This shows why it’s a real challenge for your brand’s keywords to be incremental. It’s almost guaranteed that your relevant products will show up organically on the SERP – with your top sellers showing up high in the results. Additionally, consumers are more likely to click on the top few results of a branded search, as compared to generic searches.

The biggest takeaway here is that advertising your top products on your own branded terms is a particularly bad practice. You’re capturing sales via paid placements you were likely to capture organically anyway. If brand defense is imperative, consider advertising new or longer-tail products on your branded terms instead. That way you’re defending your brand term, but you’re doing so by helping to sell products that aren’t yet ranking well organically, while still not cannibalizing sales of your top products.