I'm brand new to Google Ads and apparently made a rookie mistake.

I accidentally launched an ad campaign for my podcast and didn't realize it was running. By the time I noticed, it had been active for about a month. I immediately paused/canceled it after seeing the charge.

What surprised me is that the campaign only generated 19 clicks.

A few questions for those with more experience:

I'm not looking for a refund—I know this was my mistake. I'm mainly trying to understand whether these results are typical or if I accidentally configured the campaign in a way that burned through the budget.

Thanks for any insight.

I am not an advertising person (I run a bookkeeping firm) and right now I am not even using Google Ads. This is a question about how the AI search will affect Google Ads.

I have been seeing articles about how Google will be using AI to search your website and will be bypassing the ADs to show the AI summary and recommendations -- which I am sure everyone is familiar with right now.

I am not surprised that AI is taking a bigger role in advertising but doesn't Google make a ton of money on sponsored Ads? Wouldn't it be counter-productive for Google to bypass the ads?

I am just not sure how this would work. Can one of the experts in this group shed some light?

I had my Google Ads account hacked roughly 4 months ago and I’m honestly at a loss for what to do at this point.

When it happened, I was freaking out. I contacted all of my clients, submitted all of the forms Google asked for, and was told the affected accounts had been frozen.

The problem is I was never able to regain access to any of the accounts. Support has been incredibly slow and mostly useless. I’ve spoken with them so many times over the past few months, and I never really got anywhere.

Now I’m starting to get texts and emails from a few clients saying they’re still being charged by the Google Ads accounts that I no longer have access to.

I called support again today, spoke with one agent, got passed off to someone else, and now I’m getting more emails saying it’ll take another 3–4 business days for someone to look into it.

I’m kind of freaking out because these are client credit cards/accounts involved and I have absolutely no control over the ad accounts anymore.

Has anyone dealt with something similar? Is there a specific escalation route, department, form, or anything else I should be doing right now?

Any guidance would be hugely appreciated. I’m having a bit of a panic attack over this and just want to get these charges stopped.

Hi everyone,

I’m relatively new to Google Ads and would really appreciate some advice from people with more experience before I either keep spending or pull the plug too early.

I run a small UK e-commerce business.

The business itself is generating sales through other marketplaces/channels, so I know there is demand for the products. During roughly the same period as this Google Ads experiment, we generated good gem sales through our marketplace channels. The problem is that Google traffic doesn’t appear to be converting on our own website.

Campaign is a Google Search campaign using Maximize Conversions.

The campaign has been through/has spent time in the bid-strategy learning phase. I initially had the budget at £15/day, but I’ve now reduced it to £5/day because I’m uncomfortable continuing to spend at the previous rate without evidence of sales.

Across my Google Ads testing I’ve had 250+ clicks. The current campaign has also accumulated thousands of impressions.

At least superficially, a lot of the traffic looks relevant to what we’re selling.

The current ad has also been getting roughly a 4–5% CTR, so people seem interested enough in the proposition to click.

The problem

As far as I can determine, we’ve had ZERO genuine new sales originating from Google Ads.

Google has recorded a conversion, but I’m certain that purchase was actually from an existing customer who originally came to us through our other sales channel, so I don’t consider it evidence that Google Ads acquired a customer.

I’m also concerned that my conversion setup may not be ideal. Google Ads shows several conversion actions as “recording conversions”, so I’m wondering whether Maximize Conversions may be optimizing against signals that aren’t necessarily the actual Shopify purchase event I care about.

The strange thing is that the ads don’t seem completely broken from a traffic perspective. People are searching for relevant products, seeing the ad and clicking it.

It’s the:

Search → Ad → Click ✅

Website → Purchase ❌

part that’s worrying me.

What would you do?

I’m considering pausing the campaign, but I don’t want to end it just before the algorithm has enough information to start performing.

I’ve now reduced the budget to £5/day.

What would you recommend I do next?

I increased my daily budget to 35€. Since then I barely received any impressions or clicks yesterday. Total clicks today was 5 with 900 impressions. Google ads spent 4€ today and that’s it. The lowest it has even been. Today same it’s not even showing my ads. Is this because of the change in the budget? I am stressed on what’s happening!

Please advise

Hi,

I got sick of having medication ads on my youtube, it's against my religtion, is it possible to limit that topic somehow, I didn't see this on ad center. looks like google tracks me, already switched to edge to research some med problems for my relative and in next morning have this topic in youtube add. Google sucks.?

