Q4 Prep Checklist for Winning Black Friday & Cyber Monday

For advertisers, Q4 goes beyond the holiday chaos. It’s the most competitive season of the year.

To top it off, 2025 brings its own set of challenges, with rising CPCs, tighter buying windows, and AI-driven competition reshaping how brands prepare for Black Friday & Cyber Monday (BFCM). Success won’t come from spending the most but from preparing the smartest. The winners will have their budgets, feeds, and campaigns ready well in advance of the sales hit. Everyone else will be left scrambling in the most expensive auctions of the year.

This checklist is your playbook for the season. With steps like budget pacing checks, feed clean-ups, and smart automations set up ahead of time, you’ll be ready to scale profitably when the big days arrive instead of putting out fires at the last minute.

Your pre-season game plan to get your campaigns ready

Here is a step-by-step guide to everything you need to do to get your campaigns ready before Thanksgiving.

1. Turn your product feed into a sales driver.

Before you can win clicks, you need to make sure shoppers can actually find and trust your products.

A clean, optimized product feed is the foundation of every high-performing Shopping or Performance Max campaign, especially during BFCM, when competition peaks and search behavior shifts overnight.

Think of your feed as your digital storefront: if it’s messy, incomplete, or outdated, you’ll lose ground to competitors who are ready with polished, relevant listings.

That means going beyond basic compliance and focusing on details that directly influence conversion.

• Check for accurate titles & descriptions (shorter for mobile, human-friendly wording like “light brown” instead of “sand”).
• Add seasonal keywords (“holiday gifts,” “Black Friday deals”).
• Fix disapprovals early to avoid downtime.
• Add custom labels: hero products, deals, low-margin items.

Read More: Google Shopping Campaigns: 3 Examples You Can Copy Now

🧠 Smart Moves with Optmyzr

• Shopping Campaign Management: Build or restructure campaigns directly from your Merchant feed, keeping them synced with real-time updates so pricing, promos, and stock changes don’t slip through.
• Feed Audit: Fix issues like missing attributes or benchmark price errors before they derail your campaigns during BFCM.
• Shopping Analysis: See which brands, categories, or price points deliver the highest ROAS and double down where it matters.
• Attribute Bidder: Adjust bids based on feed attributes like color, size, or price, even if they aren’t part of your campaign structure, so you can optimize without a full restructure.
• Negative Keywords Finder (Shopping): Reduce wasted spend by cutting low-performing or irrelevant queries, and direct traffic toward the ad groups where it converts best.
• Smart Product Labeler: Segment products into performance buckets (stars, laggards, potentials) with custom labels, so budgets and bids focus on what drives the most sales.

Create new Shopping campaigns by linking your Merchant feed, reviewing product attributes, and syncing fresh data

We cover everything about how to set up your Shopping and PMax campaigns for Q4 in our Learn With Optmyzr session below:

2. Structure campaigns the smart way.

How you structure your campaigns can make or break Q4. Going live early isn’t just about having ads running; it’s about giving your Shopping and Performance Max campaigns enough time to learn before the holiday auctions get pricey. That’s why it pays to launch at least 30 days ahead of Black Friday & Cyber Monday.

When it comes to setup, don’t rely on a single structure. Each approach has strengths you can use to your advantage:

• Performance Max: Maximum reach and automation, great for scaling fast but with less transparency.
• Standard Shopping: Greater control and visibility, especially useful for protecting margins on specific products.
• Hybrid: The best of both worlds. Use PMax for discovery and Standard for precision on high-value SKUs.

🧠 Smart Moves with Optmyzr

• Campaign Automator: Turn your product data into ready-to-run campaigns. Structure campaigns by category, brand, margin tier, or seasonal labels, and let Automator keep them updated automatically as inventory, prices, or promotions change. This gives you a scalable campaign structure without the manual build-out.

• Rule Engine: Layer on custom rules to refine campaign structures over time. For example, pause underperforming ad groups, split out high-ROAS products into their own campaigns, or adjust targeting conditions dynamically. This keeps your campaign structure lean and responsive throughout Q4.

3. Plan your budgets the smart way.

Q4 isn’t the season to “set it and forget it” with budgets. Higher CPCs, shorter buying windows, and sudden traffic spikes can wipe out your daily spend long before the real shoppers even show up. The smarter move is to lock in your overall budget, set aside extra for peak days, and put guardrails in place so you don’t overspend or undershoot when it matters most.

Here are key steps to cover:

• Lock in budgets early: Decide your total Q4 budget, then set aside some extra spend for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and key shopping weekends. These planned increases in your daily budget ensure campaigns don’t cap out too early.
• Plan for higher CPCs: Adjust daily budgets upward so you don’t run out by midday when demand (and conversion rates) are highest.
• Audit your automations: Review scripts and alerts that could pause or cap spend at the wrong time. While safety nets are definitely much needed, they can backfire in peak season if you’re not keeping an eye on them.

🧠 Smart Moves with Optmyzr

• Budget Pacing: Track spend against targets across Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon accounts. Get alerts when pacing is off so you can shift budgets before it’s too late.
• Spend Projection: Forecast end-of-month spend using historical data and seasonality so you know whether to scale up or rein it in.

Aside from this, you can also use Optmyzr’s budget scripts and Rule Engine to automatically pause overspending campaigns, pace spend to hit monthly targets, and set holiday-specific rules that boost or cut budgets based on performance.

• Pause When Budget Exceeds Script: Automatically stop campaigns when they exceed daily/weekly/monthly limits so you can avoid “surprise” overspends.
• Reach Target Monthly Spend Script: Easily adjust budgets throughout the month so you end right on target, avoiding both early exhaustion and end-of-month underspend.
• Rule Engine (Budget Scope): Create holiday-specific rules (e.g., boost budgets on Black Friday morning, scale back on slower days) to keep spend aligned with performance.

4. Spot issues before they cost you.

Q4 can feel like chaos, but smart monitoring brings the calm. By setting up the right alerts, you’ll know exactly when performance shifts, what’s causing it, and where action is needed. That way, you can stay on top of changes without constantly refreshing dashboards or digging through reports.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Set KPI thresholds for ROAS, CPA, and CVR so you know when performance is slipping.
• Check feed health daily for product disapprovals, missing attributes, or out-of-stock items. If there’s something wrong in any of these aspects, it can impact the visibility of your products, hurt performance, or lead to missed sales opportunities.
• Track budget pacing across campaigns to avoid mid-day exhaustion or underspending.

🧠 Smart Moves with Optmyzr

• KPI fall-off alerts: Flag products that were previously top performers (e.g. top 10% by ROAS or conversions) but drop into the bottom 50% with rising CPA. That’s your early-warning system to investigate bids, assets, or inventory before revenue slides.
• Feed-health alerts: Trigger a notification if disapproved items cross a threshold (count or %). Fixing this fast protects visibility.
• Budget pacing alerts: Watch aggregate spend across accounts and portfolios. You can choose to receive these alerts on email/Slack/MS Teams. Or set up auto-actions like pausing before a threshold and re-enabling during the next cycle when it’s safe.
• Channel mix check (PMax): Get a breakdown of where your PMax spend is going (Search vs. Shopping vs. Display, etc.). If you see an outsized share of spend going to Display, that’s a red flag. You can then use Rule Engine strategies to automatically exclude poor placements (e.g., irrelevant sites, kids’ games).

See where your PMax budget really goes with the Channel Distribution View

Additionally, you can use Rule Engine to build custom rules and actions. You can start by using any of the pre-built templates in the Rule Engine (e.g. Exclude expensive listing groups, Clean low-value Placement, etc) and then tailor the rules to suit your business playbook.

Your next step for winning Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Black Friday & Cyber Monday aren’t won by the biggest budgets, but by the smartest preparation. By cleaning up your product feed, structuring campaigns with intention, setting budgets that can handle the pressure, and monitoring performance with the right alerts, you’ll be ready to scale profitably instead of scrambling during the most competitive days of the year.

The work you do now determines whether Q4 feels like controlled growth or chaos. With Optmyzr, you can put this checklist into action and stay ahead with automation, insights, and alerts that keep your campaigns sharp.

And this is just the beginning. This guide kicks off our BFCM Prep Series, where we’ll share more deep dives, resources, and tools to help you win the holiday season. Stay tuned; the next playbooks are coming soon.

Not an Optmyzr user? Sign up for our free 14-day trial and explore how you can elevate your campaigns this shopping season.

How Optmyzr’s Geo HeatMap Solves Common Google Ads Location Targeting Challenges

If you spend enough time in PPC forums or Reddit threads, you’ll notice a recurring complaint: “My ads keep showing in places I don’t serve, and my budget is disappearing.”

Or, “Google Ads says I’m targeting the right city, but half my leads are from somewhere else.”

Location targeting is supposed to help advertisers reach the right people in the right place.

But the reality? It’s one of the trickiest parts of PPC campaign management. Between confusing default settings, unreliable location signals, and the sheer volume of data to sift through, advertisers are likely to get confused and waste spend.

This is exactly why we built the Optmyzr Geo HeatMap tool.

It takes what would otherwise be hours of spreadsheet-wrangling and turns it into an at-a-glance view of where your ads are winning and where they’re draining your budget.

Let’s walk through some of the most common challenges advertisers face and see how the Geo HeatMap makes them easy to solve.

Ads showing in the wrong places

One of the most common ways advertisers unintentionally waste budget in Google Ads comes from the “Presence or Interest” location setting.

By default, Google Ads doesn’t just show your ads to people physically located in your target area; it also shows them to anyone, anywhere in the world, who has shown interest in that location.

That means a Chicago plumbing company could end up paying for clicks from someone overseas who once Googled “apartments in Chicago.”

On the surface, it looks like your ads are reaching people connected to your area, but in practice, those clicks rarely turn into customers.

How Geo HeatMap helps

With Geo HeatMap, you don’t just see where your ads are showing; you also see how those places are performing.

For example, if you set the view to Region and look at Clicks, areas with more clicks than average will show up in green, and those with fewer will show up in red.

But here’s the important part: green doesn’t always mean “good.”

A region outside your service area might light up green on clicks simply because it’s generating lots of traffic. To know if that traffic is valuable, you can switch the metric to Conversions or ROAS.

If that same region turns red, it means the clicks aren’t turning into business, and that’s your sign that the “Presence or Interest” setting is wasting budget.

In other words, the Geo HeatMap helps you see both the volume and the value of traffic by geography. This helps you spot leaks quickly and fix them by switching to Presence only and excluding irrelevant locations.

Overlapping or overbroad target areas

A lot of advertisers try to “play it safe” by stacking multiple target areas in Google Ads. Say, a 10-mile radius, a 20-mile radius, and the whole city all at once.

Or they pick a very wide radius around their business.

On the surface, this seems harmless. In practice, it makes reporting messy and often pushes the budget into areas that are too far away to actually convert. You end up with clicks spread across overlapping zones, and no clear idea which area is really delivering results.

How Geo HeatMap helps

Just switch to the Bubble Mode, available in the top right corner.

