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Brand Defense: Toronto

Objective

Defend brand queries in the Toronto market from OTA conquesting (Viator, GetYourGuide, and similar marketplaces bidding on our own name). Toronto is our second largest inventory market at 69 live products (live CMS product counts, 2026-08-30, journal entry 003), which makes it a high value conquesting target: every dollar an OTA spends to insert itself above our organic result on our own brand name is a dollar of margin it strips out of a booking we already earned.

This is a defensive line item, not a growth lever. Success is measured by exact-brand impression share and defended direct bookings, never by ROAS. Brand search demand already exists because of our organic and offline presence; this campaign's job is to make sure that demand lands on seesight-tours.com and not on a marketplace markup.

Campaign settings

  • Campaign type: Search only.
  • Search partners: OFF. We only want first-party Google Search results, not the partner network where match quality and reporting both degrade.
  • Display expansion: OFF. This is a brand defense line, not a reach play; any Display inventory dilutes both budget and message control.
  • Geo targeting: United States and Canada, targeting setting "Presence or interest" (Google default). Rationale: guests researching and booking a Toronto tour typically do so from home, days or weeks before travel, not while physically standing in Toronto. "Presence or interest" keeps us visible to a traveler in Chicago or Vancouver planning next month's trip, which is exactly the query we need to defend. We do not restrict to "Presence" only.
  • Language: English.
  • Bidding: Target Impression Share, target 90 to 95 percent, location setting "Top of results page" (not absolute top, to keep CPCs sane while still beating OTA placements). Max CPC cap: 3 USD to start. Revisit the cap after the first two weeks of search-terms data.
  • Budget: 100 USD per month to start (mid-range of the 50 to 150 USD per market band appropriate for a 69 product, second largest market). Near perfect Quality Score on exact-match brand terms keeps actual CPCs well under the cap, so this budget should comfortably sustain full-month coverage at target impression share.
  • AI Max: OFF. Tested data shows AI Max underperforms traditional match types specifically on brand campaigns: a documented comparison found AI Max running 35 percent lower ROAS on brand, with a 100.37 USD CPA against 43.97 USD CPA for the traditional exact-match setup (docs/research/marketing/google-youtube.md:72). Turning AI Max on here would spend more to defend the same brand impressions we can already defend cheaply on exact match. Do not enable it on this campaign under any future "recommended for you" prompt from Google Ads.

Keywords

Exact match only. Every keyword contains a brand token: "see sight", "seesight", or "sea sight". No generic sightseeing terms of any kind; "sightseeing tours toronto" is a category query, not our brand, and does not belong in this campaign.

[see sight tours toronto]
[seesight tours toronto]
[sea sight tours toronto]
[see sight toronto]
[seesight toronto]
[sea sight toronto]
[see sight tours]
[seesight tours]
[sea sight tours]
[see sight tours reviews]
[seesight tours reviews]
[see sight tours booking]
[seesight tours booking]
[see sight tours toronto reviews]
[seesight toronto tours]
[seesight tours canada]
[see sight tours official site]
[seesight tours official site]
[book see sight tours]
[book seesight tours]

Negative keywords

Exact match negatives, split into two purposes: query intents we never want to pay for, and close-variant generic leakage protection.

Off-intent negatives:

[jobs]
[careers]
[hiring]
[see sight tours jobs]
[seesight tours careers]
[salary]
[application]
[job application]
[login]
[sign in]
[account login]
[refund]
[refund policy complaint]
[complaint]
[seesight tours complaint]
[seesight tours scam]
[see sight tours lawsuit]

Generic-query leakage protection (closest generic terms to our brand name; these must never trigger under this campaign, brand-only spend is the entire point):

[sightseeing tours]
[sightseeing tours toronto]
[toronto sightseeing]
[toronto sightseeing tours]
[best sightseeing tours toronto]
[sightseeing tours canada]

Ads

One ad group per intent cluster, one RSA per ad group.

Ad group 1: Brand Core (Toronto)

Covers the direct name-match keywords: [see sight tours toronto], [seesight tours toronto], [sea sight tours toronto], [see sight toronto], [seesight toronto], [sea sight toronto], [see sight tours], [seesight tours], [sea sight tours], [seesight tours canada].

headlines:
  - "Official See Sight Tours"
  - "Book Direct, No Booking Fees"
  - "See Sight Tours Toronto"
  - "No Booking Fees, Ever"
  - "Best Price Guarantee"
  - "We Match Any Lower Price"
  - "Free Cancellation Up To 24h"
  - "Small Groups, Never A Crowd"
  - "Real Local Guides"
  - "Rated 4.8/5, 10,000+ Reviews"
  - "The Company That Runs It"
  - "Since 2006, 22 Cities"
descriptions:
  - "You book with the company that actually runs the tour. No marketplace between you and us."
  - "Best Price Guarantee. We match any lower price you find."
  - "Free cancellation up to 24 hours before your tour. Change-of-Plans Guarantee."
  - "Small groups, never a crowd. A local guide who knows Toronto shows you around."

