brand

Brand is a primary signal everywhere — for ad delivery (branded searches convert at higher rates), for policy review (Google and Meta cross-reference brands against their restricted-advertiser lists), and for catalog filtering (users filter by brand more than almost any other attribute). Missing or inconsistent brand silently degrades visibility across surfaces in ways that look like ranking problems but are really identity problems.

Consistency is the trap. "Nike", "NIKE", "nike", "Nike Inc.", "Nike Sportswear" — channels treat each unique string as a separate brand. A catalog with three of these variants has three "Nike" brands fragmented across reporting and rules. Pick one canonical spelling per brand and enforce it at feed-generation. The brand string should match whatever appears on the manufacturer's official site, exactly as they write it.

For own-brand products, use your store name — not "Generic" or "Various" or "Unbranded". The placeholder values are accepted but suppress delivery quality because they don't carry meaningful brand signal. Your store name is a valid brand even when you're the manufacturer. For drop-shippers and resellers, the original manufacturer's brand is correct, not your store name — putting your store name on a Sony product is wrong and gets flagged eventually.