When you click on a bubble in Bubble Mode, you see a roll-up of performance across multiple locations in that cluster.

In this example, the bubble combines data from several states and regions: Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, and even areas like the San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley.

Instead of looking at each one individually, you get the total picture:

• 1,562 impressions and 77 clicks show the reach and engagement.
• $307.16 cost tells you how much spend is tied up in this cluster.
• 5.21 conversions and a conversion value of 6.52 tell you what you actually got back.

This cumulative view is especially useful if you’ve set a broad radius or overlapping targets.

Google might be serving across multiple states, but in Bubble Mode, you can instantly see how that entire cluster is performing overall. If the conversions or ROAS are weak compared to spend, you know the outer parts of your radius aren’t pulling their weight.

From there, you can zoom in or switch to Non-Bubble Mode to break it down further and decide whether to exclude specific states or carve them into a separate campaign.

Broad radius targeting around physical locations

It’s tempting to set a large radius around your business location, say, 50 miles, just to “make sure” you capture everyone nearby. But the problem is that broad radii don’t distinguish between customers who are close enough to buy and those who are technically within the circle but unlikely to convert.

A pizza shop 30 miles away, or a dental clinic 45 minutes out, probably isn’t going to win much local business. The result? Your ads rack up clicks from people who are outside your true service zone, wasting budget.

How Geo HeatMap helps

The tool lets you break down performance by city, region, or country and instantly see where traffic is coming from and whether it’s actually producing results.

• If you start with Clicks, you’ll see the cities or regions driving the most traffic.
• Then, by switching to Conversions or ROAS, you can see which of those are actually delivering value.

This makes it clear that not every location in your broad targeting pool is worth the spend.

You may discover that a handful of key markets consistently light up green for conversions, while dozens of others fade red.

With that insight, you can focus your budget where the real demand is, and stop paying for geographies that look busy but don’t drive results.

Not segmenting campaigns by geography

One of the biggest mistakes in location targeting is lumping too many geographies into a single campaign. When that happens, strong-performing regions are forced to share budget with weaker ones.

The result? High-value areas don’t get the attention or spend they deserve, while underperformers quietly eat up budget.

How Geo HeatMap helps

The tool makes this problem visible in seconds. By breaking performance down by country, region, or city, you’ll see exactly which areas are pulling their weight and which ones aren’t.

If certain locations consistently show up green on conversions or ROAS, they may deserve their own dedicated campaign or budget. If others are glowing red, it’s a clear sign they’re dragging performance down and need to be excluded or bid down.

Ignoring “Happy Accidents” outside target regions

A common reaction when advertisers see traffic from outside their target area is to exclude it immediately.

The assumption is simple: “If it’s not in my target, it must be wasted.” But that isn’t always true.

Sometimes, ads leak into unexpected geographies, and those clicks actually convert. By cutting them off too quickly, advertisers risk missing out on profitable new markets.

How Geo HeatMap helps

This is where the red vs. green visual is so powerful.

Instead of treating all “off-target” traffic as bad, the Geo HeatMap shows you whether those clicks are actually driving results. If a city you never planned to target lights up green for conversions or ROAS, that’s not waste, it’s an opportunity.

Rather than excluding it, you can test it in its own campaign and see if it deserves more investment.

Using generic ad copy for all regions

Another mistake advertisers make is running the same ad copy everywhere, regardless of location. While it saves time, it ignores the fact that different regions often respond to different messaging.

What feels relevant in one city, state, or country may fall flat in another.

This leads to lower click-through rates, weaker engagement, and missed opportunities to connect with local audiences.

How Geo HeatMap helps

By breaking down performance by city, region, or country, you can see which areas respond well to your current messaging and which don’t.

If a region is driving clicks but failing to convert, it might not be just the targeting; it could be that the ad copy doesn’t resonate with that audience. For example, you might see two regions with similar click volumes, but only one delivers strong conversions.

That’s a signal that your messaging is connecting in one place but not the other.

Instead of running generic ads everywhere, you can create region-specific campaigns or ad variations that speak directly to local needs, language nuances, or cultural references.

One budget covering too many time zones or countries

It’s tempting to simplify campaign management by running one campaign across multiple countries or time zones. On the surface, it might look efficient—one budget, one set of ads, one place to manage performance.

But in reality, this approach forces very different markets to fight over the same budget.

High-performing regions often lose out, because spend is eaten up by less effective locations or by markets that activate earlier in the day due to time zone differences.

How Geo HeatMap helps

By mapping performance at the country or region level, the tool makes it obvious where budget cannibalization is happening.

You may notice that one country consistently shows up green for ROAS or conversions, while others lag behind in red.

That’s your cue to spin the top performers into their own campaigns or portfolio strategies with dedicated budgets, ensuring they’re no longer starved of spend by weaker regions.

Forgetting to pair geo insights with bid strategy

Spotting weak or strong regions is only half the battle. A common mistake is seeing poor results in a geography but leaving the bid strategy untouched. When that happens, Smart Bidding will keep funneling budget into those underperforming areas because it has no corrective signal.

The insight is there, you just haven’t acted on it.

How Geo HeatMap helps

The tool highlights exactly where performance is strong (green) or weak (red), but the real magic happens when you connect those insights to Optmyzr’s Rule Engine.

You can set automated rules like:

• If ROAS < threshold in [region], apply a -20% bid adjustment
• If conversions > X in [region], apply a +15% bid adjustment

This way, the regions that waste money get dialed down, and the ones that drive results get more support, without you having to manually tweak settings every week.

Simplify Google Ads location targeting with Optmyzr

Poor location targeting is one of the biggest silent budget killers in Google Ads.

Whether it’s wasted spend in irrelevant geographies, strong regions being cannibalized by weaker ones, or missed opportunities in untapped markets, the cost of not having clarity is real.

Optmyzr’s Geo HeatMap turns scattered location data into actionable intelligence.

You see exactly where your ads are working, where they’re wasting money, and where untapped growth potential exists.

Ready to tighten up your geo strategy? Book a demo with our team today!

FAQs

1. How can I optimize location targeting in Google Ads?

Start by reviewing the Locations report to see where clicks and conversions are actually coming from. Exclude areas with high spend but no conversions, and consider creating separate campaigns for top-performing regions so they don’t have to share budget with weaker ones. Over time, refine your targeting by city, region, or country rather than leaving it too broad.

2. Should I run one Google Ads campaign across multiple countries?

It’s usually better to avoid running a single campaign across multiple countries or time zones. Budgets get stretched too thin, and time zone differences can cause high-performing regions to lose spend to weaker ones. Splitting campaigns by country or region gives you more control and ensures each market gets the right budget allocation.

3. How do I know when to exclude a location in Google Ads?

If a location is consistently driving clicks without conversions, or showing poor return on ad spend (ROAS), it’s a strong candidate for exclusion. Look at at least 30 days of data before making decisions, since short-term results can be misleading.

4. Can location insights improve Smart Bidding strategies?

Yes. Smart Bidding works best when it has accurate signals. If you know certain regions convert better, applying bid adjustments or splitting them into their own campaigns ensures Smart Bidding can optimize more effectively. Likewise, lowering bids in poor-performing areas prevents wasted budget.

5. Does location targeting work for both eCommerce and lead generation campaigns?

Yes. For eCommerce, precise location targeting helps direct budget to regions with strong ROAS and shipping coverage. For lead generation, it ensures you’re reaching prospects in serviceable geographies, preventing wasted spend on leads you can’t fulfill.

5 Google Ads Challenges PPC Managers Vent About (and How to Fix Them)

Most PPC problems don’t start with a disaster. They start with a slow bleed.

A report that takes three hours instead of one. A budget that stalls for no clear reason. A CPC that spikes without warning. An “urgent” client email that lands at 9:01 AM, and again at 9:05.

None of these issues are catastrophic. But stacked together, they grind teams down and make performance flatline. And if you’ve spent any time on r/PPC, you know this isn’t rare, it’s the norm.

We picked out five of the most common challenges PPC managers vent about and looked at how to actually solve them.

In this article, we’ll break down each pain point and show practical, time-saving ways Optmyzr can help turn those frustrations into wins.

Challenge 1: Client reporting is dreadful

Ask any PPC manager what consumes their time, and reporting is likely to be on the list.

It’s not just pulling numbers but wrestling with endless spreadsheets, formatting charts for picky clients, and answering the dreaded “so… how are we doing compared to last month?”

The problem? Advertisers spend hours packaging data when they’d rather be optimizing accounts. Worse, generic reports often overwhelm clients with raw numbers but fail to tell a story.

That’s why reporting often becomes a constant pain point.

How Optmyzr fixes it

Start with templates, not a blank page.

Pre-built templates like the Executive Summary Report pull in account-wide performance and instantly highlight wins and losses.

You can customize them so clients see what actually matters: conversions, ROAS, or top performers, without drowning in irrelevant metrics.

Reports that answer back.

Instead of static dashboards, Optmyzr gives you reports with a built-in AI sidekick.

You can click on pre-set questions like “Summarize the key points of this report” or “Identify 3 areas needing attention” and get instant answers.

It feels less like sifting through numbers and more like having a mini-analyst inside the report.

Add tools that explain the why.

Numbers alone don’t satisfy clients. If conversions drop, they’ll ask, “But why?” and that’s where the PPC investigator comes in.

It’s a widget you can drop right into your report.

Instead of you manually digging through campaigns, the tool maps how impressions, clicks, and conversions are connected, showing exactly what caused the change.

Turn data into stories with AI

Another widget, the PPC Narrator, auto-writes a summary of what happened in the account.

Think of it as a plain-English “executive note” that lives inside the report. You choose the sentiment (positive, neutral, critical), and it generates a narrative like:

“Conversions increased by 12% last month, driven by mobile traffic. CPCs remained stable, while impression share improved due to higher ad rank.”

Now, even if clients skim the report, they’ll still walk away with the big picture.

Automate delivery

Schedule reports to hit inboxes (or Slack/Teams) on the 1st or 5th of the month, so you’re not hesitating when a client asks for an update.

Also Read: 12 PPC Reporting Tools That Tell the Story Behind Your Campaigns

Challenge 2: No time to do ad optimizations

Running Google Ads simply means balancing a lot of moving parts. PPC managers are flooded with metrics, reports, and errors to check, so there’s rarely enough time to give every campaign the attention it deserves.

On top of that, Google Ads keeps throwing in asset optimization suggestions, random errors, and new features to monitor. It feels like almost every time you open the account, there are ten new fires to put out.

But the biggest challenge is there’s simply not enough time in the day.

Between reporting, client calls, and strategy, PPC managers struggle to give ads the optimization they really need. Important improvements get delayed, and campaigns run on autopilot longer than they should.

How Optmyzr helps

Think of Optmyzr Express as your daily to-do list for ad accounts.

Instead of digging through endless reports and dashboards, Optmyzr Express shows you optimization suggestions across Google Ads, Amazon Ads, Microsoft Ads, and even Yahoo Japan Ads, all in one place.

• Quick wins in minutes: It works like an inbox. You log in, see suggestions (like “pause low-performing ads” or “add high-converting search terms”), and take action with just one click.

