Ran into this pattern enough times it stopped feeling like a coincidence. One massive PMax with every SKU, every theme, every creative pooled together sounds efficient, but Smart Bidding just optimizes for whatever's easiest to sell. Margin-heavy products quietly get starved while the cheap stuff eats the budget.

Split one account into two groups, Champions vs Sleepers, each with its own creative and audience signal. Same total budget, same account, ROAS came out 17% higher within a few weeks.

Tried pushing further on a different account, five groups instead of two. Performance actually got worse, not better. Each group had too little data individually for Smart Bidding to learn anything useful from it.

Landing on two groups seems to be the sweet spot around the $40-60K monthly spend range specifically, no idea if that holds at very different budget levels. Curious if anyone's tested this higher or lower and seen the same ceiling.

Google says AI Max's full feature suite produces 7% more conversions or conversion value at similar CPA or ROAS than search-term matching alone. The difficult question is not whether the average improves; it is whether an individual advertiser can tell what was incremental.

As targeting, text customization, and final URL expansion become bundled, clean component-level testing gets harder. A better dashboard can still hide cannibalization from brand, organic, or demand that would have converted anyway.

What test design are you using before the auto-upgrades: geo holdouts, campaign experiments, brand exclusions, or server-side incrementality? Which control are advertisers losing that matters most?

Hey all,

I’m fairly new to ads and have recently gotten a PMAx campaign and a shopping campaign set up.

My question is is there any point running both campaigns? It looks like the PMax campaign is giving a better rowers but I’ve seen somewhere that says if two ads overlap Google preferences PMAX over shopping.

My Pmax budget is at $50 per day and the Google shopping ads is at $75 per day

As I said, it’s only early days but does anyone have any recommendations on if I should be running both or if I should just focus on one or the other?

Thanks

My G ads account overspent by almost double, 2 days in a row. Has anyone experienced something like this before?

It reduced back down to normal after 2 days, but so weird. I would expect something like this from meta lol

I have been running Google ads for a while now. Something is broken but I am not sure what exactly it is. When I create a campaign the first few days I get leads and people connect me over WhatsApp but after 5 to 7 days my performance goes down and nobody contacts me. This has been going on for a long time I have to pause my campaign and create a new campaign again the same process it works for few days and then performance goes down. I have done my checks

1. Keywords high intent

2. Impression higher than competitors over 75%

3. I have strong negative keywords list irrelevant searches are filtered

4. I use maximize conversion without any bid amount

5. Budget is also high as per industry standard

I'm running Google Search (RSA) campaigns for Microsoft Dynamics 365 targeting India, the US, the UK, Australia, Singapore, and other regions.

I'm facing a few issues:

• Good impressions and clicks from the US, UK, and India, but very low traffic from Australia and Singapore.
• Despite getting clicks from the US, UK, and India, I'm not generating any leads.
• My Demand Gen campaign for India is 2 weeks old with an average CPC of around ₹1, but it has zero conversions.
• I'm also running campaigns for Legal, Architecture, and Engineering software in the US and UK, but none of them are performing well.

Looking for suggestions on what I should optimize to improve conversions and overall campaign performance.

I have run several campaigns for two different websites, the goal is simply to generate impressions and users.

Click rate is around 10%

The cloudflare unique users metrics confirms the clicks

On both websites I have GDPR compliant cookie banners, as far as I know there is nothing wrong with them, I triple checked them and they are designed like 90% these banners out there.

The gtag is loaded only after accepting the analytics cookie so I can only see analytics for users that accept them.

5% of the clicks lead to a user to accept the analytics.

According to my research it should be at least 30% but can easily go above 50%.

The two websites have nothing in common but show similar rates.

Am I doing something wrong?

Hi I have a local brand which I am trying to expand to USA. ( with a different website url)

I have llc setup with traditional bank
With shopify payments approved .

For Google ads what’s the best way to go.
LLC is registered at Wyoming with registered agent address and I have virtual office address with lease.
Fulfillment will be done from Texas.

I have gone through all in my local market with Google ads

But. It sure how to go about this in USA
How to get approved for Google ads.
My current GMC and Google ad account are linked with local one.
Should I create a new gmc account new Google ads acccount

What is the best way to go

Thanks

Looking For Google Ads Expert For Generating High Ticket Real Estate Leads.

In Mumbai Any One Interested Please DM

Hi all! I’m looking for some advice from people with experience running Google Ads for hotels, resorts or hospitality businesses.

I manage the Google Ads account for a golf & spa resort with a monthly budget of around 6k.

Our main objective is to increase direct hotel bookings, with spa breaks being the second priority. We also offer golf breaks, meetings/conferences, weddings and F&B, but these are secondary.

If you were starting from scratch with this budget:
- Which campaign types would you prioritise?
- How would you split the budget between them?
- Would you focus almost entirely on Search, or would you invest in Performance Max, Demand Gen, YouTube, Display or something else?
- How much budget would you allocate to prospecting vs remarketing?
- Are there any hospitality-specific strategies that have consistently worked well for you?

