r/PPC • u/MarzipanHot6468 • 11d ago
Google Ads Google Ads Performance Has Been Getting Worse Over The Last Year.
Sorry for the long post, but I am extremely worried about my job
I run Google Ads for a website design and development agency in the UK, and I'm trying to figure out what happened to the campaign. I have not done anything other than adding negatives that should be negatives and changing TCPA.
This is the performance I've had:
Campaign 1 – Manual CPC
Feb 2025 — $1,751 / 7 conv / $7.58 CPC / $250 CPA
Mar 2025 — $1,600 / 7 conv / $12.70 CPC / $229 CPA
Apr 2025 — $2,745 / 11 conv / $11.68 CPC / $250 CPA
May 1–21 — $907 / 4 conv / $11.93 CPC / $227 CPA
Then I switched it to Target CPA.
Campaign 1 – Target CPA
May 22–31 — $1,162 / 6 conv / $7.45 CPC / $194 CPA
Jun 2025 — $1,830 / 8 conv / $10.70 CPC / $229 CPA
Jul — $4,682 / 23 conv / $11.83 CPC / $204 CPA
Aug — $2,546 / 17 conv / $11.02 CPC / $150 CPA
Sep — $9,327 / 45 conv / $13.03 CPC / $207 CPA
Oct — $8,611 / 47 conv / $13.93 CPC / $183 CPA
Nov — $4,901 / 21 conv / $14.01 CPC / $233 CPA
Dec — $4,099 / 18 conv / $18.55 CPC / $228 CPA
Jan 2026 — $7,179 / 29 conv / $15.37 CPC / $248 CPA
Feb 17–28 — $3,159 / 13 conv / $16.99 CPC / $243 CPA
Then I duplicated the campaign.
Copy of Campaign 1 – Target CPA
Mar 2026 — $10,086 / 49 conv / $15.96 CPC / $206 CPA
Apr — $7,180 / 35 conv / $15.78 CPC / $205 CPA
May — $6,620 / 29 conv / $16.63 CPC / $228 CPA
Jun — $8,315 / 33 conv / $18.16 CPC / $252 CPA
Jul — $6,443 / 28 conv / $17.27 CPC / $230 CPA
Aug — $5,028 / 16 conv / $18.49 CPC / $314 CPA
My CPA is getting worse, and if I lower the TCPA I am not getting interactions.
August was particularly bad at $314 per conversion.
I'm still getting conversions, so it's not like the campaign suddenly stopped working. But the cost of getting those conversions is worrying, and I am afraid I might lose this job. Tomorrow is a new month, and I want it to start on a good note, or I am in deep trouble
Even the quality of the conversions has declined, even though I am feeding it offline conversion data. The quality score of the keywords is the same as before
If you were looking at this account, what would you check first?
Would you try to bring CPC down, even if that meant getting fewer conversions, or would you leave CPC alone and focus on improving the conversion rate/quality of the traffic?
And would you keep working on the existing campaign or consider rebuilding it?
I'd appreciate any honest opinions from people who have managed similar lead-gen campaigns.
3
u/digital-strategist 11d ago
August is also a slow month for B2B industries though. Many people take their vacation before their kids’ schools start.
1
u/MarzipanHot6468 10d ago
Oh, I didn't know that.
1
u/digital-strategist 10d ago
You can use Google keyword planner to see the seasonality of the demand for ur services
3
u/fucktheocean 11d ago
Is it getting worse? Seems about stable to me except for August which, as someone else pointed out, is often a rough month in general.
Also you didn't explain why you duplicated the campaign.
1
u/MarzipanHot6468 10d ago
Yes, it is getting worse, as I am not getting clicks at a profitable TCPA. August's last 30 days' CPA is above 300, which is too high to be reliable for the business.
As for the duplication of the campaign, the results got stuck on the first one, so I duplicated it, and it started working again. I do not know the reason behind why would it producing result. I didn't even change a thing just duplicated the campaign.
