The ROI of Brand Awareness Is Real: Google and Tracksuit Have the Data to Prove It

For years, “brand awareness” has been one of marketing’s most debated ideas. Everyone agrees it matters in theory, but in practice it’s often treated as a “soft” metric - useful in brand decks, but less convincing in budget meetings where performance channels tend to dominate.

That gap between belief and proof has shaped how marketing money gets allocated for a long time. Brand budgets get challenged because the impact feels indirect, delayed, and hard to measure. Clicks and conversions win because they are immediate and easy to attribute.

New data is starting to challenge that.

New evidence linking awareness to search intent‍

Google and Tracksuit put out a new study called Return on Awareness that provides some of the clearest evidence yet that brand awareness drives real commercial demand. The study shows a consistent relationship between brand awareness and Share of Search, a strong early indicator of future market share.

Put simply: the more people who know your brand, the more they search for it, and the more they search, the more likely you are to grow.

This relationship is measurable. For brands sitting around 30% awareness, the data shows a direct 1:1 relationship - every five points gained in brand awareness translates into five points in Share of Search. It’s more than correlation; it points to a clear connection between being known and being chosen.

Why search matters

This matters because search is one of the clearest signals of intent. Before people buy or convert, they usually search - and what they search for is shaped by what they already remember.

In other words, people rarely search for brands they can’t recall.

That idea has always sat at the heart of brand marketing. What this research adds is proof, not just intuition.  

Share of Search is increasingly recognised as a leading indicator of market share, often moving 6 -12 months ahead of actual sales. That makes it valuable not just for understanding current performance, but for anticipating what’s likely to come next.

The takeaway being that brand building isn’t separate from growth, it’s one of the mechanisms that drives it.

Timing is everything

Awareness has its biggest impact early in a brand’s lifecycle. When awareness is low, even small increases can lead to similar increases in Share of Search. This is where brand spend works the hardest, making early investment one of the more commercially effective calls a marketer can make.

For larger brands, the dynamic changes. Awareness on its own isn’t enough. The priority becomes staying visible, staying memorable, and staying easy to recall at the moment of choice. When Share of Search stops rising in line with awareness, that’s the cue to redirect investment further down-the-funnel toward consideration and preference.

How AI is changing discovery

This becomes even more important as AI changes how people discover, evaluate and choose brands.

We’re moving from a world of many search results to a world of curated answers. Instead of being presented with extensive lists of options, people are increasingly shown a small set of recommendations. In this environment, visibility shifts from ranking to being included in a much smaller shortlist.

This makes brand familiarity more important.

When choices narrow, people rely more on what they already know. Familiar brands are more likely to be shown and chosen, which makes early brand building more important.

Diagnosing growth more clearly

One of the most useful aspects of this research is how it helps diagnose growth challenges when paired with sales data.

If awareness is low, the constraint sits at the top of the funnel. If awareness is strong but Share of Search is weak, the issue is consideration. If search is strong but sales aren’t following, the issue is conversion.

It gives teams a clearer way to understand what’s holding growth back, rather than debating channels in isolation.

Brand awareness shouldn’t be treated as a long-term, hard-to-measure bet against performance marketing. It is a leading indicator of demand, with a clearer link to commercial outcomes than it is often credited with.

And as AI reduces the number of choices people see, the importance of being a known brand only grows.

In a world of fewer options, the brands people remember don’t just have an advantage.

They define the shortlist.

‍