• Fast actions: Each suggestion comes with an Apply button to make the change instantly, or a Snooze option if you want to revisit it later.
• Stay organized: You can filter suggestions by account or type, and archive the ones you don’t ever want to see again.
• Backed by data: Recommendations are based on performance data from the last 30–90 days, so they’re timely and relevant.
• Multi-account support: Whether you manage one account or dozens, everything shows up in one dashboard.

With Optmyzr Express, what normally takes hours of checking reports and accounts can be done within a few minutes. It saves time, reduces overwhelm, and ensures that important optimizations actually get implemented instead of being pushed aside.

👉 Check all the available optimizations in the tool here!

Challenge 3: Getting clicks but not conversions

Sometimes campaigns look healthy on the surface: clicks and impressions are steady, search terms look relevant, and the landing page is solid.

But conversions just don’t happen.

This is one of the most frustrating challenges for PPC managers. You try new campaigns, pause old ones, even reset your strategy, but leads still don’t come in.

And you’re left wondering: Was it the new keywords? A change in audience behavior? Competition? Or something in the account setup that’s blocking conversions?

How Optmyzr helps

Our PPC Investigator makes it easier to understand exactly why performance shifted. It shows not just what happened, but where and why it happened.

Cause Chart

The Cause Chart helps you trace how a change in one metric flows through the rest of your performance data.

In the example below, conversions increased by 46 during the selected period.

The chart shows that this growth was driven by a higher conversion rate (+42%) and an increase in clicks (+16%), which in turn came from a small lift in impressions (+0.86%) and a stronger CTR (+15%).

By mapping the relationships between impressions, clicks, CPC, CTR, and conversions, the Cause Chart makes it easy to see not just what changed, but how each metric contributed to the overall result.

Root Cause Analysis

Drill down to see whether the drop is tied to a specific campaign, ad group, keyword, placement, or device. In the example below, PPC Investigator shows conversions rising sharply from 9 to 84 in just 30 days.

The Optmyzr AI Summary explains the change clearly: growth came mainly from the keyword “X” (+42 conversions), users in the “Not a parent” audience segment (+29 conversions), and the male demographic (+29 conversions).

This makes it easy to see why conversions increased and which audience segments or keywords drove the improvement.

While PPC Investigator helps you uncover why conversions dropped or shifted, Conversion Grabber helps you recover lost leads and capture more.

The tool finds keywords that are already bringing conversions but aren’t showing often enough, and suggests a bid increase so they can capture more leads.

You can apply bid changes automatically (e.g., +10%) or set custom bids manually, depending on how aggressive you want to be.

Challenge 4: Google Ads won’t spend the full budget

You set the budget, but Google Ads doesn’t always spend it fully.

Campaigns crawl, pacing falls behind, and you end up explaining why the account isn’t using the money that was allocated.

The tough part is figuring out what’s actually causing the slowdown.

Sometimes there’s not enough search volume. Other times, the budget sits in campaigns that can’t scale, while stronger ones are left underfunded.

Either way, underspending means missed opportunities and accounts that feel stuck in first gear.

How Optmyzr helps

Our Spend Projection tool makes it easy to see whether you’re on track to hit your budget or if spend will fall short. It analyzes past performance, daily spend patterns, and seasonality to forecast how much of your budget will actually be spent by the end of the cycle.

Here’s how it helps with budget pacing:

• Clear Forecasts: Instead of guessing, you’ll know if your campaigns are likely to underspend, overspend, or hit the target.
• Daily Guidance: The tool shows how much you need to spend each day to reach your goal, helping you take corrective action early.
• AI Summaries: Get plain-language insights about trends, weekday patterns, or seasonal shifts so you don’t waste time digging through charts.

But spotting the pacing problem is only half the battle.

Sometimes campaigns don’t spend the full budget because funds are tied up in places where they simply can’t scale, while other high-performing campaigns remain underfunded.

That’s where our Optimize Budgets – Single Account tool comes in. It makes sure your ad money is spent in the best way.

You pick the campaigns and set your monthly budget. The tool then checks if you’re on track, underspending, or overspending, and shows you options to fix it.

For example, say the advertiser wants to spend $7,000 this month.

But based on current performance, Google Ads is only on track to spend about $5,987 (that’s just 85.5% of the target). The tool points this out clearly and even shows that you’d need to average $262 per day to hit the full budget, which is $78 more per day than what you’re currently spending.

The table below then gives you options. For example:

• If nothing changes, you’ll finish around $5,987 spend with 97 conversions.
• If you could push spend up to $7,157 (+20%), the model estimates you could reach about 102 conversions (a +5% lift).
• Going further to $7,287 (+22%) could push you to 103 conversions (+6%), though at a higher cost per conversion.

So in this view, Optmyzr is showing: “Here’s the gap between what you want to spend and what’s actually being spent. Here are scenarios for reallocating budget to help you capture more volume and get closer to the target.”

Challenge 5: Paying high CPC even with no competition

It can be confusing to see impression share at 90–100% and still notice CPCs holding steady around $1. Even in markets with limited competition (niche markets), advertisers often expect lower costs but don’t see them reflected in their reports.

The problem is that Google doesn’t only use competition to set CPCs.

Even if you’re the only bidder, other factors, like ad relevance, expected CTR, and landing page experience, decide how much you pay. Google also has minimum bid requirements for each auction, and those don’t vanish just because you’re the only one bidding.

If your ads or pages don’t hit Google’s thresholds, CPCs stay higher than you’d expect.

That gap between “no competition” and “still paying a dollar per click” creates doubt and frustration. Advertisers start wondering if Google is overcharging, and clients get concerned about costs eating into margins.

How Optmyzr helps

Optmyzr gives you visibility into why CPCs are high and the tools to bring them down.

The Quality Score Tracker breaks down each component: CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience, to help you spot exactly what’s dragging down performance.

If CPCs are being pushed up because of low relevance or weak CTR, you’ll see it right away.

The PPC Investigator takes this a step further by showing whether a spike in CPC is tied to a drop in CTR, a change in keyword performance, or shifts in impressions.

Instead of guessing, you know what triggered the increase.

When it comes to improving ad quality, Optmyzr has Ad Text Optimization (RSAs). This tool helps you test variations, refine headlines, and improve CTR, so your Quality Score goes up and CPC naturally comes down.

You can also clean up wasted spend with query mining tools like Search Term N-Grams and the Negative Keyword Finder, which help remove irrelevant clicks that hurt efficiency and CTR.

Finally, the URL Checker ensures landing pages aren’t quietly working against you.

If a page is broken, slow, or showing “out of stock” messages, Optmyzr flags it before it damages your landing page experience score.

Overcome your PPC challenges with Optmyzr

Running Google Ads will always come with hurdles: reports, optimizations, CPC swings, or budgets that don’t pace the way they should.

The hard part is keeping on top of all of it without losing focus on growth.

Optmyzr is built to take those frustrations off your plate. From reporting to optimizations, from CPC analysis to budget pacing, it gives you the visibility and automation you need to fix issues before they spiral.

Book a free trial and see how Optmyzr can help you run PPC campaigns more smoothly.

FAQs

1. What are the biggest challenges in Google Ads?

Common challenges include time-consuming reporting, budgets that don’t pace correctly, rising CPCs even with low competition, and campaigns that generate clicks but not conversions. PPC managers often struggle to balance these while still focusing on strategy.

2. Why is my Google Ads budget not spending?

Budgets may underspend if there’s limited search volume, if Google directs spend to campaigns that can’t scale, or if targeting settings restrict reach. Tools like budget pacing reports can highlight where money is stuck and how to reallocate it.

3. Why are my CPCs high with little competition?

High CPCs aren’t always caused by competitors. Google also factors in Quality Score, expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Even with 90–100% impression share, weak Quality Score signals can keep CPCs elevated.

4. Why am I getting clicks but no conversions in Google Ads?

Clicks without conversions may be caused by mismatched keywords, poor audience targeting, landing page issues, or shifts in user behavior. Analyzing search terms, conversion paths, and audience segments can uncover the root cause.

5. How can PPC managers save time on Google Ads reporting?

Instead of manually building reports, using automated reporting tools with templates and AI summaries can speed up client reporting, highlight key wins and losses, and answer “why” performance shifted.

5 Underrated Google Ads Optimizations (That You Can Automate with Optmyzr)

Marketers on Reddit recently opened up about the less obvious Google Ads optimizations that delivered outsized results. The kind of tweaks that don’t get much attention but drive serious performance gains.

The catch? These tactics are often manual, time-consuming, and hard to scale across multiple accounts.

That’s where Optmyzr comes in.

You can automate, scale, and monitor all five of these underrated (but powerful) optimizations without adding more to your plate.

Here’s how to put them into action today.

1. Automate negative keyword management

Negative keywords tell Google which searches not to show your ads for, so you don’t waste budget on irrelevant clicks.

Simple in concept but messy in execution.

That’s what makes this optimization underrated: It’s easy to overlook, hard to scale, and almost impossible to manage well across multiple campaigns without automation.

How Optmyzr helps

For Search Campaigns

The Negative Keyword Finder (Search) pulls your Google Ads or Microsoft Ads search terms report and breaks queries down, showing you exactly which ones are wasting spend.

• See key metrics at a glance: impressions, clicks, CTR, cost, CPC, conversions.
• Add individual words or full queries as negatives.
• Bulk-edit match types, archive irrelevant suggestions, or apply changes to shared lists.
• Push changes to accounts or campaigns instantly (no spreadsheets, no tab-hopping).

For Shopping Campaigns

The Negative Keyword Finder (Shopping) acts like an A/B test for queries across ad groups:

• Duplicate Queries: Finds search queries showing in multiple ad groups, identifies the underperforming one, and suggests adding it as an exact match negative.
• Low-Performing Queries: Surfaces queries within an ad group that have low ROAS or high cost/conversion compared to the group average, and recommends them as negatives.

This ensures traffic is automatically funneled to the most profitable ad groups while cutting out generic or budget-draining clicks.

2. A/B testing ads

Running multiple ads per ad group is a smart move as it gives your account room to test, learn, and improve. But in the day-to-day of campaign management, it’s easy for ad copy to go untouched for weeks or months.

Ads stay live for months (sometimes longer) without being reviewed, rotated, or refreshed. And while Google may rotate ads automatically, it doesn’t always align with your actual business goals. Without a structured way to A/B test and replace ad copy, most campaigns face performance issues.

Why this optimization gets overlooked:

• One ad quietly eats up the budget but doesn’t convert.
• Another performs better, but never gets prioritized.
• Google rotates ads, but not always in a way that aligns with your goals.
• Without structured testing, performance flatlines, and you don’t know why.

A/B testing your ad copy is one of the easiest ways to improve CTRs and conversion rates. But only if it’s done consistently, which is tough to manage manually across multiple accounts.

How Optmyzr helps

Optmyzr makes it easy to test ad copy, find what works, and keep your best-performing ads live (all in one place).

