How the business name and logo asset works
You supply a short business name and a logo, usually in a square crop, and Google places them above the ad’s headline on mobile results. It is set for the account rather than written into each ad, so one upload changes how every campaign looks. Google reviews both against its policies and checks that the name and mark belong to the advertiser it has on record, which is why an unrelated brand or a name you cannot support will not serve.
Nothing about the auction changes. The asset alters the frame around the ad, not its ranking, and like every asset it appears when Google predicts it will help rather than on every impression.
Why the name and logo matter
A search results page is a list of strangers. A recognisable mark at the top of an ad answers who this is before the reader has processed a single word of the offer, and for a business people already know, that recognition is the cheapest advantage available in the auction.
It also helps the ads that are not brand searches. Someone comparing three suppliers of the same service usually remembers a shape and a name rather than a headline. Being the one they can identify later, when they search again with your name, is worth more than the click itself.
Where it goes wrong
The logo is the usual problem. A mark designed for a signboard, with fine lines, a tagline underneath or several colours, turns into a smudge when it is scaled down to a small square on a phone. If the mark cannot survive that treatment, the honest answer is that it needs work — the ground covered by brand identity design — rather than a lighter upload.
The name is the second. Using the registered legal entity when customers know a different trading name creates a mismatch between the ad, the website and the invoice, and mismatch reads as risk. The third mistake is simply not setting it, which leaves the ad anonymous beside competitors who did.
How to act on it
Start with a square version of the logo with clear space around it and no tagline, then look at it at the size of a thumbnail before uploading. If you cannot read it there, simplify it. Use the trading name customers actually type, in the same form it appears on the website header and the landing page, so the ad, the page and the follow-up email all say the same thing.
Because it is set once and forgotten, put it on the list of things to refresh at a rebrand, alongside the site, the profile photos and the assets on your Search campaigns. Where a single account advertises more than one distinct brand, keep the accounts separate rather than settling on a name that fits neither.