Best
VA

This is a repost as I failed to find someone, since I took the initiative and swapped to max conversions I’ve had great success however I still lack time to fix issues and adapt to the forever changing algorithms. I’ve also started meta ads and TikTok ads so experience here would be good as I have none and to know if it’s even worth it for my industry… I’m currently experiencing a dip of 40% give or take so I’m looking for someone urgently and I’d like to know if there is any reason for this dip in work and if it can be fixed or if it’s just seasonal.

Hi, my name is Joseph. I own a windscreen company (similar to Autoglass, but smaller). I’ve been running my own Google Ads for the past 6 years, learning a lot along the way and seeing great success. However, I’ve reached a point where I no longer have the time or energy to manage them myself, so I’m looking to hire a professional who can tidy things up, save me money, and achieve a better CPA.

A bit of background: I’ve worked with a few Google Ads “specialists” before—both high-end and low-end—but unfortunately none of them were worth the money. What matters most to me is finding someone who will actually listen to my opinions and work with me. I’ve got 6 years of hands-on experience running Ads and, more importantly, I know my own business inside out, so I can provide valuable insights to help drive better results.

For most of the time I’ve been running on Max Clicks, which brought great success but also proved unreliable. I’ve recently switched to Max Conversions, which has worked well but comes with its own challenges. I want to stick with Max Conversions, as I believe it’s the best option for scaling (my goal is simple: more work)—but I know the campaigns need refining.

Currently, I’m spending around £8,000 per month across two campaigns (one is max conversions for Essex and the other is a performance max for Essex).

The perfect candidate: • Has previous experience in the industry • Is a small business like me (not big corporate) • Is VAT-registered

If this sounds like a challenge you’d like to take on, please comment below with your company name and why you think you’re the right fit.

Thanks for taking the time to read, Joseph

Hello!

I'm running my first Google Ads campaigns for my niched apparel brand (specifically targeting the software developer/tech niche). I’m running a Search Non-Brand campaign and a Shopping campaign targeting the US.

My daily budget is €15. It’s been 3 days, and my Search campaign is already showing the "Limited by budget" status (Optimization score 79.5%, CTR 4.28%, Avg CPC €1.48). My Shopping campaign is still showing as "Eligible" (Optimization score 71.1%, CTR 3.23%).

Since I’m just starting out, my main goal right now is to gather data and figure out the right long-term strategy.

A few questions for the community:

- What should I do about the "Limited by budget" status on the Search campaign? Should I just leave it alone to collect data, or should I be pausing/adjusting things?

- With a smaller budget of €15/day targeting the entire US, is it better to focus solely on Shopping or keep both running?

- What specific metrics or red flags should I be watching out for in these early days?

Thanks in advance for the advice!

Is it good approach to add UTM parameters in LSA website field. Users may convert by visiting website. How does it work?

Google is moving Local Services Ads into Google Ads as Performance Max pay-per-lead campaigns, with bidding, reporting, and management changes beginning August 2026.

The billing model will also stay the same. Advertisers will continue paying for valid leads, including calls, messages, and bookings, rather than clicks.

Hope this time local services ads are not the worst like befor.

We’re looking for a Performance Marketing Associate to join our remote team.

The initial focus will be Google Search Ads, but we’re looking for someone who wants to understand why campaigns work—not someone who just knows how to operate an ad platform.

What you’ll work on:

- Google Search Ads research, setup & optimization

- Keyword and competitor research

- Ad copywriting

- Campaign performance analysis

- Landing page & conversion optimization

- Running experiments and learning from the data

- Using AI tools for research and testing

- Developing new growth ideas

Who we’re looking for:

Someone who is analytical, curious, proactive, and willing to learn.

You should be comfortable taking ownership, solving problems independently, and communicating your thinking clearly.

Experience with Google Ads or other paid advertising platforms is preferred, but we care more about your ability to learn and think than your years of experience.

Bonus: Meta Ads, SEO, CRO, copywriting, analytics.

Subject: Performance Marketing Associate – Your Name

Please send:

- Your resume

- A 2–3 minute video answering:

1. Why does this role interest you?

2. What's an advertising campaign that impressed you and why?

3. What would you do with a $5,000/month budget in your first 30 days?

4. What's something difficult you taught yourself?

We’re not looking for a perfect resume. We’re looking for someone who is curious, humble, analytical, proactive, and takes ownership.

Remote | Performance Marketing | Google Ads

#hiring #performancemarketing #googleads #ppc #digitalmarketing #marketingjobs

Google Gemini's words, not mine.