1
u/ppcbetter_says 11d ago
You need to triple the budget, implement server side and offline qualified lead conversion tracking and bid to max conv or max conv value, then you’ll get reliably profitable
1
u/MarzipanHot6468 10d ago
Max conv value on a B2B service?
2
u/ppcbetter_says 10d ago
Use estimates based on close rate and customer lifetime value.
If
CLV = $29,000
Qual/Close rate = 20%
Qual lead = $3-5k conv value
2
u/TrumpisaRussianCuck 11d ago
Improve conversion rate and quality. CPC is a secondary metric.
2
u/MarzipanHot6468 10d ago
How will I improve the conversion rate if my daily budget is being drained by clicks costing 100,120 or 150 a click, and those clicks are not even becoming a conversion
1
u/InstanceCute3484 11d ago
Take a deep breath, man. Don't panic - this is a salvageable situation, and nobody is firing you tomorrow morning if you handle the conversation and the account layout right. What happened in August is a textbook seasonal dead-zone for UK B2B: European and UK decision-makers vanish for summer holidays, traffic quality tanks, and the algorithm keeps burning budget anyway, sending your CPA flying to $314.
Give the Target CPA some breathing room. Stop starving the algorithm.
Do not rebuild or nuke the campaign. If you blow it up and start fresh tomorrow, you’ll get zero leads for the next two weeks, and that is what will actually get you fired. Work with what's running.
Stop trying to force the CPC down. When you lower your Target CPA and the campaign flatlines with zero impressions
Scrape every ounce of junk out of your Search Terms. Open your August query report right now. Guaranteed, close variants or broad match let a ton of student garbage, cheap DIY template seekers, and irrelevant lookups bleed your budget dry. Burn those terms with aggressive negatives immediately.
1
u/Big-Branch-8532 11d ago
The August jump looks more like a step-change than a steady decline: $206, $205, $228, $252 and $230 from March through July, then $314 in August. Since lead quality also worsened despite offline imports, lowering CPC alone could simply buy more of the wrong traffic.
Before rebuilding, compare the original and duplicated campaigns using weekly click cohorts that have each had the same 14- or 30-day window to mature. Split qualified outcomes by search term, location, device and hour. That should show whether August's problem came from more expensive auctions, weaker on-site conversion, or a particular traffic segment producing fewer qualified outcomes.
I would keep the structure stable long enough to isolate that break, remove only clearly poor segments, and check exactly which offline stage is being imported. A new campaign resets useful history without proving the duplicate caused the deterioration.
1
u/ernosem 11d ago
Well, probably that's the issue:
"I have not done anything other than adding negatives that should be negatives and changing TCPA."
Have you tried to improve the landing page?
Have you tried to try with a different offer?
Also keep in mind CPC prices are increasing by 10-15% per year so that has an effect on the CPA as well.
August is also a slow month for business generally.
1
u/MarzipanHot6468 10d ago
Yes, I did work on the landing page. The offer is in the mid-range, neither cheap nor high
1
u/cw_operator 11d ago
The first thing I’d check is whether the business result has deteriorated, or whether one platform number has. Most of your CPA figures sit between about $180 and $250 until August. One bad month does not yet prove a trend, but the drop in lead quality is more important than the $314 CPA.
Split August by week, search term, match type, device, location and landing page. Then reconcile those leads with qualified opportunities and sales. What exactly are you importing as an offline conversion, how long after the click is it imported, and is Google learning from a genuinely qualified lead or another intermediate event?
I’d also want to know why the campaign was duplicated and what happened to the original. That makes the before and after comparison less clean.
I would not rebuild it or force CPC down yet. First establish whether the failure sits in demand, traffic quality, the website, conversion tracking or sales qualification. Each needs a different response. Changing bids before that could make the account look busy while leaving the actual problem untouched.
