The account has been dragging the same problems for years
Campaigns inherited from three different agencies, ad groups with a single keyword, budget split by habit, and a Performance Max campaign taking the lion’s share with nobody quite sure where it goes. The problem is rarely the bidding: it’s the structure.
The first thing we do isn’t optimise. It’s separate the campaigns buying traffic that was already yours — your brand — from the ones bringing in new demand. While those two are mixed together, every profitability figure you have is fiction.
How we build it
1. Audit and restructure
We go through actual search terms, negatives, overlap between campaigns and feed quality where there’s Shopping. What comes out is a new structure: brand kept apart, generics grouped by intent, and Performance Max fenced in with exclusion lists. Rebuilt once, then left mostly alone.
2. Measurement before bidding
Enhanced conversions, real conversion values — not a fixed number dropped into the pixel — and a connection to your CRM so you know which lead actually closed. Without this, any automated bidding strategy optimises towards noise with great precision.
3. Automated budget allocation
A daily process shifts budget between campaigns based on ROAS and cost per qualified lead over the last 14 days, with a floor and a ceiling per campaign so nothing runs away overnight. You set the limits; the system moves inside them.
4. Ads that refresh themselves
Headlines and descriptions generated and tested per ad group, using your brand vocabulary and your list of words you never want to see. What underperforms is pulled; what works gets replicated across the account.
What changes when this works
- You know which share of spend buys new demand and which share buys your own brand.
- Cost per qualified lead drops, even when cost per click goes up.
- Performance Max stops being a black box: it goes in with exclusions and comes out with a report.
- Budget decisions stop being an argument in a meeting and start having written criteria.
When we don’t recommend this
- If you can’t sustain steady spend for at least 3 months: automated bidding needs volume to learn.
- If conversion can’t be measured at all — offline sales with no digital trace, not even a trackable call.
- If the real problem is the website. If the landing page doesn’t convert, more traffic only makes the same mistake more expensive.
The stack we use
- Google Ads API to read performance and push budget changes.
- GA4 and Google Tag Manager, with a server-side container where it’s needed.
- Merchant Center and feed clean-up where there’s Shopping.
- Looker Studio or an AI-narrated report — whichever your team actually reads.