Optimising ads performance

Effective management of Google Ads is essential for delivering measurable advertising outcomes and maintaining control over marketing investments. The platform's complexity and rapid evolution require structured oversight and continuous optimisation.

Organisations generally select between two management models: following recommendations from Google Ads representatives or engaging a professional agency to oversee campaign strategy. Each approach presents distinct implications for budget control, campaign performance, and risk management.

A clear understanding of these models is necessary to align advertising activities with organisational objectives, maintain regulatory compliance, and achieve sustainable returns. Insufficient oversight or excessive reliance on standardised recommendations can result in missed opportunities and increased risk.

Misalignment

Google Ads representatives are measured against metrics designed to increase Google’s advertising revenue and promote the adoption of automated features. Their core objectives focus on growing monthly recurring revenue (MRR), driving engagement, and expanding use of Google’s campaign automation tools.

Consequently, their guidance often prioritises:

• Increasing daily and overall campaign budgets
• Enabling automated bidding strategies (e.g., Maximise Conversions, Target ROAS)
• Adopting new or bundled campaign features

These recommendations may expand reach and increase impressions, but the primary intent is typically to meet Google’s growth targets rather than improve advertiser profitability.

This standardised approach is applied across all industries and business maturities, rarely considering unique business objectives, margins, or definitions of valuable conversions. The result is often higher visibility without corresponding growth in qualified leads or sales, leading to wasted spend and diluted campaign value.

Generalised

Guidance from Google Ads representatives is structured around processes designed for platform-wide efficiency and scalability. Typical recommendations include:

• Automated bidding: Machine learning-driven strategies intended to maximise conversions or clicks with minimal manual intervention.
• Broad match keywords: Use of broad and phrase match to widen reach, often beyond the intended audience or immediate business goals.
• Platform-optimised campaigns: Adoption of formats such as Performance Max and Smart Campaigns, which rely on Google’s algorithms for management and delivery.

While these practices reduce manual workload and enable rapid scaling, they are inherently generic. Standardised recommendations do not consider the specific operational requirements, market context, or performance drivers unique to each organisation.

As a result, important factors such as customer intent, seasonal trends, competitive positioning, and profitability thresholds are often overlooked.

This can lead to misalignment between advertising activities and business objectives, resulting in ineffective campaigns and increased exposure to irrelevant or low-value traffic.

Standardisation may streamline basic campaign management, but does not deliver the precision or accountability required for sustained success in competitive or specialised markets.

Performance

Reliance on generalised recommendations introduces operational and financial risks that can directly undermine advertising effectiveness and cost control:

• Diluted targeting: Automated audience expansion and broad keyword strategies increase the risk of serving ads to irrelevant users, reducing lead quality and conversion rates.
• Cost inefficiency: Platform-driven budget increases and lack of exclusion controls can divert spend to low-value placements or segments, diminishing return on investment.
• Reduced control: Automation limits an advertiser’s ability to respond quickly to market changes or internal priorities, making it difficult to address underperformance.
• Click fraud: Automated placement and bidding can expose campaigns to invalid traffic, including bots and fraudulent clicks, with limited mechanisms for timely intervention.
• Sustainability concerns: Over time, these issues can erode the value of digital marketing investments, distort performance metrics, and reduce campaign responsiveness to business needs.

Organisations prioritising sustainable growth should critically assess the limitations of standardised guidance, ensuring campaigns are actively managed, customised, and performance-monitored.

Agencies

Agency-led management delivers a tailored approach based on analytics, industry knowledge, and active campaign optimisation. Agencies use advanced techniques to ensure advertising strategies are aligned with business objectives and market realities.

Key benefits of agency oversight include:

• Attribution modelling: Measuring how advertising channels contribute to outcomes, supporting informed investment decisions.
• Segment targeting: Precise alignment with intended audiences, maximising relevance and minimising wasted spend.
• Performance review: Continuous optimisation based on data, ensuring strategies adapt to changes in demand or competition.

Full-service digital agencies provide integrated expertise in design, development, marketing, and branding. This enables a holistic strategy that includes:

• Customer insight: Defining and tracking conversions based on the advertiser’s unique customer personas, not platform defaults.
• Competitor analysis: Positioning campaigns effectively in relation to industry competitors, with adjustments as the landscape evolves.
• Keyword strategy: Using refined keyword targeting and robust negative keyword lists to prevent irrelevant traffic and inefficient spend.
• Location and timing: Adjusting campaigns for geography and scheduling to maximise impact within core markets.
• Placement control: Manual review and exclusion of poor-quality or high-risk placements to reduce exposure to click fraud and invalid traffic.

This approach provides the oversight, agility, and customisation necessary to maximise campaign effectiveness and protect advertising investment.

Not all agencies provide the same standard of control and expertise.
It should be noted that some agencies apply the same automated, platform-driven practices as Google’s own representatives, due to limitations in advertising knowledge, platform experience, or resource capability. Effective results depend on engaging an agency with proven expertise, advanced optimisation skills, and a demonstrated ability to deliver true oversight and accountability.

As a baseline, ensure your engaged agency or Google Ads manager is a certified Google Ads Partner. Certification confirms a minimum level of platform knowledge, adherence to Google’s best practices, and ongoing professional development. You can verify an agency's or manager's status via the official Google Partners directory.

Case study

Speedy Shower Screens

Speedy Shower Screens has been a client since 2022, receiving web development, design, SEO, Google Ads management, web hosting and domain services. In 2024, the client transitioned to self-management of Google Ads, relying on Google’s automated campaign settings. Our agency resumed control of the account in 2025 following a performance review.

Findings

The following issues were identified during our review of Speedy Shower Screens’ self-managed advertising period:

Keyword

During the period of self-management, Google’s automated controls converted all exact match and phrase match keywords to broad match. This impacted hundreds of keywords and resulted in the account appearing for unrelated search terms, such as "fly screens," due to the misinterpretation of the word "screen."

Click fraud

Placement and traffic analysis determined that over 60% of clicks and attributed conversions originated from non-human sources, including bots and click farms. Our audit identified 12,000 click farm domains involved in this activity.

As a result, more than $60,000 of the annual advertising spend, out of a total budget exceeding $100,000, was lost to click fraud.

Cause

The financial loss and decline in campaign effectiveness were attributable to the absence of oversight and optimisation in Google’s automated campaign configuration. Critical controls for keyword targeting and fraudulent placement exclusion were not present during the self-managed period.

Outcome

Resuming agency oversight restored control over keyword targeting, placement management, and click fraud prevention, leading to improved campaign efficiency, higher quality lead generation, and greater protection of advertising investment.

Compliance

Unsolicited outreach from Google Ads representatives, particularly after opt-out requests, introduces privacy and compliance risks. Such contact can conflict with organisational consent policies, disrupt workflows, and raise questions regarding data governance.

All campaign interactions must adhere to internal compliance standards and regulatory requirements. Proper documentation and controlled communication channels are essential for protecting brand reputation and meeting legal obligations.

Selecting the right management model is essential for maintaining control, optimising spend, and minimising compliance risks. Agency-led oversight provides the expertise and customisation required to align advertising investments with business objectives. Prioritising tailored strategy, robust analytics, and regulatory adherence enables organisations to improve both the efficiency and integrity of their advertising efforts.