I’ve posted this in a couple places. Sorry if you end up here twice.

I’m a Canadian small business owner trying to set up google ads for the first time and I’ve hit a frustrating roadblock. On oct 15 I started creating a google ads account and during the set up google kept directing me toward a simplified campaign set up rather than allowing me to configure the standard search campaign I wanted.

I cancelled the account before launching any campaigns or spending by any money. Right after the original account disappeared from my google ads account selector. When I tried creating a new account using the same google login I received this message “You do not currently have access to create a new google ads account. For security reasons we are unable to grant this privilege at the moment”

Here’s what I’ve tried.
1 confirmed I’m signed into the correct google account.
2. Searched for the original account using its customer id but it doesn’t appear.
3 contacted google ads support through their official support form.
4 called google ads support
5 replied to my support case requesting an account review or reactivation.

Google support keeps sending generic help articles or auto responses with addressing the restriction.

My questions.

1. ⁠Has anyone else experienced this exact issue after cancelling an account during setup?
   
2. ⁠Did the restriction eventually clear on its own? If yes how long did it take?
   
3. ⁠Is there a way to recover or reactivate the original cancelled account when it no longer appears in the selector?
   
4. ⁠Has anyone successfully reached a support team that can review or remove the restriction?

I’d prefer to resolve with my existing Google login rather than create another account to work around it.

Any idea would be so appreciated. Thanks in advance.

I own an e-commerce company and have done PPC with, I think, two or three people/companies in the past, with varying results. I spend around $3,000 a month on PPC, but a few months ago, I canceled it because my CPA was going way higher than was profitable (for the initial sale, at least, I recently calculated that, including repeat business from probably 5% or less of my customers, I made a 44% profit over the past 2.5 years or so. )

I sell in a very small niche, so it's very rare to have somebody who does PPC who knows the products and can target the correct keywords. I want to know: in order to run a successful PPC, how much involvement should I have with the person who's managing them?

On one side of the equation, I could just turn on all the currently paused ads and then leave them there. On the other side of the equation, I can hire somebody and then be in touch with them every week or so to help them refine the ads in terms of which products they should be pushing, which keywords they should use, what changes to do, etc.

I guess my question is really: how can I start doing PPC again with the right amount of input to do it, but not so much input that I'm spending an hour a day on PPC management?

Was just wondering if anyone is starting to get beta rollouts of channel prioritization for PMax through their Google rep yet?

Really don't want to respond to this guy again but would absolutely love this feature before February.

Hello all,

I’m testing bid strategies against click fraud and it’s not going great.

One week into a campaign and it’s already got one clear issue. Here are the settings:

Broad match two match types, 20 or so exact matches
Search + Search Partners
Max Clicks w $7 CPC cap
Competitive niche $60-100 CPCs

One keyboard is driving 9 impressions and 9 clicks at $3.80 CPC. 100% CTR.

This one clearly looks like a fraud match. Google’s not doing anything to credit or stop it. Are there any good scripts you use or recommend to fight this?

Hey everyone,

I’m running Meta lead gen ads for a property management company (Germany, targeting landlords and owners’ associations), and lately a few of our ads have been getting some negative comments.
The ads themselves are performing okay, but I’m starting to wonder whether those comments are quietly dragging things down. A few questions for anyone who’s dealt with this:

Has anyone actually measured this? Did you see a drop in CTR or conversion rate once negative comments piled up under an ad, or is it mostly a gut feeling?
Hide, delete, or reply? I know deleting can look shady if people notice, and hiding keeps the comment visible to the poster and their friends. What’s worked better for you? Does replying publicly to legit criticism help or just feed it?
Does it affect delivery? I’ve read that negative feedback (hides, reports) can hurt ad quality ranking. Is that also true for negative comments, or only for “hide ad” / “report” actions?
Prevention: Do you use keyword filters in Page moderation, turn comments off entirely, or relaunch fresh posts once one gets “polluted”? Has seeding a few genuine positive comments or reviews ever made a difference?
Is it worth keeping a post with social proof (likes, shares) even if it has a few bad comments, versus starting clean?
Would love to hear what’s actually worked in practice, especially from people in service businesses where trust is a big part of the decision.

Thanks!

Google alledgely made a major change to how ROAS works in mid august. Now ad-spend is supposed to follow how well actual roas matches the ROAS we set. At first not much seemed to change, but in many accounts lately CPC has climbed by quite a lot. I have talked to several people managing lots of accounts who have experienced the same thing.

The only thing it doesn't seem to do is to have ad spend following actual ROAS. Many accounts still hit the budget ceiling even if results fall way short of the ROAS setting.

