Do brands need search advertising?

Unlike traditional advertising, brands pay for search ads only if they are effective, measured by clicks. Clicks, however, are not sales. This paper presents results from nine field experiments conducted with eight small, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands selling exclusively online with all sales captured in the dataset. Despite variations in brand, product category, and search advertising formats, stopping branded search advertising had no significant effect on sales for all eight brands. For two of three brands that stopped generic search advertising, there was a significant effect on sessions (website visits), but not sales. A pre-registered online experiment was also conducted, confirming the null effects of branded search advertising on sessions (measured as click intentions) found in the field experiments. These results indicate that brands should reallocate search-related marketing expenditure from branded to generic search ads, or search engine optimization to appear on the first results page.