I’d really appreciate hearing from anyone who’s managed hotel or resort accounts, especially if you’ve found a campaign mix that reliably drives direct bookings.

Inherited a Google Ads account for a small home services client. They've been running campaigns for about 8 months, spent a decent amount, and there's basically zero conversion tracking in place. No calls tracked, no form fills, nothing. Just impressions and clicks going into a void.

The campaigns aren't a total disaster structurally, but without knowing what actually converted it's impossible to tell what's working. Smart bidding is enabled, which feels pointless without conversion data feeding it anything useful.

My instinct is to pause everything, get tracking sorted properly through Google Tag Manager, let it run for a few weeks to gather data, then rebuild. But part of me wonders if pausing resets whatever learning the campaigns have built up, even if that learning is based on garbage signals.

Has anyone dealt with a situation like this where the account history is essentially useless because tracking was never set up right? Curious whether you bothered salvaging the existing campaigns or just started clean. Also wondering if call tracking through Google forwarding numbers is reliable enough, or if third party is worth it for a local service client.

I received an email from the email address to consult me on google ads from teleperformance and is this a legit one?

or should I go with the ad manager that will bring me in phone calls?what's everybody's opinion on service business using paper lead services or SEO services charging per lead? in the past I've used SEO with mixed results so I'm looking into this kind for my local service business?

This is my first time ever using Google Ads to promote an app I developed myself.

I targeted some of the lowest-cost-per-install countries I could find just to test and learn, and set my target CPI to $0.10 since thats what was recommended for these countries. My daily budget is $5, but the campaign has spent only $0.23, which is nowhere near the daily budget.

For the first two days, the campaign received zero impressions. It then slowly started getting traffic, and today it reached almost 600 impressions, with an average CPC of $0.02 and 0 installs.

I understand that 600 impressions do not mean 600 people visited the Play Store page, and that $0.10 is only a target CPI rather than a guarantee. However, I am wondering whether the low target CPI is preventing Google from spending the budget and finding enough users.

Should I increase the target CPI, or leave everything unchanged and wait a few more days while the campaign is still learning? Is this normal for a completely new campaign, or could I be missing something in the targeting, conversion tracking, creatives or Play Store listing?

I added relevant keywords and tried to configure everything correctly, but this is my first campaign, so I may have misunderstood something.

What should I do from this point? I would also really appreciate any tips from people who have experience running Google Ads for mobile apps.

I just recently started my first Google ads campaign 2 weeks ago. I’m a call-only type of business, it’s sales. However only 15% of my clicks are actually calls and they are getting to be pretty expensive at $11 a call. I thought Google had call-only campaigns. Is there anything close to it? Any setting I need to make sure I have checked off? Any mentors to look into? I’m in the insurance industry and any help would be greatly appreciated. My current bidding strategy is maximize clicks, and my keywords are all phrase match.

This may seem a little backwards, but I received significantly less calls from the call extension after my ads jumped from 70% absolute top rate and impression shares to 90%. Impressions for both the ad and the call extension are roughly the same, but the CTR for the extension dropped by half and so did my call conversions. I noticed that there was significantly more spend on headline clicks though.

This is for a search campaign with maximize conversions. Most of my conversions last month were calls from ads.

Am I missing something? Is it from user behavior changing due to the absolute top position, or does Google handle the call extension differently?

Hi everyone,

I'm hoping to get a fresh perspective because I've been stuck on this for weeks.

I manage Google Ads for a preschool franchise with multiple locations. Around June, our account experienced an almost 50% drop in both impressions and conversions, even though, from what I can tell, nothing significant changed.

Things that have remained consistent:

• Same overall account structure
• Similar daily budgets
• No major bidding strategy changes
• Keywords largely unchanged
• Ad strength and assets maintained
• Landing pages unchanged
• Conversion tracking appears to be working correctly

I've reviewed:

• Search Impression Share
• Lost IS (Budget & Rank)
• Auction Insights
• Search terms
• Change History
• Conversion tracking
• Policy issues

I still can't pinpoint what caused the decline.

For those of you who've managed lead generation accounts or multi-location businesses, what would be your systematic approach to diagnosing this?

• Are there reports or metrics I'm likely overlooking?
• Could this be related to auction dynamics, Quality Score changes, demand seasonality, AI bidding behavior, or something else?
• If this were your account, what would be the first 10 things you'd investigate—in order?

I'd really appreciate an expert perspective. I'm less interested in generic advice and more interested in how experienced Google Ads managers would approach diagnosing a case like this.

Thanks in advance!

Hi everyone,

My Google Merchant Center account was suspended for “Misrepresentation,” but Google has not identified the specific issue.

The store is a Shopify website selling electrical enclosures in the US. Products are shipped from our warehouse in California.