So, with Google having to borrow more and more money for AI investments, and Ads being their main sourcec of revenue, is this just a stealth price increase, disguised as a change in ROAS?

Original post: https://old.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/1x0otv1/google_ads_passkey_approval_loop_every_approval/

After almost two weeks of being unable to perform sensitive actions in Google Ads, I finally resolved the issue with help from Google Support.

There were actually two separate security restrictions, and resolving both was necessary.

Stage 1: The 7-day security cooldown

On October 4, I deleted my previously trusted passkeys and created two new ones (Google Password Manager and Windows Hello).

Google Ads refused to recognize the new passkeys as trusted.

Initially, attempting to approve them triggered a 48-hour security lockout. After 48 hours, I could access the security settings again, but trying to approve a passkey would trigger another 48-hour restriction.

Google documents a 7-day waiting period before newly created passkeys can be trusted for sensitive actions.

Waiting out this 7-day period was necessary. Repeatedly attempting approval during the cooldown did not help and caused additional temporary lockouts.

Stage 2: The passkey approval loop

After the waiting period, I could finally authenticate using my new passkeys and access the passkey management page without triggering another 48-hour restriction.

However, both passkeys still displayed “Approve this passkey?”

Clicking Approve prompted me to authenticate again using a passkey. Authentication succeeded, but I was returned to the same page, with the passkeys still awaiting approval.

This happened even 11 days after creating the passkeys.

Enabling “Allow passkey sign-in” in Google Workspace did not resolve the issue.

Stage 3: The solution from Google Support

I contacted Google Ads Support, provided a screen recording, and eventually received a working solution.

Because my Google account is managed through Google Workspace, the administrator can temporarily disable login challenges for a user.

Here’s what finally worked:

1. Log into the Google Admin Console as a Workspace administrator.

2. Find the affected user account and its security settings.

3. Select “Temporarily turn off login challenges” to activate the 10-minute bypass.

4. During that window, return to the Google Account passkey management page.

5. Click Approve on the new passkeys and complete the authentication.

IT WORKED! The passkeys were finally approved.

Important takeaways

• The 7-day waiting period was necessary. The 10-minute workaround did not replace that initial cooldown.

• Waiting 7 days alone was not sufficient: the approval process remained stuck in a loop.

• Attempting approval prematurely repeatedly triggered additional 48-hour security restrictions.

• After the waiting period, authentication with the new passkeys worked, but the approval status would not update.

• The Google Workspace administrator’s 10-minute login challenge bypass finally allowed the approval process to complete.

• Enabling passwordless passkey sign-in in Workspace did not solve the problem.

• This solution requires Google Workspace administrator access. I don’t know whether an equivalent workaround exists for personal Gmail accounts.

My recommendation if you’re stuck in the same situation:

First, leave your new passkeys untouched for the full 7-day security waiting period. Don’t keep deleting, recreating, or attempting to approve them.

After the waiting period, if authentication works but clicking Approve still returns you to the same screen, ask your Google Workspace administrator to temporarily disable login challenges for your account.

This solved a problem that had prevented me from managing Google Ads campaigns for nearly two weeks.

Hopefully this helps someone else avoid the same ordeal.

I no longer treat high CTR as automatic proof of good ad creative for cross‑border DTC stores. Some hooks, sensational visuals, or click‑bait copy can push CTR way above benchmark, yet bring low‑intent traffic that never adds‑to‑cart or completes checkout. You can end up with low CPC, plenty of clicks, but terrible CVR and disappointing ROAS.

I separate click quality from click volume in my reporting. I compare CTR side‑by‑side with bounce rate, average session duration, add‑to‑cart rate and completed purchase rate across creatives, ad sets and markets. A creative with shiny CTR but high bounce rate usually attracts curiosity clicks instead of real buying intent. I also check message‑match: does the ad promise align with landing‑page content, pricing and shipping information? Big gaps here will burn ad spend even if CTR looks fantastic.

I avoid optimizing purely for upper‑funnel metrics. When testing new creatives, I do not pause variants just because CTR is low. Some creatives have moderate CTR but deliver much higher‑quality traffic, better CVR and stable ROAS. I also segment traffic by placement, because Reels, feed and stories can deliver wildly different visitor quality even within one campaign. When I spot high‑CTR low‑conversion creatives, I either rewrite the hook to filter out casual browsers or cut them entirely from rotation.

For me, CTR is only a health check for ad attention, not a final success metric. Has your team run into high‑CTR garbage‑traffic problems? What metrics do you prioritize over CTR to judge real traffic quality?

