Situation found

After many months of optimisation, the revenue generated by brand campaigns began to rise sharply. Unfortunately, the good performance of brand campaigns coincided with a worrying trend when it came to sales from restricted traffic. The cannibalisation of some organic traffic by Google Ads campaigns was undeniable. However, we decided to check how big the scale of the problem is and whether continuing brand campaigns in their current form is profitable. 

Our theses

To investigate the impact of brand campaigns on shop revenues, we decided to carry out a simple test. We divided the campaign into two groups that were as similar as possible, using province targeting. We posed two theses:

• Brand advertising generates more sales than organic traffic thanks to numerous optimisation options and a high degree of flexibility.
• low cost of brand campaigns positively impacts on profitability

Assumptions of the test

Using the aforementioned geographical targeting by province, we have separated two areas:

• area with active brand campaigns. Whe following voivodships: wielkopolskie, dolnośląskie, łódzkie, lubelskie, podkarpackie, warmińsko-mazurskie, opolskie
• area without brand campaigns.Voivodships: Kujawsko-Pomorskie, Lubuskie, Małopolskie, Podlaskie, Świętokrzyskie, Śląskie, Zachodniopomorskie

The split was made so that the two areas had almost identical numbers of sessions and revenue generated in the 12 months preceding the test.

Our conclusions 

The test we conducted lasted six months. The data collected allowed us to draw two main conclusions.

Impact on traffic: Excluding branded campaigns had no impact on traffic. The test and control pools recorded very similar results.

Impact on revenue: Here we see a significant difference in favour of pools with branded ads running. Branded campaigns contributed to a nearly threefold increase in revenue. 

Summary:

• Brand campaigns can help increase sales generated by brand traffic thanks to optimisation opportunities and personalisation of ad content
• The additional cost of brand campaigns is usually very low, so testing their effectiveness is not associated with high risk, and can have a positive impact on the profitability of the activities.