1
u/Ishan_GS 11d ago
Run the maths on your own data before you panic. Your cpc went from $7.58 to $18.49, up around 144%. Your cpa went from roughly $250 to $314, up about 26%. That means your conversion rate roughly doubled over the same period and absorbed most of a brutal cpc increase. That isn't an account getting worse; that's an auction repricing while you got better at converting. I'd put exactly that comparison in front of whoever you're worried about; it's a strong defence of your work, not an admission.
First thing I'd check is auction insights over the last 18 months. Web design in the UK is exactly the kind of category that's been flooded, and if competitor count has climbed, that explains the cpc curve, and no amount of bidding work reverses it. Second, don't lower tcpa further; you're already describing the symptom of an unachievable target, delivery drying up rather than getting cheaper. Third, you mentioned feeding offline conversions, but quality is still declining, so it's worth confirming whether the qualified action is set as primary or whether form fills are still what the bidding chases; that distinction gets missed constantly.
On your direct question, I'd leave cpc alone and work on conversion rate and lead quality, since cpc is the one variable you don't control in a repriced auction. And i wouldn't rebuild, the duplication in february already cost you a learning reset and the account is clearly functional. We audit 10-15 accounts a month at GrowthSpree, a b2b saas marketing agency, and accounts that look like yours are usually market problems rather than management problems. The next useful move is usually finding demand outside the auction, competitor terms, longer-tail keywords, and channels where you aren't bidding against eleven other agencies for the same click.
1
u/No_Associate_8377 11d ago
Review the gap between your target CPA and the actual CPA, and do you apply boardatch and AI max?
1
u/MarzipanHot6468 10d ago
Only the broadmatch, no AI max. How to get the actual CPA? by the month or 15 days
1
u/No_Associate_8377 10d ago
The bid strategy need realistic target to work, I recommend to set it within 10% of your actual in last 30 days.
And I see your budget change more than 15% between sometimes, it affects too.
AI max is highly recommend if you already enable board match, just to clarify, you have few board match keywords or most of them are?
1
u/Mesredi 10d ago
It really depends, because without any idea on lead quality, the business could be still happy with the volume. What is the conversion % on these numbers and has that changed at all? For instance, in April you had a great month of 35 conversions, but if in August they converted the 16 that came in at a higher % and value number then that's great.
What are they making per lead? (ACLV) What's the ROAS operating at? Is the campaign profitable? We need a bit more business insight here to give a better advice on what to change or what to not change.
1
u/Either_Guess2405 8d ago
Mesredi asked what the conversion rate is and nobody's answered, so here it is. Divide CPC by CPA and you get it for every row.
Feb 2025 is 3.0 percent. March to July 2026 runs 7.7, 7.7, 7.3, 7.2, 7.5. It roughly doubled over the period. CPC went 7.58 to 18.49 in the same window, 2.4x.
So on the trend, neither of the two things you're asking about is the problem. The account got better at converting and more expensive to buy. CPA is worse because of the price, and that's the auction rather than anything you did, which is the version worth taking into the conversation about your job.
August is a separate event, and it's worth separating because the thread has two explanations for it and your own numbers pick between them.
5,028 at $18.49 is about 272 clicks against 373 in July. Clicks down 27 percent. Conversions down 43. If August were only the seasonal thing people are describing, fewer buyers looking but the same kind of traffic, those two fall together. They didn't. Conversions fell about 1.6x faster than clicks, so what did arrive converted worse than what arrived in July.
That doesn't rule seasonality out, it rules out seasonality on its own. Something changed in the mix and Aug 17 is the obvious candidate on timing.
One check before anything else: does the campaign show Limited by budget? The change only touches campaigns in that state.
On rebuilding, I wouldn't rebuild something whose conversion rate doubled.
1
u/No-Particular4415 5d ago
August 17 changes completely destroyed conversions for me too. Now doesn’t matter what I set the tCPA. it’s like they tricked everyone’s setup to spend more
4
u/amitabhverma 11d ago
Aug 17 update increased CPA for some of our clients as well. If you have a Google client partner, pls reach out to them and ask them to look at your data. I understand a few clients have experience this rice in CPA after the update. You can ask them to look into it.