Here’s how:

Automatically compare ad performance

Optmyzr’s A/B Testing tool compares ads within the same ad group and tells you which ones are underperforming. It will then suggest pausing these ads, and you can also create a new version right from the same tool.

Quickly create new RSAs

Need to replace a paused ad or create new ones from scratch? Optmyzr helps you build Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) in bulk:

• Use AI-powered suggestions for headlines and descriptions.
• Pull in content from your existing ads.
• Create RSAs across multiple ad groups and accounts in just a few clicks.

Update or repurpose winning ad copy

The Ad-Text Optimization (RSA) tool helps you iterate on ads without starting from scratch:

• Find and Replace: Make quick text edits to update tone, offers, or branding.
• Bulk CSV Upload: Download ad copy, make edits in a spreadsheet, and upload to create new ads fast and in bulk.

💡Also Read: New to Optmyzr? Here’s What You Should Test In Your Free Trial Period

3. Optimize budget allocation based on product profitability

Not all products are created equal, and they shouldn’t be treated that way in your ad campaigns.

Some products generate high profit margins, convert easily, and perform well even with minimal advertising spend. Others might look good on the surface but consistently drain your budget without delivering real returns.

However, standard campaign structures in Google Ads often treat all products the same.

Without clear segmentation based on actual performance, you might waste budget on the wrong products.

Why this optimization gets overlooked:

• Profitability isn’t always reflected in campaign data.
• High-performing, low-cost products often get buried.
• Manually segmenting product groups is time-consuming and hard to scale.
• Merchant Center feeds don’t automatically adjust to performance shifts.
• Managing bids across large inventories without automation is nearly impossible.

This makes it easy for inefficiencies to creep in, especially when product catalogs grow or performance fluctuates quickly.

How Optmyzr helps

Optmyzr’s Smart Product Labeler is built specifically to solve this challenge in Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. It helps you automatically segment your product feed based on real-world performance, so you can allocate budget and bids where they’ll have the most impact.

Segment products by performance

The Smart Product Labeler assigns every product to one of five custom performance categories:

• Heroes: Top-performing, high-ROAS products. Great candidates for increased bids and budgets.
• Sidekicks: Solid performers close to breaking out. Gradually increase spend here.
• Villains: High-spend, low-ROAS products. Reduce bids or consider excluding.
• Zombies: Low-traffic items that haven’t had enough exposure yet. Use test-and-learn strategies.
• Flukes: Surprisingly high-ROAS products with minimal exposure. Nurture with moderate bid increases.

The segmentation is based on ROAS and Cost, so you’re acting on what truly matters, not just impressions or clicks.

Keep labels automatically updated

No need to constantly download reports or adjust feeds manually.

As performance changes, the Smart Product Labeler automatically updates your product labels, keeping your strategy in sync with reality.

4. Selective conversion reporting on lead gen campaigns

Instead of counting every lead from your campaigns as a conversion (like anyone who fills out a form), only count the leads that are actually valuable, such as those that are qualified or result in a real sale.

When you do this, your cost per lead (CPL) may look a little higher, but it will be more accurate.

In the long run, your client will see a much better close rate (more sales from those leads) and will actually spend less money per sale overall.

👉 In short: Don’t focus on reporting every lead. Focus on the ones that matter; it saves money and gives a clearer picture of success.

How Optmyzr helps with selective conversion reporting

Optmyzr makes it easier to turn offline conversion data into actionable insights.

While the actual import of offline conversions happens in Google Ads (from your CRM or sales platform), once those conversions are in Google Ads, Optmyzr can help you report, analyze, and optimize campaigns around them.

Using the Rule Engine, you can:

• Build custom rules that track only qualified leads and closed deals (not all leads).
• Automate reporting so that only the most valuable conversions show up in your reports.
• Optimize efficiently by targeting your spend toward campaigns, ad groups, or keywords that drive real sales.
• Create scalable workflows that automatically identify high-cost/low-return segments and shift budget to better-performing areas.

Here’s a sample workflow:

If you’d like to see how this works in action, our team would be glad to walk you through this and other strategies you can build in the Rule Engine. Feel free to book a demo here.

5. Landing page A/B testing

Your ads can be perfectly targeted, but if the landing page falls flat, conversions won’t follow.

Small changes like making calls-to-action more prominent or trimming down long, cluttered pages can deliver massive lifts in performance.

Why this optimization gets overlooked:

• Landing page testing often requires designers, developers, or third-party tools.
• It’s hard to quickly see which pages are draining the budget without conversions.
• Winning page elements don’t always get reused across the account.

How Optmyzr helps with landing page optimization

Optmyzr’s Landing Page Analysis tool helps you zero in on which pages need improvement and which are worth replicating.

Here’s how it works:

• Aggregate data across the account: See performance metrics for the same landing page URL, no matter how many campaigns or ad groups use it.
• Spot problem pages instantly: Find “expensive” pages (high CTR, low conversion rate) or those with high potential (good conversions but low CTR).
• Learn from top performers: Identify pages with strong CTRs and conversion rates, then apply what works across weaker pages.
• Download and share insights: Export suggestions into CSV to review with your team or client.

While performance is one side of the equation, ensuring that all your ads actually point to live, functional pages is just as critical.

That’s where you can use Optmyzr’s URL checker. It automatically scans your ads, keywords, sitelinks, and even Performance Max asset groups to catch broken links, 404 errors, or out-of-stock messages, before they waste budget.

You can even set it to automatically pause ads with broken URLs or simply generate reports for your team. Together, Landing Page Analysis and URL Checker make sure your campaigns not only lead people to the right pages but also to pages that convert profitably.

Put these Google ads optimizations to work with Optmyzr

The best Google Ads optimizations aren’t always the flashiest ones.

As we’ve seen, tactics like smarter negative keyword management, consistent ad testing, profit-based product segmentation, selective conversion reporting, and landing page improvements can lead to significant wins, especially when automated.

The challenge is that doing these consistently and at scale is tough without the right tools.

From analysis to automation, it helps you cut out the manual work and focus on strategies that actually help you improve your Google Ads performance.

👉 Ready to put these underrated optimizations into practice? Start your fully functional 14-day free trial with Optmyzr today!

FAQs

1. Why are negative keywords important in Google Ads?

Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing on irrelevant searches. This saves budget and ensures clicks come from users more likely to convert.

2. Can negative keyword management be automated?

Yes. Tools like Optmyzr’s Negative Keyword Finder automate the process by scanning search terms, identifying wasted spend, and suggesting negatives across campaigns.

3. How does A/B testing improve ad performance?

A/B testing helps you compare multiple ads, identify the best-performing copy, and continually refresh underperforming ads to boost CTRs and conversions.

4. Does Google Ads rotate ads automatically?

Yes, but not always in a way that matches your business goals. Structured A/B testing ensures you’re optimizing toward meaningful results, not just impressions.

5. Why are landing pages critical for Google Ads success?

Even with great targeting, poor landing pages cause lost conversions. Testing layouts, CTAs, and copy can significantly boost conversion rates.

6. How does Optmyzr help with landing page optimization?

The Landing Page Analysis tool identifies high-performing and underperforming pages, showing where to improve and what to replicate.

7. How can I avoid broken or outdated landing page links in ads?

Optmyzr’s URL Checker scans your ads, sitelinks, and PMAX assets for broken links, 404 errors, or “out of stock” pages, and can even pause affected ads automatically.

Never Blow Your PPC Budget Again: 7 Smart Tactics Every Advertiser Needs

Managing PPC budgets can feel overwhelming; between tracking spend across accounts, preventing overspending, and making sure no budget goes to waste.

The truth is, even small inefficiencies can drain ROI fast.

That’s where Optmyzr comes in. In this article, we’ll show you how to simplify PPC budget management with smart, automated solutions.

You’ll learn practical ways to predict spend, reallocate budgets, and stay in control, without the stress of constant monitoring.

1. Use historical data to predict future spend.

One of the biggest challenges in PPC management is knowing whether your campaigns are pacing correctly against the budget you’ve set.

The Spend Projection tool takes the constant guesses out of this process.

It analyzes recent performance, historical seasonality, and day-of-week trends to forecast how much your account is likely to spend by the end of the selected date range.

Rather than showing a single number, the tool gives you a spend range: minimum, maximum, and expected. That way, you can anticipate whether you’re at risk of overspending or underspending.

What advertisers gain from Spend Projection:

• A clear view of daily and cumulative spend projections that show how budgets are likely to unfold
• The exact daily spend required to stay on track with your simulation budget
• AI-powered summaries that surface patterns like weekday fluctuations or seasonal spikes, so you don’t have to manually interpret the data
• Support for Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Amazon Ads, ensuring consistency across platforms

The data is available in three different places:

1. All accounts Dashboard: Set monthly budget targets for your connected ad accounts, receive email notifications when accounts overpace or underpace, and get an overview of all your accounts’ budget pacing in one place.

2. Spend Projection tool: If you’ve specified a target budget for the account on the All Accounts Dashboard, we’ll use the same amount as the simulation budget to show you some further insights in this tool. Based on your actual performance, we can tell you how you are pacing against your target.

For example, if you should have spent $100 by today but your actual cost is only $90, then you are pacing at 90%, slightly behind where you should be.

Try it now

3. Performance Reports: Whether you want to share a projection with stakeholders or simply stay informed about your spend, scheduling a report with the Spend Projection widget ensures that the data is consistently delivered to the appropriate people at the right time. Include visualizations of cumulative and daily spending trends against your spend target.

Try it now

2. Allocate budget efficiently for enhanced performance

Optmyzr offers two powerful budget optimization tools: Optimize Budgets (single account) and Optimize Budgets Across Platforms. Here are the key differences between the two:

Translate monthly budget targets into daily budgets

It’s important to note that Google Ads and other ad platforms typically operate with daily budgets at the campaign or ad set level, as well as shared budgets that encompass multiple campaigns. Use these optimization tools to bridge the gap between monthly budget targets commonly used by companies and the daily budgets required by ad platforms.

Let’s take a couple of examples:

Example 1: Avoid overspending.

In this case, the account is projected to spend $6,017 against a budget of $5,000, which means it is at risk of overspending by 20%. The overspend is primarily driven by one campaign, which accounts for more than half of the total projected spend, while a few others contribute moderately.

At the same time, some campaigns show little to no actual spend, even though budgets are allocated to them, leading to inefficient distribution of funds.

To avoid overspending, consider reducing the daily budget for the highest-spending campaign, as this will have the most direct impact on bringing costs closer to the budget target.

Additionally, review and reallocate budgets from inactive or underutilized campaigns to ensure that funds are concentrated on those that deliver meaningful performance.

This way, the account can remain within budget while protecting conversions.

Example 2: Avoid underspending

In our second example, we have clicked on the ‘Get Optimization Suggestions’ button, which provides us with various spend scenarios to consider. Here, the budget group is unlikely to reach the $7,000 monthly target, as the current projected spend is only $6,017 (86% of the target).

This creates a risk of underspending, which means the account may not fully utilize the allocated budget.

To address this, we can use the optimization table to analyze different spend scenarios and evaluate their impact on performance metrics such as conversions, cost per conversion, and conversion value.