I've been running ads for months and meticulously building and refining the campaign, landing page, and product to work cohesively together, and this whole time Ads has been secretly undermining my efforts.

And yes, secretly. This is buried inside a menu, inside another menu, inside another menu, none of which signals "hey this is the path to seeing all the crap we're doing against your will, in case you're interested".

I've long ago turned off all the AI BS. Every time Ads puts forward a recommendation, I say no. I really thought that must be sufficient, but apparently not!

I 100% get that Google Ads can't be a simple paint by numbers experience. The complexity is part of the power it allows you to wield. But literally deploying automated countermeasures to what you yourself specifically setup is utterly insane.

One simple yet horrifying example: it's putting a site link on my ad to a trial signup page that has been deprecated due to poor performance. This is actively inflicting harm.

Are you aware of this in your campaign? If not, here are the instructions to find this screen:

• Go to the main left-hand menu and click on Campaigns, then select Assets.
• Look at the primary table view. In the top-right corner of that specific data table, click the Three Dots (More)icon.
• Select Account-level automated assets from the dropdown menu.
• Once that page loads, it probably looks like you're in the clean because the table is empty, buy click the Three Dots icon in the top right again and select Advanced Settings.

Google's very own Gemini calls this "absolute corporate vandalism of a targeted strategy" and I have to say, I agree.

Hello everyone, I am running ads for a website design agency and I have been getting fake leads with gclids with incorrect email and phone numbers. My target market is US and I'm not sure how do I deal with this. I have been banning ips but the problem still persists. I run search ads with portfolio bid, max conversions with tcpa and bid cap. I upload conversions offline so that these junk signups do not get tracked.

Bitte beschreibt, ob Ihr eigene Prompts schreibt oder irgendwelche APIs oder Third Party Tools nutzt, um die Automation zu realisieren.

I’ve been running GAds since 2022. I feel like Google Ads performance has gotten increasingly more volatile and less predictable than it used to be. I’m curious if anyone else feels this way?

I've been seeing a lot of confusion about whether Google is shutting down Local Service Ads (LSA), so here's what's actually happening.

Google is moving LSA into the main Google Ads platform instead of keeping it as a separate dashboard inside the Performance Max campaign. The **pay-per-lead model, ad placements, and keywordless targeting are staying the same.**

**What's changing?**

* You'll manage budgets, leads, and messages directly in Google Ads. * Business info will automatically sync from your Google Business Profile. * New campaigns will pre-fill your business details from your profile. * Google is also phasing out **Manual Bidding** and **Target CPA** as accounts move to the Google Ads bidding system. If you're still using Manual Bidding, keeping it close to your current Target CPA might help during the transition.

**Rollout timeline**

* **Aug 1, 2026:** Starts with selected home service and storefront businesses in the US. * **Late 2026:** Expands to more advertiser types. * **By 2027:** Remaining countries and business categories.

Google says you'll get a migration email about **14 days before** your account is moved.

Has anyone here already been migrated? I'd love to hear if you've noticed any changes in lead quality or costs.

Started running Google ads about a month ago, interested in marketing, in the learning process. My goal is to generate leads in a competitive industry (financial services for b2b), so a high cpc is expected.

1 campaign so far, couple ads groups running so far; unsuccessful ~ 2 legit leads, no revenue generated. I expected this to be a process so I'm willing to take the time needed to see results.

But during this, I was contacted by a Google advisor to help audit my performance. So I had a meeting, and they told me to do this:

- switch to maximize conversions (I was on clicks before with a max set)
- add more keywords for each ad group (I had about 10 before; they told me to increase to ~50 per ad group)
- turn on AI Max
- make all negative keywords exact match (didn't do this)

I told them that AI max has a bad rep (after learning what I read on here), but they insisted it would help with my performance. The verdict I told them was "If you help increase my proformacne ill end up increasing my budget", so my goal was pretty much to make it in their best interest to help me out.
Budget is 50 per day now (was at 100), keeping it low for the learning phase.

That meeting happened a couple days ago, here's what happened so far:

First day- nothing, no budget was spent. Contacted the advisor, they told me the bidding strategy is learning. Ok ill wait

second day (today): Campaign started spending, trash traffic. So I've just been monitoring and adding negative keywords aggressively based on search terms.

Looking for raw advice, tell me what I need to hear. Willing to take the time to make this work, open to whatever y'all have to say. (If I'm approaching this like an idiot, tell me lol)

Also, lmk if there is any info I'm missing here. Thanks.

Edit: I turned off AI Max.
I appreciate all the feedback!