There was an interesting earlier this year from EBAY showing that there was ZERO value to buying their own brand keywords from Google (when their organic keywords ranked high).
In fact spending money on their own brand keywords generated signifigant negative ROI (1).
So my guess is that this strategy from Google is designed to provide brands with a first step to generating actual value from Google search results.
I can see brands making these out-sized spends when able to provide their customers w/additional value like interactivity within the goog results, etc.
Perhaps, but Google has already been claiming[1] that such spending provides positive value (though I have no idea how true that is for whatever brands they're pursuing here)
Also it is generally really cheap to buy that ad, so even if the incremental value is small it is still worth it. It also keeps you on top of anyone else bidding on your brand, if you brand is generic enough for them to get away with it.
In fact spending money on their own brand keywords generated signifigant negative ROI (1).
So my guess is that this strategy from Google is designed to provide brands with a first step to generating actual value from Google search results.
I can see brands making these out-sized spends when able to provide their customers w/additional value like interactivity within the goog results, etc.
(1) http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/03/did-ebay-just-prove-that-paid/