
If your competitor is running PMax and you’re holding back because “the brand might not like it,” you’re not protecting the brand, you’re starving it. Distribution is oxygen. Without it, your brand suffocates, no matter how pretty your guidelines PDF looks.
And here’s the kicker: automation doesn’t destroy brand; it creates visibility at scale. Responsive headlines, dynamic search ads, AI Max, Performance Max placements, they don’t “ruin tone.” They put your product in front of the right person at the right time. The alternative is invisibility.
Branding as a Cloak for Fear
The phrase “because of brand” has become a shield people hide behind when they’re unwilling to adapt. It’s safer to nod at a style guide than to admit you don’t understand how machine-driven ad auctions actually work.
But ask yourself this: when was the last time you clicked an ad and thought “Wow, the brand tone was immaculate”? Never. You clicked because it was relevant, timely, and visible. That’s distribution doing its job.
The New Rule
Brand isn’t irrelevant – it still amplifies pipes once they exist. But pipes come first. In Google Ads, distribution is the empire. Brand is just the paint on the palace walls.
So the next time someone says, “We can’t run automated Google Ads because of brand,” translate it correctly:
“We’d rather feel safe than grow.“
That guarantees suboptimal results. Google Ads, for most people, is just a numbers game, and your job is to make that number as big as possible. The best way to do that is just let the machine do the job.
The Distribution Test
And if you still think brand is the moat, look at the giants. Coke and Pepsi get worshipped in business schools as brand icons – but under the hood, they’re distribution machines. Shelving contracts, fountain deals, global bottling networks. The logos only matter because they’re everywhere. Take away the pipes and they’re just sugar water.
Nike tells the same story. The swoosh is iconic, sure, but when they cut back retail distribution to go DTC-only, sales slumped. Not because the brand failed – but because the pipes narrowed.
That’s the rule nobody wants to say out loud: distribution makes the brand visible, the product makes it stick, and only then do people start telling stories about it.
Next time you resist AI due to brand, think again.
Ben Luong is a technical marketing consultant who operates where AI falls short. In a world flooded with cheap, mediocre code and automated strategies, he provides the expert integration, verification, and strategic accountability required to make modern marketing stacks profitable. He specialises in architecting Google Ads, SEO, and GA4 into a single, high-performance system that is accountable to the bottom line.
