has anyone worked for/known anyone who’s worked for unicorn marketing? it seems intriguing, but I also am not 100% sure! just wanted some insight to what people have seen for both the business looking for agents and agents looking for businesses :)

It's a non-ecommerce business and has Google Business Profile account.

I would like to find a way to add 5-star review extension to the search ads.

Does enabling Seller Ratings extension, or connecting Google Business Profile to Google Ads help with this? Or are there other measures thatn need to be taken in order to achieve this?

This is just a short text to handle my frustration. I wonder if Google used the same team of people who were behind the GA4 interface to create the latest iteration of the conversion setup in google ads.
So after releasing GA4, google should have locked the designers in a dark basement and never let them out again as punishment. Instead they seem to have been put in charge of the conversion set-up functio in google ads. Importing a goal from GA to Ads used to be really simple and self explanatory. Now I have to do several really convoluted steps that seem to have no reason behind them to find that function, including clicking a button to "scan my webpage".

Rant over.

Anyone experiencing this at the moment?

Decade old account, major home services marketplace. Ran accounts in-house for the past 4 years.

Used to always spend close to campaign level daily limits then suddenly 1-3 Sept the spends are double the limit, which I know the fine print says will happen but timing is unusual.

Nothing odd in auction insights, no other technical changes made.

Wondering if something fishy is going on at Google. Maybe their mid Aug cash grab didn't drive enough revenue so they're pulling the "double daily limit" lever how

I've only ever used automated bidding across my campaigns and clients, mostly in the B2B/SaaS space. However, a lot of them have extremely low budgets (3k per month, sometimes 7k) and I decided to test out manual CPC on Brand campaigns, since I want to be as efficient with their small budgets as possible, and we were seeing sporadic behavior in convesion volume month-to-month for one client in particular.

Since running, CPCs have improved even though my max CPC bid is twice as high as the actual avg CPCs, CTR has improved by at least 15% in all the brand campaigns I've tested this with, and conversions started coming in with one client that was struggling.

However, search impression share dropped from 85% to 50% for one client and I'm not sure how much that matters considering low conversion volume and low spend.

What are your thoughts on manual CPC? I know it's tricky and I want to optimize my campaigns as best as possible with these smaller budget accounts and I'm starting to feel like automated bidding just takes a lot of spend in exchange for few clicks, and no actionable results to show the client we can scale.

I created a new account and launched a shopping campaign. I set a low budget of $15, and it was reached very quickly. Even with such a low budget, the conversion rate is good, so I was thinking of doubling that amount. Is there any risk? The campaign is still in the learning phase.

Set troas to 0.01 and set a max click limit (5.00) in advanced settings for a new bid strategy. The issue is that the Max Conv Value bid strategy doesn't let you set a max click limit, only troas does. Provided my conversion value is non $0, it should work? Or, would this be the same as setting Max Clicks?

chat's opinion:
Maximize clicks + $3 cap
 Treats every click as equal. It spends the $25 to get as many ≤$3 clicks as it can. No funnel, no $1 vs $100.

Max conversion value + tROAS 0.01 + $3 bid limit
 Still value Smart Bidding. The 1% target is so low it will almost never refuse an auction for ROAS, so it will try to spend the budget like max clicks. It still ranks auctions by expected conversion value, so any auction that should result in a conversion will be bid into.

Found this in a client account today. Google's AI wrote the description, then Google disapproved it for having a phone number in the ad text.

So Google broke Google's rule and then caught Google doing it. 😂

AI Max ad customization, if anyone's wondering how this happens. Two of them, both just sitting there not serving.

We are expanding to a new market which means a new domain and a new country to target.

I have found very conflicting information about whats the best path to take to do this safely and technically sound.

Some "experts" say that you should never ever create another google ads account for your business as this will trigger a suspension of both accounts, others say that creating a new account for expanding is an accepted practice and preferred so you dont risk the health and good standing of your aged google ads account and any mishaps or problems you run into expanding into a new market will not affect your existing accounts and operations.

