Is Google Ads Still Worth It — Or Are You Just Paying a Brand Tax?

Hey Founder,

If you know me, you will know that I am pretty skeptical of Google and the way they report revenue from their campaigns.

Google essentially makes you pay for traffic that is ALREADY searching for your brand name. They charge you for traffic that is the result of your own brand awareness.

Then they use those sales to make their overall campaign ROAS to look really good. 🤯

Why is this happening?

Heavy automation on Google has reduced the media buyer’s control over targeting. It's now much harder to differentiate true prospecting from bottom-funnel retargeting.

My friend Collin Slattery handles some pretty huge Google accounts and has started testing this - in 90% of cases he found that the brand-keyword campaigns on Google were NOT incremental.

So I got curious and decided to test it out on a larger client of mine.

How I Tested This and What I Learned

Google was reporting a 6X ROAS from their Google Ads account.
On paper, it looked incredible.

What Raised the Red Flag?

After 15+ years of auditing and running ad accounts, I’ve learned to trust my instincts — and something didn’t add up.

The business already had strong brand awareness across key markets.

When I dug into the data, it got even more suspicious:

80% of conversions were tied to brand-related keywords.
In other words, most "conversions" were people who already knew the brand — and likely would have bought anyway.

The hunch?
Google wasn't generating new demand. It was merely clipping the ticket at the last mile.

A Structured Hold Out Test

Theory is great — but in eCommerce, real decisions demand real-world testing.
Here’s exactly what we did:

✅ Paused ALL Google Ads in two countries (the brand operates globally).
✅ Maintained Meta ad spend at the same levels, and held all other marketing constant to isolate the variable.
✅ Monitored total site revenue, new customer acquisition, and overall site behavior.

The Results

👉 Zero change in total site revenue in both test markets 😳
👉 New customer revenue dipped slightly — down by 7% and 10% respectively.

This tells us two important things:

1. Google's contribution to total revenue was marginal at best.

2. Even if all the slight dip in new customers came from Google's absence (a generous assumption), the "true" ROAS would be less than 1X — meaning the spend was not efficient or profitable.

In short:
It wasn't Google driving the business forward — it was just taxing the brand’s existing strength.

What We’re Doing Next

This doesn’t mean we’re abandoning Google entirely. It's still a powerful platform when used strategically.
But it does mean we're changing the approach:

🔹 No more heavy investment in brand terms.
🔹 Focus on non-brand search, Shopping, and Performance Max campaigns that can actually bring in new customers.
🔹 Incrementality testing baked into the strategy — no more assuming good platform ROAS = good marketing.

The goal?
Rebuild from a true prospecting perspective, and measure against channels like Meta where we've consistently seen stronger performance.

Lessons for eComm Brands like yours

If you're managing paid media today, you can’t afford to simply trust surface-level metrics in Google ads or in Google Analytics.

Here are some key thoughts:

1. Always ask: Is the spend leading to incremental revenue?

2. Consider hold-out tests — sometimes the only way to uncover the truth is to hit pause.

3. Watch your brand keywords like a hawk - are they actually driving most of your Google sales?

In eCommerce, we don't get paid for looking good in dashboards.
We get paid for driving incremental growth.

Are you sure your media spend is doing that?