Brand defense means advertising on your own brand name and your own product pages so competitors cannot capture shoppers who are already looking for you. It is usually cheap, because your relevance on your own brand is high, and it protects sales you would otherwise lose to a competitor's ad placed directly on your listing.
The objection, and the answer
Sellers often argue they should not pay for traffic that would have found them anyway. That holds only if no competitor is bidding on your brand — and if you are worth targeting, someone eventually will.
The correct test is empirical: check whether competitor ads appear on your branded searches and on your product pages. If they do, the traffic is not safely yours.
Keep it proportionate
Brand defense should be a small, efficient slice of the account, not a way to flatter overall ACOS. Branded terms convert well and can make an account look healthier than its acquisition performance justifies — always review branded and non-branded separately.
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