Pin "Official See Sight Tours" to headline position 1. Pin "See Sight Tours Toronto" to headline position 2 so the market name always appears above the fold on mobile.

Ad group 2: Brand + Booking Intent (Toronto)

Covers the transactional and trust-check keywords: [see sight tours reviews], [seesight tours reviews], [see sight tours booking], [seesight tours booking], [see sight tours toronto reviews], [seesight toronto tours], [see sight tours official site], [seesight tours official site], [book see sight tours], [book seesight tours].

headlines:
  - "Book See Sight Tours Direct"
  - "No Booking Fees"
  - "Official Toronto Tours Site"
  - "You Book With The Operator"
  - "Best Price Guarantee"
  - "Free Cancellation 24h"
  - "Small Group Toronto Tours"
  - "Local Guides Since 2006"
  - "Rated 4.8/5 on Google"
  - "See Sight Tours Official"
  - "22 Cities, One Standard"
  - "Skip The Booking Fee"
descriptions:
  - "You book with the company that actually runs the tour, not a reseller."
  - "No marketplace between you and us. Book direct, no booking fees added."
  - "Best Price Guarantee: we match any lower price you find, direct."
  - "Free cancellation up to 24 hours before your tour, guaranteed."

Pin "Book See Sight Tours Direct" to headline position 1. Pin "Official Toronto Tours Site" to headline position 2.

Sitelinks

Display text Chars Final URL
Toronto Tours 14 https://seesight-tours.com/toronto-tours
Guest Reviews 13 https://seesight-tours.com/reviews
Contact Us 10 https://seesight-tours.com/contact
Our Local Guides 17 https://seesight-tours.com/guides

All four sitelinks fit within the 25 character display text limit.

Final URLs and UTM

Final URL for all ads and the primary sitelink: https://seesight-tours.com/toronto-tours

UTM parameters to append to every final URL in this campaign:

utm_source=google
utm_medium=cpc
utm_campaign=brand-defense-toronto-tours

Full example final URL:

https://seesight-tours.com/toronto-tours?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=brand-defense-toronto-tours

Google Ads auto-tagging (gclid) should stay enabled at the account level alongside these manual UTMs. The gclid carries through automatically into the ss_attr attribution cookie and Stripe checkout metadata per lib/attribution/capture.ts, so no additional tagging work is needed for this campaign to show up correctly in the attribution and revenue reporting downstream of the ad click.

Launch checklist

  • Conversion feed live check in Meta/Google diagnostics is NOT required before launch. This is a defensive brand campaign, not a conversion-optimized growth campaign, so it can go live without waiting on conversion feed validation.
  • Confirm AI Max is OFF on this campaign.
  • Confirm Search partners is OFF.
  • Confirm Display expansion is OFF.
  • Confirm geo targeting is United States and Canada, "Presence or interest".
  • Confirm bidding is Target Impression Share, 90 to 95 percent, "Top of results page", with the 3 USD max CPC cap set.
  • Confirm every keyword is exact match and contains a brand token.
  • Confirm the generic-query negative list ([sightseeing tours], [sightseeing tours toronto], [toronto sightseeing], [toronto sightseeing tours], [best sightseeing tours toronto], [sightseeing tours canada]) is loaded before the campaign goes live.
  • Check the search terms report DAILY for the first 14 days. Add any generic-query leakage found (queries that are category searches rather than name searches) as new exact-match negatives the same day.
  • Screenshot the impression share metric weekly (exact-brand impression share, top-of-page rate, absolute top rate) and log it alongside the readout.

Success metrics

  • Exact-brand impression share reaches 90 percent or higher within 4 weeks of launch.
  • Branded CPC stays under 1.50 USD on average.
  • Monthly cannibalization audit (checking the auction insights report for OTA domains) shows OTA ads displaced on our brand terms, not appearing above or alongside our ad on exact-brand queries.
  • Journal entry 003 records the first full readout: impression share trend, branded CPC trend, and the cannibalization audit result.