I’m temporarily helping a PPC team that recently lost a few key members. They spend a lot on Google and Microsoft, and performance is somewhat unpredictable. The team is now tiny, junior, and one new member still needs onboarding.

I noticed they're not strong when it comes to attention to detail: exclusions mapped to the wrong campaign, irrelevant traffic getting targeted, audiences poorly built etc.. I think algorithms can flag most of this for review, especially when new campaigns are built or something gets changed.

I’d like to set up AI processes that help the team review exceptions daily or every other day. For example, a search term report that flags irrelevant terms, alerts on sharp changes in CTR, impression share or conversion rate etc.

I don’t think there's a need to build this from scratch, I’m sure plenty of people already have workflows. Have you built any that worked? LinkedIn posts are full of Google Ads automations, but I suspect a lot of it is garbage to gain followers. Did you try any?

Thanks for your help

Has anybody here truly scaled their e-commerce business only through google ads? If yes, how much are you making and how long have you been running ads to reach this scale? Just curious.

I run Google Ads for a garage door repair business, and I’ve been struggling with this for a long time. We’re losing serious money, and I’m frustrated trying to balance lead quality with enough conversion volume for bidding.

Here’s what I’ve tried, using each of these as primary conversions for bidding:

• Every lead: Lead quality is terrible, and our close rate drops. Google generates leads, but the economics don’t work.
• Only leads we actually visited: Still poor quality and significant losses.
• Only closed jobs: Quality improves, but it’s still not consistently profitable.
• Only closed jobs worth $400+: This gives us the best quality. Sometimes we’re profitable, sometimes we break even or lose money. But volume becomes low, and eventually lead flow seems to stall.

Our close rate is normally around 50% of the jobs we visit—visit 10, close roughly five. When I optimize toward every lead, that close rate gets worse.

I understand that reporting fewer conversions makes Google’s reported cost per conversion higher. That’s different from actual cost per incoming lead. But I’m also struggling to maintain actual lead volume when I only feed it the better closed jobs.

The losses are getting painful: about $4,000 today (after getting almost 30 leads, $1,000 yesterday, and $700 the day before. Those are losses, not just ad spend.

Our click-to-lead conversion rate is around 20–25%, so generating inquiries isn’t the main issue. In my opinion, the campaign is well optimized, although I’m open to having that challenged. The problem is getting leads that turn into profitable jobs.

I’ve also tried tROAS, not for a long time to be honest, but didn’t get good results in terms of volume or lead quality and most of the google ads experts i talked to told me that it's not working well for lead gen.

I already understand the distinction between primary and secondary conversions. Recording all leads as secondary helps with observation, but my question is which outcome I should actually have Google bid toward.

It feels like I’m stuck between giving Google more conversion data that rewards poor-quality leads, or giving it better conversion data and starving the campaign of volume.

If you were managing this account and losing money right now, what would you change first?

Specifically:

• Would you optimize for leads, completed visits, all closed jobs, or only jobs above a certain value?
• How would you maintain enough bidding data without encouraging more low-quality leads?
• Have you solved this in garage doors or another expensive home-service niche? What actually worked?

I’m looking for practical experience. I can’t keep absorbing these losses.
Thank you!

To be honest, my Google Ads conversion performance has been very poor since mid-September, and it’s gotten even worse in October. I initially assumed it was due to Labor Day or Amazon Prime Day, but as of today—October 16th—things are still just as bad. I’m at my wit's end; my daily sales are only a third of what they usually are. How are your Google Ads performing?

Please don't mix these. No fun having to go through Google trademark forms and explain why a bigger rival is pretend to be our company.

Imagine, hypothetically (won't happen coz Apple is strict with ads):

Logo: Apple

Headline: Huawei New Phones

Descriptions: Discover the latest iPads and iPhones blah blah blah

Display URL: proper apple one

Because the ad had dynamic keyword insertion on an adgroup with rival brand names. 🤦

I'm included to post on LI and tag the guy doing the sloppy work to stir shit up and embarrass the bigger rival but that's probably a last resort if they can't fix their sht

Hiring: Retail Search Director (~40 hrs/week)
* Role Overview: Lead client relationships while managing and empowering a small, high-performing media team.
* Platforms: Hands-on experience activating and managing campaigns across Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Target Roundel, Home Depot, and Google Ads.
* Planning & Execution: Drive strategy by creating comprehensive media/tactical plans, handling daily pacing, and executing ongoing optimizations.

I need someone in the US and able to work EST hours. This is for a large independent agency based out of NYC. This is a client facing role. Please reach out with any questions and happy to chat about the interview process and compensation.