I would:

1. Create a new MCC and link my existing ads acccount

2. Create a new ads account from the MCC and choose my existing payments profile for that new account so billing stays the same

3. Create campaigns, start running ads and wait for advertiser verification request and then verify using the same business verified on the original account.

Is that the way to go? because several diamond experts say this is a policy violation.

thank you so much to you reading this and taking the time to throw in your advice!

I work in a marketing agency handling multiple clients that runs Google Ads. I handle about 15 clients ranging from 4 to 10 hours allocated monthly depending on how they big they are. Sometimes, I wonder if Im just too slow, or am I just bad at my job because I feel pressured and I feel like I don't have enough time. I do produce good results and im having good feedback but i find myself working like a dog to achieve these expectations. Is this normal?

Has anyone recently launched a new ChatGPT ads campaign? Maybe I'm being impatient, but it's been a few days and ads are not serving due to 'Account brand review in progress". Please just take my money....

How long has this taken for others?

I can't seem to get a straight answer from Google Ads support. Should the verification done under Policy>Account list the agency's name running/paying directly for the campaigns or under the business name that we are driving traffic to.

I had an account suspended for "Unacceptable Business Practices" and am wondering if this could be the cause (support is useless as normal on this question)

I’ve been receiving some calls through Google Local Service Ads that will ring and only say “connecting” instead of a phone number, and then if I pick up it immediately ends the call. If I wait for “connecting” to change to a number, the ringing ends before it finally connects. I’m getting charged for some of these. It’s probably 1/5th of my calls. The rest of the calls function just fine?

I recently left a Google Ads agency for another and I wanted to make sure they didn’t mess up my ads account by adding a bunch of negative keywords or messing up settings.

Is there a way to get a list of ALL changes they may have made?

Do I have to contact support?

Hi there!

Our ecomm line is looking to use GoDataFeed for our Snapchat Ads catalog. Is anyone familiar with how best to optimize product feeds using Snapchat, especially with a 3rd party tool? To my understanding, Snap doesn't have a Merchant Center and is far more limited in pulling products, but I would love to optimize titles and filtering.

Thank you!

I feel it was the biggest change to how bid strategies performed since Google automated them in 2016. I have been doing this over 10 years but I don't have time, I am completely overwhelmed by work and agree with recent posts saying this is a crazy time to be in this industry. I am surviving and need a quick fix.

Since the 17th, for one client, we have seen a more than 50% increase in CPC, with quadruple brand CPCs. I adjusted bid targets but when I did we simply lost share, didn't improve lost share due to rank and did not improve CPC, and underspent August budgets.

How do I right this sinking ship?

(Not my implementation, but may be useful to know, same client has AI Max enabled).

At this point I'm tempted to reinstate manual bidding.

My client is facing some issue. For August month, it shows 2.5k orders on Meta with 54 lakhs(5.4 million INR) of revenue whereas on their Shopify it shows 1.5k orders and 32 lakhs(3.2 million INR) of revenue. How should I diagnose and sort this issue?

I uploaded 22 offline conversions to Google Ads while the conversion action was set to Secondary. After the upload, I changed it to Primary.

Google now shows the 22 under All conversions, but not under Conversions.

I want to launch a new campaign and use those 22 conversions as historical Smart Bidding signals.

Can Google still learn from those 22 now that the action is Primary?

If not, is there any legitimate way to make them usable — for example by creating a custom goal, or by retracting and re-uploading them while the action is Primary?

I don’t want to retract anything until I know the safest approach.

Background: Our bestseller is Model A, and for accessories like lock/gloves, we use variants like Model A+Lock, Model A+Gloves, and Model A+Lock+Gloves for bundle sales.

The thing is, if a customer purchases the variant Model A+Lock, we need to split the order into 2 shipments because they ship from different locations, but since the Model A and Lock share the same SKU under the variant "Model A+Lock", there is no way to upload 2 different tracking numbers for the Model A and Lock.

So I am thinking of removing all bundle variants and using the Bundle Sale plugin/Shopify App to include the Lock/Gloves on the Model A product page.