By selecting higher-spend scenarios (for example, the row projecting $6,641 or $6,901), we can explore how increasing daily budgets in specific campaigns could generate more conversions and raise overall spend closer to the $7,000 goal.

While this increases costs, it helps maximize budget utilization and ensure the account reaches its monthly target, thereby optimizing conversion value.

Try Optimize Budgets (Single platform) now.

Try Optimize Budgets Across Platforms now.

3. Identify and fix lost impression share across accounts quickly.

Optmyzr Express shows you bite-sized suggestions for all of the most important aspects of your ads for continual account improvement.

The Fix Impression Share Lost Due To Budget - Campaign Budget Express optimization focuses on boosting the budget for campaigns experiencing impression share loss due to budget constraints.

By increasing the budget, you can capture a greater number of impressions and improve visibility. The tool provides initial suggestions and allows for further adjustments, giving you flexibility in optimizing your campaign’s budget allocation.

You can breeze through the suggestions across accounts in a matter of minutes. And make sure to check out the other Express optimizations available for your favorite accounts while you’re at it.

Try Optmyzr Express now

Also Read: Why Your Google Ads CPC Spiked Overnight (And How to Prevent It)

4. Automated budget control to prevent overspending

Flexible Budgets is an Enhanced Script™ for Google Ads that provides automation for budget management.

If you’ve been spending time manually checking budgets on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to make sure you’re not overshooting the target, this script will automatically do this for you every single hour.

By setting up this script, you can automate the process of pausing campaigns, ad groups, and keywords and labeling them when the cost exceeds the specified maximum. You can also have the script re-enable the same entities when your budget resets.

Let’s take a couple of examples:

Example 1: Pause campaigns when weekly spend cap is reached.

Here’s how you’d set this one up to prevent an account from spending significantly more than $5,000 per week:

This script can be copied and pasted into Google Ads (either at the Manager/MCC or individual account level) and scheduled to run automatically every hour.

Example 2: Test new keywords without exhausting too much budget

While this script is very useful for monthly budget management, it can do a lot more.

For example, you can apply budgets at any level of the Google Ads hierarchy: account, campaign, ad group, keyword, or ad. You can set budgets to be monthly, weekly, or daily.

An example use case is to enforce a daily budget for a set of experimental keywords (which you have labeled) so that they are not taking up too much budget from old keywords you already know to be performing well.

Try it now

5. Avoid underspending with smart adjustments

With the second budget management Enhanced Script™, you can effortlessly stay on track with your clients’ budget targets and ensure optimal spending without the hassle of constant monitoring and manual adjustments. By combining this script with Optmyzr’s solutions to stop budgets from overspending, you gain better control over your monthly spend.

Distribute the remaining budget intelligently

One of the standout features of this script is its ability to intelligently distribute the remaining budget across the days left in the month, whether you’re working with campaign or shared budgets.

You can choose from different allocation methods, like our advanced approach that leverages historical data to allocate higher budgets on days with greater potential for clicks.

For example, if Mondays typically see higher search volumes and engagement, the script can allocate a larger budget for that day.

To fine-tune the script’s behavior, you can adjust settings such as the number of weeks of data to consider for determining day-of-week spend. Additionally, you have the option to carry over any unused budget from the previous month, ensuring efficient budget utilization.

With the Enhanced Scripts™, you can focus on delivering exceptional results for your clients while staying within their budgetary constraints. It’s a user-friendly solution that empowers you to optimize budget allocation and drive engagement.

Try it now

6. Allocate different budgets for different days of the week (and other rule-based optimizations).

With the Rule Engine, you have the power to tailor your daily budgets to align with performance metrics and even external factors like the day of the week.

Imagine having the ability to fine-tune your budget allocation with precision. The Rule Engine empowers you to do just that; you can set logical rules that automatically adjust your daily budgets based on specific criteria and schedule your strategies to run on partial or full automation.

Here are a couple of examples.

Example 1: Lower budget for weekends and holidays.

Depending on your business, you may see lower conversion rates or potential customer activity on specific days - e.g., on public holidays or certain days of the week.

To maintain a consistent ad presence throughout the week while prioritizing higher budgets for weekdays, you can easily implement a rule similar to the example provided above: “Allocate a daily budget of $100 if today is Saturday or Sunday. For all other days, set the daily budget to $120.”

This approach enables you to maintain visibility and engagement over the weekend while strategically allocating higher budgets to weekdays.

Example 2: Increase budget for high-return, low-CPC campaigns

Using the if-then-else statements, you can increase your daily budget on days when the cost-per-click (CPC) is low and the return on ad spend (ROAS) exceeds a certain threshold.

In this scenario, the objective is to identify all the campaign-level budgets that meet specific criteria in order to optimize their performance. With a rule like this, you can increase the daily budget by 10% for any campaign budget that has exhibited the listed characteristics within the last 14 days:

• ROAS exceeding 500%
• An average CPC lower than $1.10
• A daily budget below $330
• Currently underperforming (underpacing) with a spend utilization of less than 70%.

Additionally, as you have full control over the conditions and actions, it’s easy to define limits within which the budget changes need to happen.

With this rule, we can effectively identify campaigns that demonstrate strong ROAS and cost efficiency while having room for improvement in terms of spend utilization. This allows us to focus on optimizing these campaigns to increase their performance and maximize the return on investment.

Try now

7. Monitor budgets seamlessly with the budget dashboard

Managing PPC budgets isn’t only about fixing issues or reallocating funds; it also requires a clear view of how budgets are pacing, where money is being spent, and which opportunities need attention.

The Budget Dashboard in Optmyzr provides this visibility in one place, making it easier to monitor and adjust budgets across single accounts or multi-account portfolios.

What you’ll find in the Budget Dashboard:

Budget Target widget: Set or edit monthly budget targets and cycle dates, so your pacing aligns with business reporting needs.

Cost Summary and Pacing: Quickly see how much has been spent, whether you’re on track, and how many days remain in the cycle.

Spend Projection widget: Access projections directly, with the option to dive deeper into the full Spend Projection tool.

Day-of-the-Week Trends: Identify high- and low-performing days to allocate budgets more strategically.

You can get an AI-generated summary of the chart by clicking on the ‘Summarize with AI’ icon (✨). The summary will highlight your high and low spend days of the week, helping you optimize your daily budget allocations and refine your bidding strategies.

Media Mix and Performance Distribution: Understand how spend is distributed across platforms and accounts, with AI summaries to highlight key insights.

Budget Monitoring and Scripts: Review all budget monitors and automation scripts in place, so you always know what guardrails are active.

Consolidating this information into one dashboard can help you save time and reduce the risk of missing critical signals. Instead of switching between multiple views, you can monitor pacing, detect overspending, and uncover optimization opportunities at a glance.

The Budget Dashboard works both at the single-account level and across multi-account portfolios, making it equally useful for in-house teams and agencies managing multiple clients.

Budget management doesn’t have to be daunting

From tracking spending across multiple accounts to optimizing budgets for maximum performance, these tools offer automation, insights, and control.

We hope you’ll give them a try. We built these based on our customer feedback, and we’d love to hear more feedback from you about how else we can make these more useful, or what completely new methodologies you wish Optmyzr would build next.

If you’re not an Optmyzr user yet, consider signing up for our 14-day free trial to try all these tools and check how they fit your needs.

Related reading: Optmyzr Spend Projection vs. Google Budget Reports: More Than Just Visualization

FAQs

1. How can I prevent overspending on PPC campaigns?

Overspending often happens when daily budgets aren’t aligned with monthly targets or when traffic surges unexpectedly. Advertisers can prevent this by monitoring pacing regularly, setting clear budget caps, and using automation to pause or slow spend when thresholds are reached.

2. How do I know if my PPC campaigns are under-spending?

Underspending typically shows up when actual spend falls short of the pacing needed to reach your monthly target. Monitoring projections and impression share can help identify whether campaigns have room to spend more and drive additional results.

3. Should PPC budgets be adjusted on weekends or holidays?

Yes. Many advertisers see performance shifts depending on the day of the week or during holidays. Lowering budgets on low-conversion days and increasing them on high-return days can improve overall efficiency.

4. What’s the difference between managing budgets for one account vs. multiple accounts?

Single-account management focuses on reallocating spend within one platform, while multi-account management involves coordinating spend across platforms or clients. The latter requires consolidated tracking and a higher-level pacing strategy.

5. What factors should I consider when reallocating PPC budgets?

Key factors include campaign performance (clicks, conversions, ROAS), impression share lost due to budget, and seasonality. Budgets should be moved toward campaigns with proven potential and away from those that are capped or underperforming.

The PPC Stress Test: ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. Gemini (and Where Optmyzr Wins)

Reddit is filled with marketers complaining that AI tools are too generic, too vague, or too “copy-only” when it comes to paid ads.

So instead of arguing theory, we put three of the most popular AI tools: ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, through five real PPC tests based on tasks advertisers do every week: writing ad copy, reporting, analyzing seasonality, running an audit, and doing a KPI comparison.

Here’s what worked, what failed, and where Optmyzr fills the gap.

Overall performance summary

Test 1 → AI ad copy generators for Google Ads: ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini

Use case goal: Can an AI tool generate RSA ad copy that’s compliant, engaging, and ready to launch without spending hours tweaking headlines/descriptions?

We didn’t want to feed the AI tools a fluffy “write some ads” prompt. So we gave them the kind of brief a PPC copywriter would actually get from a SaaS client.

This is important because, as Amy Hebdon pointed out in our recent PPC Town Hall, our industry doesn’t usually create proper briefs for ad copy. That’s a big miss; without a brief, we don’t really know what to write or how to make ads connect to strategy.

A good brief gives clarity, constraints, and direction. It’s not just for AI, it’s what human copywriters need too.

Claude gave good angles but made risky claims

Claude did a decent job of sounding like a marketer. Its headlines tackled pain points head-on: “Stop Project Chaos Today,” “Ditch the Tool Juggling,” “No More Missed Deadlines.” Solid, straightforward stuff that speaks to frustrated project managers.

It also grouped its variations logically, and the structure made sense for A/B testing.

But here’s the problem: Claude tends to make things up at times. It confidently claimed “1,000+ teams” were already using WorkSync and promised “40% fewer delays.” We never gave it those numbers.

That kind of creativity is fine in a brainstorm doc. In live PPC ads, it’s a compliance risk waiting to happen.

ChatGPT sounded too formulaic at times

ChatGPT played it safe with headlines like “Manage Tasks in One Place” and “Simple Project Tracking” - technically correct, but bland.

Where ChatGPT stood out was in structure. It delivered five clear creative angles: efficiency, simplicity, collaboration, reliability, and the free trial offer.

Each is tied back to a real buyer pain point. It even suggested a smart A/B testing setup.

It got the rational benefits right (automation, faster setup, cost savings), but didn’t lean into the emotional relief FlowSync promises. Things like: fewer late nights, fewer fire drills, less chaos.

That’s what makes ads stick, and ChatGPT just didn’t go there.