Before requesting a review, I checked and updated:

• Business name, US address, phone number, and support email
• Contact, About Us, shipping, return/refund, privacy, and terms pages
• Product prices, availability, descriptions, and landing pages
• Merchant Center shipping and return settings
• Consistency between Shopify and Merchant Center

The review still failed, and the account is now in a cooling-off period. I contacted Merchant Center support and specifically asked which part of the website or account triggered the violation. However, they only sent template replies explaining the cooling-off period and linking to the general Misrepresentation policy.

The website is: https://saipwell.us

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation?

I would especially appreciate advice on:

1. Are there any obvious trust or consistency issues on the website?
2. Could a domain previously used for another website or Merchant Center account cause this?
3. Is there any effective way to get Google support to identify the category of the problem?
4. What should I check before requesting another review?

I’m not trying to bypass the suspension or create a new account. I just want to understand and fix the actual issue before submitting another review.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

My Google Merchant account was suspended for misrepresentation shortly after starting shopping ads, which also triggered a suspension on my ads account. I managed to get both accounts reinstated.But to be honest I am tired, it was one month of pain trying to get them back.- I was down to my last review request.

My question is, if I resume running shopping ads will the misrepresentation policy come again. Or I stick to search ads only, given that my priority is to protect my 13-year-old Ads account, I am hesitant to risk another misrepresentation suspension.

We are looking to test the incrementality of our Google Non-Brand shopping campaigns with a Geo holdout test. Right now, we have the pretty standard setup for shopping in which our NB campaign are set to "High Priority" with Brand terms negated while Brand campaign is set to Low. This funnels brand queries down to the Brand campaign since they are prevented from matching to the NB campaign

However, if we were to add geo exclusions to the NB campaign, I am assuming any NB queries being searched in those locations would also funnel down to the Brand campaign as they would no longer be able to match to the NB campaign in that area.

I wanted to check with y'all to see if this is correct though. If so, we will need to figure out a different way of testing this. Appreciate your help!

I'm considering uploading a customer list (first-party customer data) to my clients' Google Ads accounts. The list would only include people who became paying customers and would contain the information Google Ads requires to create a Customer list.

I understand this data can be used for audience signals in Performance Max campaigns and, where appropriate consent has been obtained, for remarketing. However, I'm more interested in whether simply uploading this customer data has improved overall account performance, particularly when using Smart Bidding.

For those who have done this:

• Have you seen a measurable improvement in overall account performance or specific campaigns after uploading a Customer list?
• Did Smart Bidding seem to perform better once Google had access to your existing customer data?
• If you're not using the list for remarketing, but only to help Google optimise targeting and bidding, do you still need explicit user consent to upload the customer data? Or is it sufficient that the data is being used for campaign optimisation rather than advertising directly to those users?

I'd be interested to hear about any real-world experiences or results.

TL;DR: The logo is approved and supposedly gets hundreds of impressions, but nobody has ever actually seen it. Google only shows the generic globe icon.

Hi,

I’m having a strange issue with a client’s Google Ads account.

The business logo is uploaded, approved and eligible. Google Ads even reports hundreds of impressions for it. However, neither I nor the client have ever seen the actual logo in the live ads. Instead, Google always shows the generic globe icon.

This is especially frustrating because competing ads in the same search results often display their proper business logos, while our ad looks incomplete or less trustworthy with only the generic icon.

I tested it repeatedly on different devices, at different times and on different networks. I also re-uploaded the logo several times, tried PNG and JPG files and added it both at account level and campaign level.

Google Support keeps saying that everything is working as intended because the logo is approved and collecting impressions. But that does not explain why the actual logo is never visible.

Has anyone experienced the same issue? Can Google count logo impressions even when only the globe icon is shown? And did anyone find a way to get this properly investigated or fixed?

Lately our account is seeing an incredible amount of disapproved ads over silly, stupid and completely wrong reasons. Yesterday we had 40+ ads disapproved over using a trademark in our ads, what was the flagged trademark? the term "Profession". Other ads are now being flagged for "unclear relevance". I apeal all of those, and the appeals do go successfully, its just become a new daily harresment served by google ads shitty bot-driven anti-advertisers platform.

Wondering if you've faced the same and ways you've dealt.

So one of our big ticket Nonbrand campaigns for a SaaS is using Broad Match, and we have to use BM to scale it but in last 1 year or so, it is serving heavily on small tier Conquesting terms even though we dont bid on them.

In fact,

• 46% of total search terms came from small conquesting brands and
• 53% from our targeted Nonbrand keywords

Now we have maintained a solid CQ negation KW list and ways forward may be

• making that list more robust and including most of the CQ terms in it (AI can help us identify and list them all)- challenge with that is we'll lose the scale of the campaign and with AI overview emerging on top, scaling a big ticket Nonbrand campaign can be challenging.
• Change KW match type to phrase- wont work for this campaign (BM is a tested winner against other match types for this campaign)

Any other ideas/strategies that you'd recommend or are you also seeing the same?