do your brand ads pay?

People search your name and click your ad. Some would have bought anyway. This shows whether the brand ads are actually earning their cost.

Your brand ads, per month

People who clicked your ad after searching your brand name What you paid per click $ Sales that came from those clicks Profit you keep from one sale (after product cost) $ Share who would have bought anyway %

Not sure about the last one? Leave it at 50% for now. The only real way to know is to switch your brand ads off for a few weeks and see whether total sales drop. Example numbers are made up.

verdict

What the brand ads cost

Clicks times cost per click.

Profit after the ad cost

Profit from sales the ads actually caused, minus the cost.

Share of sales that must be new

Below this, the brand ads lose money.

What happens at different guesses

Share who would have bought anyway	Sales that were new	Profit after ad cost

The link holds your numbers. The card is a paper-ground PNG of the verdict.

How it works

The arithmetic

cost = clicks x cost per click profit from new buyers = sales x (1 - share who would have bought anyway) x profit per sale profit after ad cost = profit from new buyers - cost share that must be new = cost / (sales x profit per sale)

Plain version: the ads get credit for every sale from a brand search, but some of those people would have found you anyway. Only the buyers the ads truly brought in cover their cost. The page works out how many of your buyers must be new for the spend to pay.

Read this before you act on the number

The hard number is the share who would have bought anyway. No dashboard gives it to you. Test it by switching the brand ads off for a few weeks and watching total sales.

Competitors can bid on your name while you are off. Keep the test long enough to see that effect.

Profit should be after product cost. Using revenue makes every brand ad look better than it is.