For years, manual bidding was the standard for brand campaigns in Google Ads. Set your CPCs, control your costs, and dominate your brand terms — simple, right? But over the last few months, I’ve been testing a different approach. And the results have been hard to ignore.

I’m here to say it: manual brand bidding might be obsolete.

What I’m Doing Instead

For the past three months, I’ve shifted most of my branded campaigns to use portfolio bid strategies — specifically, Maximize Conversions with a Target CPA, layered with maximum CPC caps. That balance of automation and constraint has been outperforming manual CPC efforts across multiple brands I have run these tests with.

Why? Here’s the short version:

  • Smart bidding learns fast on branded terms (which are low-funnel and high-converting).
  • Target CPA ensures scaling with profitability in mind.
  • A Max CPC cap prevents overspending in auctions we know we can win cheaper.

And the results? Higher ROAS, lower cost-per-acquisition, and less time managing bids.

What About Performance Max Cannibalization?

Here’s where it gets more interesting.

Performance Max is already bidding on your brand terms. You can fight it — exclude brand keywords and hope for incrementality — but in our experience, that strategy doesn’t hold up.

When I tested negative brand keyword exclusions in Performance Max, I saw:

  • A significant drop in total revenue.
  • No meaningful lift in Search to compensate.
  • No evidence of incremental gains — just a shift in reporting, not reality.

So instead of trying to force manual control, I’ve embraced the overlap. Allowing Performance Max to do its thing, and focusing our Search campaigns on being strategic complements, not competitors.

Let Search Do What PMax Can’t

Here’s what did work:

Let Search campaigns run with portfolio-based Max Conversion bidding strategies, targeting branded queries with smart creative and clear intent signals. mCPC is only available when you utilize tCPA.

Note: ensure not to set tCPA too low, as this has a tendency to strangle the bids and decrease traffic.

If you are choosing to utilize broad match, which I do, make sure to restrict search terms by adding a brand inclusion for your brand.

Performance Max still picked up brand traffic, but the Search campaign’s tighter relevance and better CTR meant it pulled in higher-value clicks without fighting against the machine.

This method isn’t about excluding PMax — it’s about designing campaigns that work in harmony with it. Manual bidding just doesn’t keep up anymore.

Key Takeaways

  • Manual brand bidding is no longer the best path to efficiency or scale.
  • Portfolio strategies with CPA targets and CPC caps outperform by letting automation do the heavy lifting — with guardrails.
  • Trying to isolate brand traffic from Performance Max often does more harm than good. Here’s an excellent deep dive by Kirk Williams on the nuances of this point.
  • Let Search add value, but don’t expect it to outcompete PMax at its own game.

Performance Max isn’t perfect, but trying to restrict it too heavily — especially on branded terms — may just be cutting off your nose to spite your ROAS.

Got a different result? I’d love to hear how it played out. But as of right now, I’m done pretending that brand needs manual control to be effective.

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