Brand Activator: Capture Incremental Traffic at a Lower CPC with Low-Bid Campaigns

• Benefits
• When Low-Bid Campaigns Are Activated
• MCC Linking Requirement
• Setup Instructions
• FAQ

Benefits

Low-bid campaigns enhance Adthena’s Brand Activator by keeping your brand visible on Google SERPs—even when your main campaigns are paused. Acting as a cost-effective backup, these campaigns run at a significantly lower CPC to maintain your presence without overspending.Key benefits:

• Preserve incremental traffic: Maintain both paid and organic visibility without losing valuable brand clicks.
• Cost efficiency: Capture brand traffic at a fraction of the usual CPC, while keeping competitors off your terms.
• Fully automated: Bidding adjusts automatically to optimize cost and coverage with minimal effort.

By pairing low-bid campaigns with Brand Activator’s smart keyword management, you can reduce waste, protect your brand, and sustain performance—efficiently and reliably.

When Low-Bid Campaigns Are Activated

Low-Bid Campaigns are triggered when:

• There is no competition on your brand keywords, and
• Your site has top-ranking organic listings for those terms.

What the System Does

• Pauses evergreen brand keywords
• Activates the same keywords with a low Max CPC bid

What You Can Expect

• Lower CPCs
• Maximum SERP coverage (organic + paid)
• Ongoing ad copy control

MCC Linking Requirement

Low-Bid campaigns are only available for Google Ads accounts linked via MCC. Please ensure all your accounts are MCC-linked before setting up a campaign. 

If you have a mix of MCC-linked and legacy-linked accounts, only the MCC-linked accounts will be visible and selectable in Adthena. If you have only MCC-linked accounts, you will see the standard screen to add Low-Bid campaigns.

To view your linked Google Ads accounts, go to the Google Ads Integration section under Settings in the top-right corner of the app. Your current linking method will also be indicated by an in-app prompt:

• First-Time Linking
• Migrate Existing Linking

Setup Instructions

Steps	Importance	Description
After setting up Brand Activator, follow these steps to add a Low-Bid Campaign
1	Essential	Set up low bid campaign, adding Brand Activator terms as exact match keywords. Easiest way to do this might be by copying existing brand campaign you're linking to Brand Activator.
2	Essential: Choose option 1 or 2	Option 1: Set the low bid campaign bid strategy set to manual CPC (approximately 10% of the CPC of the terms in the main campaign).
		Option 2: Set the strategy to max clicks with a low bid cap (approximately 10% of the CPC of the terms in the main campaign).
3	Essential	Use the same ad copy in the additional campaign as you do in current brand campaigns & ensure the targeting settings are the same.
4	Optional	Do not apply BA negative keyword list to the Low Bid Campaign.
5	Essential	Disable Brand Activator Close Variants using the switch at the bottom of the BA settings page, otherwise the close variants might not be covered by the Low Bid Campaign.
6	Essential	Turn on the Low Bid Campaign.
Monitor the campaign
7	Recommended	Ensure the Brand Activator campaigns both (regular one & additional test one) have sufficient budget.
8	Recommended	Set up a Looker dashboard to monitor the performance of the two campaigns (see here for an example).
9	Recommended	After 7 days: Review the data to understand how the low bid campaign has been working, decide whether to adjust CPCs.

FAQ 

What’s the benefit of running a Low-Bid Campaign instead of just turning off Brand Activator to save on CPC? Wouldn’t the result be similar?

Not exactly. In most cases, the Low-Bid Campaign offers a meaningful cost saving while still maintaining brand visibility.

Example:

Let’s say you pay $1 per click on a brand term, which has a 50% Lone Ranger rate and gets 10,000 clicks per week. Here’s how the scenarios compare:

1. Standard Brand Activator (no bidding on Lone Rangers)
   • Saves $5,000 by not bidding on 50% of clicks
   • Highest savings, but may impact performance if organic coverage is weak
2. Low-Bid Campaign (bidding 10% of original CPC on Lone Rangers)
   • Saves $5,000 in the main brand campaign
   • Spends $500 through the low-bid campaign (at $0.10 CPC)
   • Net saving: $4,500, with some brand coverage maintained
3. No Brand Activator at all
   • Full spend of $10,000 on brand clicks
   • No cost savings and increased risk of losing brand visibility to competitors

Conclusion: Low-Bid Campaigns strike a balance between cost savings and maintaining presence on the SERP, whereas turning BA off completely could result in higher spend or missed traffic.

Wouldn’t CPCs naturally decrease if there are no competitors? How does the Low-Bid Campaign create additional savings beyond that?

Not necessarily. While CPCs often decrease slightly when no competitors are present, Google doesn’t automatically reduce your bids to the minimum possible, especially when using automated bidding strategies.

Automated strategies focus on meeting performance goals (like conversions or ROAS), not on minimizing cost per click. That means Google may still bid relatively high, even if no other advertisers are in the auction—as long as the strategy predicts the goal can still be achieved.

In contrast, the Low-Bid Campaign enforces a much lower bid (e.g., 10% of your usual CPC), which helps ensure you’re only paying the lowest viable amount to maintain visibility when competition drops.

How should we measure the success of a low minimum bid strategy over time?

The success metrics for a Low-Bid Campaign are largely the same as those used for standard Brand Activator setups. Key areas to monitor include:

• Cost savings
• Organic performance
• Overall revenue impact
• Overall impact on clicks

Do we need to exclude Brand Activator terms from PMax campaigns?

Yes. To ensure the Low-Bid Campaign works as intended and PMax doesn’t pick up the same traffic, it’s best to exclude Brand Activator terms from PMax.

Can you adjust CPCs while the Low-Bid Campaign is running?

Yes, you can adjust CPCs during the campaign. If it’s been running for a week or two and you’d like to increase or decrease bids, that’s perfectly fine.

Just keep in mind that frequent or significant changes—such as large CPC shifts or switching bid strategies—can affect performance and make it harder to measure results accurately. This is true for any kind of testing within Google Ads. To maintain clean insights, aim for controlled adjustments.

What’s the impact on automated bidding?

The impact is the same as with standard Brand Activator setups.

If conversion volume drops below 30–50 conversions per month, performance-based bid strategies like tCPA or tROAS may become less effective. However, this is unlikely to be an issue for brand campaigns run by large advertisers, where conversion volume typically remains high.

Strategies like Impression Share or Maximize Clicks, which don’t rely on conversion data, are generally unaffected and work well with low-bid campaigns.