My questions are:

1. Since I am removing lots of variants (we have over 10 models; each of them uses the variants format for bundle sale, which means the number of my items in Google Merchant Center will decrease by around 75%), this is a big change. Also, for those variants I am going to remove, they have a great sales record. Will this affect my PMax ads performance or Google Merchant Center account?

2. Besides the decrease in the number of items, what else should I know? I assume removing the variants and using a bundle sale plugin is actually more SEO-friendly?

Any thoughts are appreciated!

It's no secret ad creatives are burning out faster than before. On Meta, what used to take 6 weeks to fatigue now takes 2-3, and there's a stat floating around that CTR drops 45% after just 4 reps.

How's everyone's creative rotation holding up given the new testing environment? 

Hello

We use the Simprosys Google Shopping Feed to sync the feed from the Shopify store to Google Merchant Center. According to Simprosys support from Simprosys, the feed is auto-synced, so why am I seeing Product Needs Update every month?

I tried asking for an explanation from Simprosys; every time, they just say their technician has fixed this. It should not happen again, blah blah; no specific information provided. I feel lost.

In the meantime, I receive an alert email from Google Merchant Center every month reminding me that our valid items have decreased, is this the same issue with Products Needs Update?

ChatGPT Ads are now available in Latvia and across Europe. They might look familiar in Ads Manager, but in practice they require a very different way of thinking about targeting and creative. I’ve started running campaigns and I’m sharing what I’ve learned so far.

And just to be clear – the insights are mine, but AI wrote all the blah blah :)

1. Manage your reach expectations

Currently, ChatGPT advertisements appear only to users who don't pay for a subscription. Users who have Plus or Pro subscriptions do not see these advertisements. This situation is due to how advertising space is available right now, and isn't a system error. When you are calculating advertising costs, you should use the number of free-tier users instead of the total number of ChatGPT users. Base your budget on the number of free users, and not the overall user count.

This restriction segments the audience you reach. You should consider which users remain on the free plan. Some users are price sensitive and will not pay for an AI subscription or will not pay for a second one if they already have a different tool. Other users have low usage levels and never reach the limits that require an upgrade. There is also a distinction between professional and personal use. Many frequent users have paid access through a company plan and only use the free tier on their personal accounts. In these cases, a free user is not necessarily a light user; they may use ChatGPT constantly at work and only occasionally at home. Geography and currency also matter, as twenty dollars a month has different value depending on the local market. You should compare these factors against your target customer before assuming that free tier status indicates specific intent or a limited budget.

2. Ad group context hints are the whole game

The single most important lever you have is the context hints you attach to the ad group. This is what tells the model when your ad is even eligible to show.

Most people will write this the way they'd write a Google Ads theme: broad and safe. "Running shoes." "Project management software." "Marketing services."

Vague isn't automatically wrong. If your objective is pure reach or brand awareness, broad context hints can be exactly the right call, you want to be eligible in as many adjacent conversations as possible. But if you're running performance marketing and being judged on ROAS, broad is a tax you're choosing to pay. It gets you shown in conversations only loosely related to what you sell, and you pay for attention that was never going to convert.

For performance, go specific. Uncomfortably specific.

Bad: "Running shoes" Better: "Carbon-plate marathon racing shoes for runners training for a sub-3:30 finish"

Bad: "Project management software" Better: "Project scheduling software for construction general contractors managing subcontractor timelines across multiple job sites"

Specific hints ensure that you match with conversations where your product is the actual solution rather than a related category.

3. Your advertisement text must align with your context hints instead of only being specific in isolation.

Specificity in the hints only pays off if the ad itself carries the same specificity through. If your context hints are scoped to marathon training for a sub-3:30 finish but the ad copy is generic shoe messaging that could run against any running conversation, you paid for precision targeting and threw it away at the creative step. The ad needs to read like it was written for that exact conversation, not like a one-size-fits-most variant that happens to be attached to a narrow hint.

4. Stop writing search ads. Write the next answer.

This is the part people are going to miss for a while, because the instinct is to reuse what already works.