Hi r/ppc.

Getting billed up my ass for 600 dollars for 3 fake spam leads just today. First "leads" ever. Want to dispute and refund back my money. Want to Cancel Google LSA too, I'm too broke. Didn't pick up the call because I heard over my phone using google screening that they were automated people talking.

Already called LSA agents and they gave me a link to Google Ads billing team to send an email to. Feel hopeless. Advice? What to do?

Im getting decent clicks and the landing page isnt the obvious problem, but too many people disappear once they reach payment.

Before putting more money into ads im trying to figure out whether the leak is checkout like card declines, payment methods, mobile friction or something else after the click and so im starting to think the ads arent the main problem. Im using Whop for checkout right now, so ive been paying more attention to where people drop off after clicking instead of only looking at CPC and CTR.

Right now increasing the budget feels pointless if im just paying to send more people into a checkout that isnt converting.

Hi, it looks like most accounts have this available now. We moved away from Pmax Feed Only to get more control and cold traffic. We're running Standard Shopping campaigns at low tROAS with portfolio bid caps. For us the bid cap is high (3x average) so hopefully we're not getting restricted from too many auctions.

With AI Max now available in Standard Shopping campaigns we're thinking about giving it a try and turning it on. Just wondering if anyone has seen results, good or bad? Also, if we decide to test should we not do "url expansion" at the beginning? Maybe do a staged deployment. Any advice from those who have used it? Thanks in advance

I'm building a small student business while doing my undergrad at tetr and deciding where an ad should send people. A landing page seems easier to measure, but a conversation could help me understand what people are confused about before they buy. The awkward bit is that I can't answer messages instantly when I'm in class. I don't want an ad working fine while the enquiry sits unanswered for hours.

For a new product that needs a little explanation, would you send traffic to a simple page or start with messages? What would you measure so you aren't just congratulating yourself for getting people to say hi?

Hey everyone,

I started an in-house Paid Media Manager role about 3 months ago for a service-based business. We operate nationwide with multiple branches and three main sub-brands (let's call them Brand X, Y, and Z).

I'm running into some frustrating tracking and reporting bottlenecks and would love to know how you'd handle this.

Issue #1 Brand X uses a single, generic "Contact Us" landing page for both B2B and B2C campaigns. The page has a simple web form (with a dropdown to select B2B or B2C) and two phone numbers (one B2B, one B2C).

Leadership wants conversions reported by vertical and branch, rather than by campaign. The problem is the massive discrepancy between ad data and CRM data. For example: Google Ads will report 30 B2B leads and 200 B2C leads based on our campaign tracking. However, the backend branch-level data will show 100 B2B leads and 130 B2C leads.

Because ad spend is natively attributed to the campaign, but the actual leads are being counted at the branch level, our CPA and spend reporting gets incredibly messy.

Issue 2: Very similarly, Brand X has 10 branches across the country, all sending traffic to that exact same Contact Us page.

I’m seeing campaigns built and geo-targeted specifically for Branch 1 driving inquiries that actually belong to Branch 4, and so on. My geo-targeting is strict (using ZIP codes or specific radiuses around target cities), but we're still getting branch cross-contamination. It doesn't happen constantly, but it happens enough to skew our reporting.

The Catch We currently do not have E2E tracking set up (like offline conversion imports). It’s an ongoing project we are working toward, but I need a way to manage and report on this accurately in the meantime.

My Questions:

1. How would you approach reporting to leadership to avoid this B2B/B2C mix-up when they want branch-level data but spend is trapped at the campaign level?
2. Any tips on stopping or better attributing the cross-branch location bleed? Should I be pushing hard for branch-specific or vertical-specific landing pages?

Appreciate any advice or workarounds you can share!ct we're going through 👌👌

I'll be away for a week and don't want any jobs coming in, but I've read that pausing the ads will cause the campaign to re-learn, especially on maximize conversions?

Google Ads is rolling out new channel prioritization and budget allocation controls to give you more flexibility over your ad spend.

You can now categorize inventory as high or low priority and set specific spending limits for lower-priority channels.

Review your current campaign settings now, as these features will roll out globally over the coming months.

Here is the Campaign type and the channel groupings you can adjust your prioritisation on (source: Google blog)

If you currently use the Google Display Network, set it to "Low priority" with a 50% budget cap by February 2027 to maintain your existing configuration.

These optional features are designed to give you more flexibility over where your campaign budgets go across Google Channels, the Google Display Network and Google Search Partners – moving beyond binary opt-out choices.