Gemini played it safe but lacked creativity

Gemini sat somewhere in between: not reckless like Claude, not rigid like ChatGPT, but missing the spark. Many headlines felt generic - “The Right Tool for Your Team,” “Better Project Management,” “Simplify Your Workflows.”

A few lines did hit closer to the mark, like “A project management tool non-technical teams will actually use.”

Unfortunately, those moments were the exception rather than the rule.

Why Optmyzr takes this further (for RSAs)

AI tools can help with generating RSA copy ideas quickly, but they don’t help you manage those ads once they’re live in Google Ads. That’s where Optmyzr’s Ad Text Optimization tool steps in.

With this tool, you can:

• Edit RSA assets safely: Change any headline or description, save it, and track it as “modified.” Nothing goes live in Google Ads until you give the green light.
• Use AI as a helper: Get smart AI-powered suggestions for headlines, descriptions, or even full drafts, but always with the option to review before applying.
• Focus on what needs fixing – Filter by Ad Strength so you can improve weaker RSAs while leaving the stronger ones untouched.
• Bulk edits without errors: Use Find & Replace to update copy across multiple RSAs, whether it’s updating outdated promos or replacing legacy terms.
• Work at scale: Spell check across languages, CSV workflows for client approvals, and even full-ad views where you can edit multiple assets at once.

Test 2 → AI PPC Reporting: Can ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini build reports for CMOs?

Use case goal: Can AI tools build a goal-focused, ready-to-send report with summaries and insights?

ChatGPT initiated with a 2-step plan

ChatGPT delivered a basic 2-page report covering the executive summary and MoM comparison.

Next, we ran a similar test by uploading charts from a Google Ads account. The result was a 9-page report, with each page dedicated to explaining specific insights, such as:

If you’re after a straightforward report with clear explanations, ChatGPT does the job well.

Don’t expect flashy visuals; instead, you’ll get concise insights with all the essentials covered. The output could be improved, though; with more specific prompts, you might coax a bit more design flair out of GPT.

Claude came up with a good analysis

We first fed Claude the Google Ads chart data I’d extracted, and I was pleasantly surprised. The initial report looked polished and professional.

As shown in the screenshot below, Claude often produces a plain document-style report.

Other times, it goes a step further and builds an interactive prototype, like this:

The advantage of these prototypes is that you can either download the code to implement elsewhere or publish the artifacts and open them directly during presentations.

You can check the one we built here: Claude Reporting Artifact V1

We further prompted it with:

As we mentioned, the report was meant for a busy CMO, but Claude made it a little too concise. That’s a common limitation with AI tools: they often miss the balance.

So, we asked it to dive into the details after presenting the big picture.

Here’s what it produced:

You can check out the full Claude Artifact V2 here!

It was significantly better in terms of visuals and understanding.

Now for the MoM comparison, here’s the report it came up with, consisting of 9 different sections neatly presented:

You can check the full artifact here: Claude MoM comparison report

The bottom line? When it comes to visually compelling reports, Claude still has the edge over ChatGPT.

Gemini gave a fairly mediocre response initially

When we fed the MoM comparison data to Gemini and asked it to create a report for a busy CMO, there were quite a few assumptions and inconsistencies.

In the first attempt, Gemini fell short on several fronts:

• Inaccurate data representation: e.g., a nonsensical ‘100% decline’ claim.
• Lack of revenue clarity: no clear view of the pipeline or revenue loss to guide budget decisions.
• Absence of actionable recommendations: no concrete recommendations to address the gaps.

When asked to create visuals, Gemini (2.5 Flash) built a code-based dashboard. It lagged endlessly, and the data it showed was inaccurate.

However, upgrading from Gemini (2.5 Flash) to Gemini (2.5 Pro) delivered far better results.

Here’s what Gemini (2.5 Pro) got right:

• Accurate data interpretation with correct numbers and analysis.
• Flagged key issues like tracking gaps, mobile exclusions, and budget pacing.

Where it fell short:

• Shallow demographic analysis with no guidance on business strategy.
• Couldn’t generate charts; instead, produced a limited dashboard (see below).

In conclusion, Gemini delivered a solid, safe executive report that identified problems and suggested next steps. However, it lacked the strategic depth and growth vision a CMO needs for major budget decisions.

Optmyzr helps you build reports you can talk to

With Optmyzr, you don’t have to jump through hoops, extract sheets, switch modes, or double-check data accuracy. You can generate reports with a simple prompt or start with pre-built templates.

If you’re using AI, you can jump right in with pre-built prompts. Prefer a custom setup? Just describe what you want in your report, and we’ll build it for you.

The real differentiator? Once your report is ready, Optmyzr’s built-in AI (Sidekick) lets you talk to it. It takes away the hassle of digging into charts or slides.

Simply ask it to summarize the key points, highlight areas that are performing well, and those that need improvement.

If I were a busy CMO, I know I’d prefer a report I can actually have a conversation with, not just one I have to read.🫡

Once the report’s ready, Optmyzr even helps with the last mile: drafting the emails for your scheduled report deliveries, so you don’t spend extra time packaging the story for your CMO or client.

Instead of wrestling with widgets or hoping an AI deck lands right, Optmyzr gives you a reporting workflow that’s both smart and repeatable.

Test 3 → AI Seasonality Analysis in PPC: Forecasting Demand with GPT, Claude, Gemini

Use case goal: How can PPC marketers use AI tools for seasonality analysis to forecast demand, optimize budgets, and improve ROAS during peak and slow periods?

ChatGPT came up with a neat plan..

We started the test with ChatGPT 5 (instant), and it devised a plan for the seasonality analysis:

It began with a time series decomposition and explained the results clearly, even for someone not deep into statistics.

The output included the following chart with clear explanations:

Similarly, we were presented with day-of-week patterns and monthly/quarterly trends:

Overall, the charts were clear and easy to interpret, and the accompanying text made the data even more accessible.

If you’d like a deeper dive into how to run seasonality analysis with ChatGPT, here’s an article that can help!

Claude was a bit overwhelmed with the data at first

Claude’s response wasn’t as instant due to our large dataset (over 900 days), taking some time to process.

Once it finished, though, it produced a comprehensive document.

Unlike ChatGPT, it didn’t include charts by default, but with a couple of extra prompts, you can easily generate them. The analysis itself was detailed, useful, and, most importantly, explained in a way anyone could follow.

It even went a step further by predicting performance for Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, which was pretty impressive:

Next came a strategic plan of action, followed by a checklist with weekly tasks.

Overall, Claude delivered a solid analysis, but in my view, ChatGPT did a better job with this dataset. A smart workflow might be to extract insights with ChatGPT, then use Claude to turn those findings into an action plan or checklist.

Gemini also did a great job

Lastly, Gemini (2.5 Pro) also delivered strong results.

It generated a variety of charts, including conversion forecasts, anomaly detection, quarterly cost-per-conversion patterns, and monthly trends.

Interestingly, using the same prompt, Gemini also produced additional visuals like day-of-week cost-per-conversion analysis and conversions with anomalies.

The generated charts were also clear and easy to interpret, as you can see below:

A small but useful detail: Gemini also lets you instantly download the charts (look at the icon in the corner), something GPT doesn’t offer.

Overall, Gemini came out on top for generating clear, reliable seasonality analysis charts. GPT does have an edge in providing detailed explanations, but with a couple of extra prompts, Gemini can break down the insights just as effectively.

Want to skip the hassle of writing endless prompts just to run a seasonality analysis?

We built a seasonality analysis tool using Lovable that makes it super simple. Just upload your CSV file, no mega prompts, no back-and-forth, and you’ll get a clear, detailed analysis.

Upload your data and get a clear seasonality analysis instantly. Need a quick summary? Just hit Explain in plain English for an easy breakdown.

When you hit Show full analysis, you get a bunch of options: seasonality focus, decomposition, stats, business insights, and even a campaign view, all with a handy sidebar that explains the charts as you go.

Curious already? Give our seasonality analysis tool a spin here!

Test 4→ Get quick insights into strengths, weaknesses, and improvements in your PPC account

Use case goal: How can PPC marketers use AI tools to quickly identify strengths, weaknesses, and optimization opportunities in their Google Ads account performance?

Claude surprisingly interpreted the data wrong (in the first go)

Claude surprisingly got the data wrong on the first attempt. Even though it’s often my go-to for summarizing numbers, this time the response was riddled with miscalculations.

Here are the major accuracy issues I spotted:

• Claimed conversion rate ‘surged 193%’ when it actually declined 43%.
• Stated ‘total conversions increased 59%’ when they actually dropped 69%.
• Reported ‘cost per acquisition dropped’ even though conversions had collapsed.
• Praised ‘remarkable conversion efficiency improvements’ when performance had clearly deteriorated.”

On the flip side….

ChatGPT was far more accurate with its analysis

• Correctly flagged a ~22% cost reduction (actual: -21.6%)
• Accurately noted a ~50% drop in clicks/interactions (actual: -45.6%)
• Properly identified a ~69% collapse in conversions (actual: -69.0%)
• Correctly highlighted a ~14% decline in impressions (actual: -15.1%)
• Pinpointed CTR decline as the core issue behind performance shifts

Here are some recommendations it gave based on the identified strengths and weaknesses:

Still, I wanted to give Claude the benefit of the doubt (call it favoritism), so we ran the test again.

Same prompt, same document, and this time, it delivered the best response yet.

What stood out in this response:

• Comprehensive, with granular campaign-level analysis
• Professional formatting with clear sections and priority levels
• Recommendations neatly ranked by high/medium/low urgency
• Read more like a polished agency report than an AI output

The risk with relying on AI for PPC data accuracy

What if I had gone further without double-checking whether the responses were actually accurate?

That’s the risk AI tools sometimes carry.

And let’s not forget their ever-convincing tone that makes everything sound correct.

The issue with general AI tools like Claude or even GPT is that they’re great talkers, but not always great with the math. For instance, Claude claimed conversions had “surged 193%” when in reality they had collapsed by 69%.

That’s not a minor slip; it’s the kind of error that could drive completely wrong strategic decisions.

Gemini delivered conversion-focused insights

Gemini’s response was short and to the point.

It did a good job of identifying critical problems and gave good suggestions.

However, it missed broader account efficiency trends and didn’t provide sufficient context on absolute volume sizes.

Find Your PPC strengths, weaknesses, and fixes with Optmyzr Sidekick

So, with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, you first need to extract and format your data, then carefully prompt the AI to get insights. Once you get the insights, you need to cross-check them to make sure the responses are accurate.

With Optmyzr Sidekick AI, you skip the hassle of uploading data, writing prompts, and praying the AI doesn’t mess up the math.

The moment you log in, it’s already working for you.

👉 Every session starts with three things marketers care most about:

• One clear win: what’s working well this month
• One weakness: where performance is slipping
• One recommendation: the next step you can act on right away

💡And when you want to dig deeper? You don’t need to build a query or export a report. Just type or ask:

• “Which campaigns are overspending this week?”
• “What’s my best converting landing page?”
• “Where did CTR drop compared to last month?”