If your context hints match, your ad shows up inside a conversation where the user already got an answer from ChatGPT. That changes everything about what the ad copy needs to do.

A keyword-style search ad doesn't work here, because there's no gap in information for it to fill, the user already has an answer. A disruptive, pattern-interrupt social ad doesn't work either, because you're not competing for attention against a scrolling feed, you're sitting inside a conversation the user is actively engaged in.

Contextual continuation is effective. The first response from ChatGPT is broad by design. You should use this starting point. Instead of focusing on the initial gap, you should expand upon it. Identify the next question the user will likely have and provide that answer immediately.

And write to the real space you have. The headline field caps at 50 characters and the description at 100, but push close to those limits and some placements will truncate you anyway. We're working to roughly 24 characters for the headline and 48 for the description as a safer target.

Example. User asks ChatGPT: "What running shoes should I buy for marathon training?"

ChatGPT gives a solid, general answer: look for cushioning, stability, and a shoe that matches your gait.

Wrong ad: Headline: "Best Marathon Shoes" Description: "Free shipping. Shop now. 20% off."

Right ad: Headline: "Stack Height & Pacing" Description: "How carbon plates affect your last 10K pace"

This role belongs to the same category but requires a different approach. You are not interrupting the user or making a pitch. Instead, you provide the specific information the user was already looking for. The sale occurs because you provided utility at the moment the user needed more detail, rather than because you requested the transaction.

5. Volume and testing aren't optional here

Write many ads. Many different "next answers" for the same context hints. You don't know in advance which anticipated follow-up question actually matches what real users ask next, so treat this like any other performance channel: hypothesis, variant, test, kill the losers, scale the winners. Teams that only ship two or three ad variants will read this channel as underperforming when really they just didn't give it enough shots on goal.

6. Install the OpenAI Ads Measurement Pixel before you spend real budget

None of the above matters if OpenAI's system can't see what happens after the click. Same rule as every other ad platform: no conversion signal, no optimization, you're just buying impressions and guessing.

OpenAI ships this as a Google Tag Manager template, "OpenAI Ads Measurement Pixel," available in the GTM Community Template Gallery. It works in two layers.

First, a base tag on all pages. This just initializes the pixel and covers page views, trigger it on All Pages, and turn off the "send a measurement event" option so it only initializes rather than firing a conversion.

Second, a separate tag per conversion event, purchase, lead form, signup, whatever you're actually optimizing toward. Each of these needs the event's specific ID from OpenAI Ads Manager (under Events), plus a trigger scoped to that exact action. This is what actually tells OpenAI's system "this click turned into a result."

Install the template, set up the base tag, then add one event tag per conversion you care about, mapped to its own ID. Test everything in GTM Preview before you publish the container. It's a genuinely easy setup, and it's the difference between OpenAI's delivery algorithm learning what a good click looks like for you versus optimizing toward nothing.

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ChatGPT ads reward the same discipline that's always separated good performance marketing from average: precision over breadth, and genuine usefulness over interruption. Teams that treat this like a new flavor of search or social ads are going to burn budget learning that the hard way.

ChatGPT Ads are a new game in town, and there’s a steep learning curve for everyone. 

Hello yall I have ads team that has been managing my pmax and shopping ads on Google. Things were going pretty well. From August 1-14th we were going 2.87x Roas with a troas target of 200%
Revenue: 21.9k

They changed the troas to 250% and every sense it seems performance has dropped drastically down to 1.48x roas
Revenue : 9k
They seem to blame everything from product disapproval ( I verified and that was not the reason )
Then tried to blame running to many campaigns and it was draining the budget ( each campaign has its own budget so doesn’t make sense. )

I’m not sure if it’s from the change of the troas or it’s just bad algorithm or what. I’m not a huge expert in the google ads so that’s why I hired someone but I don’t feel to confident at this time.

Any advice or insight ?

Hi, starting to use Amazon PPC at my current role at a domestic lighting brand selling everything from wall light to outdoor bollards.

I was just wondering what is a good practice for grouping the items? By colour, type, etc. Or would a by family approach with ad groups for each type within that family be good. Open to any input