There might be a problem with your Google Ads account
I have OCD. I blame it on my traumatic brain injury that left me hyper anxious and a little bit depressed (don't worry, I see a therapist and a psychiatrist…it's all good). I once freaked out when my spouse re-arranged my deodorant sticks on my dresser (yes, I have multiple deodorant sticks available…because you never know when you might run out). And if I think about it, I bet a huge swath of marketers are on the OCD spectrum too. We love control. Like Yoda.
Yoda's thoughts on Google Ads account architecture were lightyears ahead of its time.
From a marketer's perspective, control used to mean hundreds of little tiny knobs and dials we could tweak and fiddle with. Things like:
Audience targeting (custom audiences, interests, lookalikes, in-market, affinity)
Keyword match types (exact, phrase, broad match modifier)
Ad rotation settings (optimize vs. rotate evenly)
Ad placement selection (specific sites/apps for GDN, FB/IG placements manual)
Manual CPC bidding (set per keyword/ad group)
Enhanced CPC toggling
Device bid adjustments (desktop, tablet, mobile split)
Location bid adjustments (down to zip code/radius)
Time/day scheduling
Demographic adjustments (age, gender, household income)
Manual budget pacing (daily vs. shared budgets)
Audience layering (stacking exclusions/inclusions)
Exact geo-fencing (1 mile, 3 miles, 5 miles, etc.)
Manual campaign budget allocation (not pooled across goals by algorithm)
Manual remarketing segmentation (cart abandoners, product viewers, etc.)
Custom sequencing in funnels (which ad showed first, second, etc.)
Holy shit that's a lot of knobs and dials. But we loved it. We craved it. We needed it. Why? Because it gave us a sense of control. More to the point, it gave us security…
Only I know which levers to pull to increase ROAS.
Only I can be trusted to acquire new customers.
Only I understand the inner workings of Google and Meta.
And that used to be true. The key phrase here is ”used to.” Google and Meta have for the most part collapsed all these knobs and dials and levers into their own black boxes. I think it's funny how they now call it "smart bidding" as if we were "dumb bidding" for years and years and years before the algorithm overlords graced us with their presence and bestowed upon us the benevolent gift of machine learning.
The push in marketing circles today is to consolidate your Google Ads and Meta Ads account structure into as few campaigns as possible. The thinking is that what has worked in the past (i.e. things like "single keyword ad groups" and funnel position campaigns) don't work anymore. These AI and ML tools enable simpler account structures because they love to eat as much data as they can in order to be helpful.
More data = better learning = optimal signals = more efficiency/volume
They love to consume data because the more data they eat, the more they learn to place bids in the right auctions for the right queries and users. More data in a single campaign gives Google and Meta more signals to perform better. It gives the platforms maximum flexibility to compete in more auctions to find the most conversions. In CFO speak, consolidated smart bidding works best when it can optimize towards the same marginal cost per conversion across all related traffic.
So what happens when you have 1,438 active campaigns in your Google Ads account, aside from the fact that your marketing manager is either showboating or thinks they know how the customers act better than Google?
Simple…
You don't scale.
You don't learn.
You spin your wheels.
You spend the rest of your tenure trying to put out all the little fires without addressing the big ol' dumpster fire in your backyard. You jerry-rig individual fixes because your account operates as 1,438 mini-accounts. You can't recognize trends or patterns to think systemically about the account. All you do is put out fires because that's all you have time for.
Campaign #955 acts like #386 but not like #1,021 or #454. Campaign #698 is competing against #149. Campaign #302 has been in the learning phase for 3 years. This is what you get when you don't give Google Ads more data to learn how certain auctions and bids and budgets interact with your business goals. It's the paradox of control (and why my OCD self is a terrible marketer). The very levers we cling to for security and authority are the same levers that kill our ability to scale. No one likes a micromanager, not even Google Ads.
I'm not micromanaging Google. I just need to exert control over every single little thing it does.
Sure, running 1,438 campaigns might look like you know what you're doing (and I'm sure at some point someone convinced you that structuring the account like this was the only logical choice). And maybe at some point in time campaign segmentation was the right move for the business. I doubt it, but sure, I'll give you that. But that doesn't mean that it's the right decision now. I mean come on, every change and feature upgrade that Google and Meta release to their ad platforms is in direct opposition to the 1,438 campaign way of thinking and operating.
What do you do if you have 1,438 Google Ads campaigns?
You blow it up…err I mean…you consolidate. It's the golden rule: always consolidate as much traffic as possible and only segment when you have an overwhelming reason to do so (and "I want to appease my OCD" is not a valid reason). Consolidation gives you maximum flexibility to compete in more auctions to find the most conversions. If your campaigns are segmented, Meta and Google have to attain the efficiency target for each campaign independently (this is hard to do). When you spread spend across too many silos, you dilute the marginal returns that smart bidding is designed to capture.
I like to think that we still have some level of control, but it's not in the traditional knob-turning and bid juggling we grew up on. I think the level of control we can exert on Google and Meta is in strategy, story, and structure.
Strategy in deciding where we compete and why.
Story in shaping what we say so people actually care.
Structure in building systems that give the algorithms the right signals.
Control today is about teaching the machine who we are, what we stand for, and where we're headed. Those are the new knobs.
Until next week,
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