Sidekick responds instantly, with the right PPC context baked in.

And that’s the difference. A general AI assistant can talk about anything, but it doesn’t know your Google Ads metrics, ROAS goals, or budget strategies. Sidekick does.

Test 5 → AI Metric Comparison in PPC: Clicks vs. Cost Accuracy Test

Use case goal: How can PPC marketers use AI tools to accurately compare key metrics like clicks vs. cost in Google Ads campaigns?

Note: We started by giving the AI the same comprehensive dataset used in earlier tests, to see if it could accurately pull out and create charts for the specified month.

ChatGPT’s strengths and limits in Clicks vs. Cost analysis

ChatGPT handled the data correctly and produced an accurate chart.

The only minor drawback was that the orange line occasionally blended with the blue, making it a bit harder to distinguish.

While it didn’t offer additional insights upfront, a quick follow-up prompt easily drew out more detailed analysis.

Gemini delivers accurate insights with clear explanations

Gemini nailed both the analysis and interpretation of the data.

It introduced no inaccuracies and correctly highlighted the peaks and valleys when fed the full dataset from 2024–2025.

This shows you don’t need to manually extract data for a single month to get an accurate analysis, unlike Claude (more on that below).

With Gemini, you can also ask for deeper explanations, and it delivers them accurately.

Claude struggled with PPC metric accuracy

When given data for the past year, Claude’s output included several issues:

• Reported the wrong average CPC
• Missed the most significant data point (July 17th, with 560 clicks), the chart showed only ~90 clicks for that day
• Incorrectly claimed a performance increase from July 24–31, even though July 24 had just one click

What happened when we fed it data for just July 2025

This time, Claude performed much better. It:

• Correctly captured the July 17 peak (and other key data points)
• Generated proper dual Y-axis scaling for easier interpretation
• Highlighted key insights clearly in a yellow callout box

Why Optmyzr’s metric comparison widget beats GPT/Claude/Gemini for comparing metrics

If all you need is to compare two metrics, say, clicks vs. conversions, you could export your data, feed it into GPT, Claude, or Gemini, and prompt it to plot or summarize the relationship.

But let’s be honest: that’s a lot of extra steps.

You have to prepare the data, explain the context in your prompt, maybe re-ask if the chart isn’t quite right… and you’ll probably end up repeating that whole process every time you want to switch metrics.

Plus, you’re gambling with accuracy at times.

As we’ve seen from testing multiple tools, some tools completely misinterpret it, showing wrong peaks, missing critical drops, or calculating metrics like cost-per-click incorrectly.

You end up having to double-check every number and extract data for exact date ranges just to verify you’re not getting wildly inaccurate responses that could lead to wrong business decisions.

With Optmyzr’s Metric Comparison Widget, it’s just… built in. Two clicks, and you’re instantly looking at any pair of metrics you want.

Want to flip from Clicks vs Cost to Cost vs Conversions? Just switch the dropdown.

Want to smooth out the noise and view weekly instead of daily?

Change the frequency and it’s done.

The best part? The widget doesn’t just show the lines. It gives you an AI-powered summary right alongside the chart, written specifically for PPC context.

So, instead of you trying to coax a useful interpretation out of a general AI, you get a clear, campaign-focused takeaway immediately.

Investigate metrics with PPC investigator

Comparing two metrics is a good start, but what if you want to dig deeper and actually understand why performance changed?

That’s where Optmyzr’s PPC Investigator comes in.

With just a few clicks, it pinpoints the exact element driving a metric up or down, whether it’s a keyword, placement, or even an entire network.

So instead of just seeing that conversions dropped last month, you can see what caused the drop and take action faster.

And to make analysis even more intuitive, PPC Investigator includes a colorblind-friendly mode with icons that clearly show positive or negative trends.

See It in Action: Want to watch how this works in a real account?

In the video below, we walk through how to investigate changes in your PPC performance using PPC Investigator along with other Optmyzr tools. You’ll see how quickly you can spot what changed, why it happened, and what to do next.

Where PPC Pros rely on Optmyzr (beyond AI assistants)

Generic AI tools will always have limits in PPC. They don’t know your accounts, your budgets, or your business goals; they just generate words and numbers based on the data you feed.

Optmyzr was built for paid media from the ground up. That means:

• Ad copy tools that improve RSAs without compliance risks.
• Reports you can interrogate with Sidekick instead of wrestling with decks.
• Diagnostic tools that find the “why” behind every performance shift.
• AI Audit Summaries that instantly flag strengths, weaknesses, and missed opportunities across your account.
• Competitor Widgets that show top entrants and exits in your auctions.

While Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT can brainstorm, Optmyzr helps you act.

See the difference in your own accounts. Start a fully functional 14-day trial today — no credit card required.

FAQs on Using AI for PPC

1. Can AI actually write high-converting Google Ads?
A. Yes, but not reliably. AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini can generate RSA copy fast, but they either sound formulaic, make compliance-risky claims, or lack emotional punch. These drafts still need to go through expert copywriters to be published-worthy.

2. Is AI good enough to replace my PPC reporting dashboard?
A. Not yet. GPT tends to produce clear but plain summaries; Claude often adds better visuals but can misrepresent data; Gemini improves accuracy in Pro mode but still struggles with strategy.

3. Can AI forecast seasonality and budget spikes for PPC?
A. It can, with caveats. GPT explains patterns well, Claude builds detailed plans, and Gemini generates reliable charts. But AI needs carefully formatted data and multiple prompts.

4. Will AI tools catch strengths and weaknesses in my Google Ads account?
A. Sometimes. GPT is more accurate with math; Claude can miscalculate but improves with retries; Gemini is safe but shallow. The bigger risk: over-confident AI tone that hides errors.

5. Can AI compare PPC metrics like Clicks vs. Cost without errors?
A. Partially. GPT and Gemini usually handle it, though Gemini gives cleaner charts. Claude is inconsistent, sometimes fabricating numbers.

6. Should I trust AI with PPC strategy at all?
A. Use AI for drafts, brainstorming, and data exploration, not as your sole decision-maker. Think of it as an intern: fast, helpful, but in need of supervision.

4 Campaign Hygiene Optimizations for PPC Advertising Success

Account management is a necessary task that all PPC managers have to perform on a regular basis.

While it can be time-consuming and tedious (like flossing your teeth), it’s unavoidable if you want to keep your account in good health.

In this article, I’ll share four of the most important “campaign hygiene” tasks our PPC managers at WebMechanix perform on an ongoing basis to keep their accounts humming.

1. Audit the search terms report

Auditing the search terms report at different levels is one of the most time-consuming PPC tasks, but also one of the most vital to keep your account’s performance trending up and to the right.

You need to monitor the search terms like a hawk for three key reasons:

1. Make sure the search terms you show for align with what you bid on

This is especially important with the changes Google has made to match types over the last two years. We now see more close variant search terms showing for Exact Match and Phrase Match keywords, some of which are not relevant.

You also need to make sure that the right ad groups are triggering the correct queries. This is a tactic known as “query funneling”. Query funneling by campaign or ad group ensures that the right keyword, ad, and landing page show for the correct query, thereby increasing the chances of a click and conversion.

2. Save money

By looking at the queries, you can start to compile a list of negative keywords. These are keywords that you do not want to show for.

Negative keywords typically fall into two categories:

1. Keywords that aren’t relevant to your business goals
2. High-click queries that have not led to a conversion.

By excluding these queries, you free up money to spend on relevant queries that do convert well.

3. Find new keywords to bid on

Typically, you can find a few high-converting queries that you may not have as an exact match keyword. By adding these high-converting queries as exact match keywords, you make sure that you show for that query more often.

Bottom line: The search terms report is a goldmine for negatives, new keywords, and ensuring search intent. Mine it frequently and extensively.

2. Monitor your quality scores

Quality score (QS) is often an overlooked metric when assessing account performance.

I find PPC managers often fall into two camps.

Camp 1 says, “Quality score is an important metric to assess and try to improve.”

Camp 2 says, “Quality score, shmality score… doesn’t have an iota of impact on account performance.”

At WebMechanix, we fall in the first camp. We’ve found that you can improve quality score while optimizing your accounts!

Besides, quality score is one of two metrics used to determine ad rank and how much you will ultimately pay if your ad is clicked on. So it’s worth paying attention to.

And since Smart Bidding is prevalent in most accounts these days, quality score can often be your only lever to lower your cost per click (CPC).

When assessing quality score, I look at keywords with high click volume to see which ones have low quality scores, and then the reason Google gives for the low quality score. Finding a high-click keyword with a low quality score due to ad relevance is like finding gold within your account.

With the exception of competitor keywords, you should never have a keyword that has an ad relevance below average. That’s because ad relevance is the easiest metric that a PPC manager can influence.

It can easily be improved by adding the keyword with a low quality score to your ad copy. By doing this simple task, you can end up saving literally hundreds of dollars a month (if not thousands).

Bottom line: Quality score is a powerful lever to lower your cost per click and crank up return on ad spend (ROAS). Make efforts to improve quality score a part of your weekly routine.

3. Prune out non-serving keywords

Easier-to-manage accounts are typically the ones that perform the best. So stop overbuilding accounts and adding an unnecessary amount of keywords to each ad group!

One easy way to make your accounts easier to manage is by removing non-serving keywords. Within almost every account, there will be several keywords that have not shown an impression for a large period of time (often 90+ days).

Ask yourself: Are these keywords really necessary, or are they getting in the way and making it harder to assess performance?

Don’t be afraid to go through and hit “pause” on clutter keywords like these. Your future self will thank you when you go to build reports and optimize your account.

Bottom line: Don’t make your job as a PPC manager harder than it has to be. Clean out dead weight keywords regularly and watch your effectiveness soar.

4. Cut ties with low-performing keywords

I know, you probably picked the keyword and really feel that it should be performing for you. But if a keyword isn’t delivering results within a reasonable period of time, you have to make that critical decision and pause.

When onboarding new accounts, this is one of the first tasks our account managers perform. We have seen accounts where only 2% of the keywords that had been clicked over the last 30 days were responsible for a conversion. That’s a lot of wasted spend!

By pausing the high-click non-converting keyword, you are able to spend more on your high-converting keywords — which means more bang for your PPC buck at the end of the day.

Bottom line: Stop wasting spend on low-performing keywords, especially if you have high-converting keywords that are losing search impression share due to budget constraints.

Block and tackle like the PPC pros to win on search

No one said everything about managing a paid search account would be sexy.

In fact, it’s often the unsexy things done consistently over time that drive growth, not the flashy or big sweeping account changes.

And you don’t have to go at it alone — Optymzr has some great PPC tools to help make that daily PPC grind a little bit more automated.

But by executing these four activities on a consistent basis, you’ll be doing the work that most advertisers are too lazy to perform. And you’ll get the results those other advertisers can’t.

Optimizing Campaign ROI: Get the Highest-Value Leads Your Ad Budget Will Allow

Google’s Smart Bidding has evolved over the years to have a better understanding of what works for many PPC accounts. It wasn’t too long ago that advertisers preferred manual bidding outright.