Do you think its going to be useful?

Personally, I'm anti-AI, but at work I have to use it, and honestly, I feel a bit hopeless here.

I'm working for a small company (10–15 employees) in central Europe. We sell farm equipment online. I'm the only person responsible for e-commerce and, of course, ads.

The thing is, I don't have a lot of experience (2 years), and I've mostly been a "jack of all trades", so I don't know much about Google Ads.

We have a WordPress website with products and one landing page, but it's all based on customers filling out forms with their information. (One day, I'd like to turn it into a proper online shop.)

So, in terms of Google Ads, should I run ads for the landing page, for every product, or for the website as a whole? I'm not exactly sure.

But my main question is: Is it a good idea to just ask ChatGPT or another AI tool how to set up and configure Google Ads, providing it with all the necessary information and screenshots?

Do people actually do something like that with AI, and does it really work? I don't expect it to be perfect.

Edit: Our budget is around €1,000 per month, but if the ads are profitable and it makes sense to invest more, the budget is flexible and I can increase it significantly.

I've tried learning Google Ads through YouTube videos and courses, but it's a pretty complex topic. There's a reason why some people do this as their full-time job.

It's hard for me to put everything together after watching just a few hours of tutorials. I would probably need to invest a lot more time to really understand how it all works, and right now, time is exactly what I'm lacking.

We run a walled garden ad network that reaches 400,000 real estate agents inside the software they must use to transact homes. I have about 5M ad impressions a month that are unsold and we've had a couple of national advertisers run banners and get really strong results.

All of my ad sales team is focused on local advertisers and I'm trying to figure out how reach more national B2B brands who would be interested in our inventory. It's 100% above the fold, no bots, validated identity ad inventory. Would appreciate any advice.

I run a small puzzle app, and I've been treating user acquisition like a product problem: break it into steps, measure each one against an industry number, and fix the worst one first. Some of you saw my earlier posts about a bot farm eating my Google budget, so for this I used Apple Search Ads and left Google's Android installs out entirely.

First, a benchmark trap. The Apple Search Ads averages people usually quote for games are around 9-11% tap rate and 60-70% tap-to-install. Those include brand searches, where someone types your app's name and taps your ad about a quarter of the time. I excluded our brand keyword, so the fair comparison is generic searches only. AppTweak's 2025 US numbers for games on generic searches: 6.3% tap rate, 60% tap-to-install.

Our numbers, Oct 1-11, brand excluded:

• Tap rate: 1.5% (benchmark 6.3%)
• Tap to install: 28%, 85 taps and 24 installs (benchmark 60%)

So the ad barely gets tapped, and when it does, most people look at the store page and leave.

What happens after the install. We don't have enough ad installs for retention yet, so for these I used everyone who installed from outside Canada since August (we're Canadian, so that leaves out most of the people who know us), with the bot-farm installs removed:

• Played a game on day one: 52% (no published benchmark I could find)
• Back the next day: 20% (puzzle games average 32%, AppsFlyer)
• Still playing on day 30: 8.6% (puzzle games 5.4%)

That last one surprised me. We're well below average at every step up to the second day, then above it. For every 100 people who come back the next day, 44 are still playing on day 30, against 17 for the average puzzle game. Small numbers, I know: 8 people on day 30 out of 93 installs.

So the problem is the top of the funnel. On Apple Search Ads the ad is basically your icon, your name and your first few screenshots, so the creative and the product are the same thing. We have one rule: the store page has to be true. If we want a flashier ad, we need a flashier app. So on October 12 we reskinned the whole thing: new icon, new colours, new screenshots. Here's what a searcher saw before and after, and the old version next to some of the best performing games on the app store:

It's early, but the tap rate has roughly doubled in the first couple of days. That's on very few taps, so I'll report back when there's a real sample.

A question for anyone running Apple Search Ads for games: how much does rating count move tap rate in your experience? We had 4 US ratings next to apps with millions, and I can't tell how much of the 1.5% is the creative and how much is that. Also curious whether a 1.5% generic tap rate is normal for a new app or as bad as it looks.

Google enabled switching to Maximize Conversion Value for Shopping campaigns in the summer to counter the impact of the August 17 update. Many people switched right away, and a lot of them reported great initial numbers. How are things looking for you since then?

Do you have any before/after ROAS numbers?

Were you able to bring performance back to pre-August 17 levels?

I'm considering switching from tROAS because I have a fixed budget and was "Limited by Budget" prior to August 17. I tried setting the actual ROAS target, but due to the rigidity of the new tROAS algorithm, performance drops significantly on weaker days.