Smart Bidding is now commonly used and much more effective than ever before — over 92% of Google Ads accounts linked to Optmyzr use Smart Bidding in at least one campaign.

But while Smart Bidding strategies aim to drive volume-based KPIs such as clicks or conversions, not all conversions are created equal.

With bid strategies like Target ROAS and Maximize Conversion Value, there’s a much stronger case to bid for value rather than volume.

The Optmyzr suite currently has three tools to help advertisers and agencies implement these strategies effectively and easily.

In this article, you’ll learn:

• What these tools are
• How to use them
• Common use cases
• Best practices to maximize effectiveness

Create training data using Segment Scorer

The Segment Scorer lets you easily rate segments from your online audiences based on their value to your business. These ratings should be based not on Google metrics like click-through rate, but on how they perform after converting.

With these scores, you create training data for Optmyzr to suggest the best Conversion Value Rules for your campaigns. Conversion Value Rules are similar to bid adjustments for Smart Bidding and put your scores in a format that Google can understand.

Go to Segment Scorer

Let’s look at an example of this in practice. When you’re asked to score a segment like the one below (United States), you first need to analyze the value of this segment to your or your client’s business:

• Are people from the US more likely to buy from you?
• Do they return fewer products or have a shorter sales cycle?
• Is the average order value higher among US customers?

Based on the angles important to the business, give it a score between 1 and 5 with 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest.

You can score segments from five categories in this tool: City, Region, Country, Device, and Audience.

Adjust conversion values using Optimize Value Rules

The Optimize Value Rules tool suggests conversion value rules based on your data inputs from the Segment Scorer. Conversion Value Rules let you better express the importance of your conversions as they relate to your business.

This tool bridges the gap between your business knowledge and Google’s ability to use that knowledge to get you the most profitable conversions.

Go to Optimize Value Rules

The magnitude of a suggested adjustment depends on the scores for the primary and secondary segments. However, you can always change the adjustment for each entry by editing the fields in the ‘New Adjustment’ column.

Note: Before applying adjustments, read up on the common pitfalls of value-based bidding so you can better monitor performance.

Discover insights using Segment Explorer

The Segment Explorer lets you visualize your Google Analytics audiences’ performance by multiple dimensions in Optmyzr.

Many times in Google Analytics, it’s difficult to segment and visualize multiple audiences together. But with Segment Explorer, getting those insights becomes straightforward.

Go to Segment Explorer

Check out the performance of multiple audiences in terms of behavior, geography, and demographics — all at once. This lets you create targeted audiences for your Google Ads campaigns, faster than you could do manually.

How conversion values can vary: use cases

Let’s look at how different industries might use these tools to optimize the ROI of their ad spend. Remember that after Google reports a conversion, its final value to a business varies based on several factors including location, ticket size, product type, and more.

Home Services

Example: Roofing

Google conversion event: Lead gen form completed

What can happen afterward:

1. Roofing company contacts the lead to schedule a free estimate
2. Estimator meets the prospect
3. Prospect reviews the estimate
4. Prospect becomes a paying customer

What can affect the final value:

• Some zip codes have bigger houses. Bigger houses mean bigger roofs. And bigger roofs mean higher average project values.
• There are different types of roofing materials that vary with geography and customer preferences. For instance, customers in warmer locations like Los Angeles may prefer solar roofing. Different materials have different margins, making a job more or less profitable than usual.

Education

Example: University

Google conversion event: Lead gen form completed

What can happen afterward:

1. College contacts applicant to discuss the education program
2. Applicant may apply for financial assistance
3. Applicant is admitted and becomes a paying customer

What can affect the final value:

• Depending on the area of study the prospect indicates, it can be a longer or shorter program and have a different total cost.
• Applicant proximity to campus impacts the chance they attend virtual or in-person programs, which may have different associated costs like room and board.
• Preferred degree may make them more or less likely to get a high-paying job, thus influencing their ability to make charitable donations to the university after they graduate.

Ecommerce

Example: Cosmetics

Google conversion event: Purchase/checkout

What can happen afterward:

1. Order is returned for a refund, either in part or in whole
2. Customer buys additional products of equal or greater value

What can affect the final value:

• Someone who buys a big bottle of shampoo will be less likely to be a repeat customer in the short term than someone who buys a trial size of several shampoos.
• Some customers will return more of their purchases. For example, different demographics may correlate with higher impulse purchase behavior i.e. they buy several products but return most of them.

Using ROI optimization as a control tool for Performance Max

Among all of Google’s advertising products, Performance Max is the most comprehensive example of automation yet. It promises a new way to advertise across all of Google’s channels, which also means fully automated bidding and budget allocation.

This calls for a new approach to ROI optimization that’s less about pushing buttons or turning dials and more about feeding the right first-party data that’s not accessible to Google or your campaign.

If you’re an ecommerce clothing store, that data can be detailed stock information like availability per size or color, margin, sell-through rate, return rate, etc.

Feeding this data to Google along with Conversion Value Rules offers you better control over your Performance Max campaigns. A good strategy here would be running Maximize Conversion Value with tROAS.

Best practices for ROI optimization

We suggest the following best practices to produce optimal results when using a value-based bidding strategy.

1. Score your segments based on their ultimate value to the business, not according to metrics or KPIs that Google can easily see.
2. Check your campaign performance after four weeks of making adjustments. The Smart Bidding algorithms need some time to learn what the right traffic looks like to you.
3. Re-score your segments in the Segment Scorer if there are changes in your business priorities (like a discontinued product), or when you have to optimize your campaign performance (a product that isn’t moving). We still recommend spacing adjustments four weeks apart.
4. Be sure to set your bidding strategy to Maximize Conversion Value (with or without a target ROAS) so that Smart Bidding can take different conversion values into account.

Solutions to common concerns around ROI Optimization

Errors in reporting due to ‘Adjusted Conversion Value’

When you work with Value Rules, there will be differences between your original conversion values and adjusted conversion values. This leads to discrepancies in reporting.

To overcome that, we added ‘Unadjusted Conversion Value’ to the ‘KPIs’, ‘Summary’, ‘Top Campaigns’, and ‘Performance Comparison’ widgets in our single account report. When you’re reporting metrics to your clients, you can clearly communicate the actual conversion value and the adjustment made to it.

Knowledge gap between you and your client

We’ve heard from some customers — especially agencies — that it can be challenging to obtain scores for the Segment Scorer. To make that easier, we’ve created a template you can share with clients or stakeholders to fill out.

In the ‘Start Scoring Segments’ dropdown, select ‘Bulk Score Segments’. You can download the template, add the scores and then upload it back to the tool.

This template can serve you in two ways:

1. You can score multiple segments at once without the need to score a large set of scoring cards one after another.
2. You can share this template with your clients requesting them to score the segments based on their business goals. This bridges the knowledge gap between you and your client, ultimately bringing more accurate Value Rules suggestions for your Google Ads account while respecting a client’s need for privacy.

Data is your most valuable asset

ROI optimization is the next evolution of account optimization after a conversion-based strategy. But for any optimization to work, you must collect the right data to enable smarter decisions from ad platforms like Google.

Unique business data is your most powerful asset, and the optimization tools that we’ve built can help you make the best use of that data in a smooth process.

Why optimize for numbers when you can optimize for actual profitability?

Get started with a 14-day free trial today.

Agile Target Layering: What It Is and How It Helps Maximize Your PPC Profits

Has the world of PPC as we knew it come to an end?

The short answer, my friend, is not yet and, if you continue reading this article, you’ll understand what I mean :-)

I’ve avidly read all articles and reports by Frederick Vallaeys and several of the top most important Google Ads professionals in the world. I’ve also performed a lot of experiments myself and I am sure that there still is a wide scope for manual selective targeting to perform better than machine learning.

But then the real question becomes: how to do it (without losing the immense possibilities provided by AI)? And, under what circumstances is it worth it?

The answer as often is the case in the digital marketing industry, is not easy and has to be applied on a case-by-case basis, after an evaluation of running campaigns.

When is automation worth it?

My almost 20 years in PPC have taught me that there is not a right or wrong way of doing Google Ads, but several more or less effective ways to target your ideal prospects or customers.

I’ve literally seen things in Google Ads campaigns (that you wouldn’t believe) working well, and technically perfect structures failing to meet even the minimal goal they were built for.

This is why I’ve always tried to reach my ideal target audience in the most complete (& simplest) ways the platform allows me to do. This way of doing campaigns will never fail.

But it also means you cannot use a fixed model or structure to promote everything. You always have to try almost completely different approaches to meet your campaign’s goals.

Anyway, after having tested several different ad structures I come to elaborate on a general wireframe, which I hope can help you too.

What is ‘Agile Target Layering’ and how does it work?

I named it “agile” because it is not built on a fixed structure. You have to change it as soon as you see it does not achieve results or if you find better ways to effectively address your audience.

I used the words “target layering” because to get the most out of your campaigns you have to be sure that machine learning perfectly understands which are your ideal audiences and covers them completely.

If it doesn’t, you have to pair it with some manual target “layers” to be sure to cover what you know performs best at the lowest cost possible.

Presently the only way to achieve this goal is to add some “old school” campaigns to the PPC AI, which we are only slowly starting to taste these days.

To explain it in a simple way, you should address the top of the iceberg’s best-converting search intent of your audiences with a phrase or exact match campaign (starting from branded keywords, for instance).

Then leave the conversion stars scouting to machine learning (ML), sculpting these campaigns out with negatives for irrelevant terms and what already is performing well in your “old school” campaigns.

Once ML finds something that converts, you can loop again into the process, and build a new manual target layer upon it, or simply enjoy all the benefits of ML and spend your saved time thinking of other approaches you could use to your target users (or even better spending time with your family 😊).

Agile Target Layering applied to a hyper-competitive industry

Imagine you have to sell luxury home rentals in Sorrento (one of the best seaside spots in Italy) on a global scale.

Your Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) keywords to build specific phrase or exact match search campaigns could then be: “Sorrento luxury villas”, “Sorrento luxury rentals”, “Sorrento villas with private pool”, “Sorrento luxury apartments” etc. That is “specific location + a luxury related term + home rental term”.

Nothing, except branded terms with the name of the villa or website, will ever attract more in-target users to your site.

If your budget allows it, you could then add some broad match MOFU campaigns with keywords like: “Sorrento villas”, “holiday rentals Sorrento”, “Sorrento home rentals,” etc., and see if machine learning can do the magic of finding juicy audiences for you.

Then again you could add a final layer with totally machine-learning-driven campaigns like Performance Max or Discovery/Display to address TOFU audiences to see if you can convince someone who isn’t even aware of the existence of so a beautiful place like Sorrento and only wants a place to literally “spend” their time (and money, of course).

After an initial training period (the lower the budget, the longer the period) you will be able to check what needs adjustments, what has to be stopped, and what deserves more push and optimization.

Final takeaways

I firmly believe that our mission as PPC professionals in this time of great change in our industry is to instruct machine learning on what it doesn’t or cannot know (marginality of sales, seasonality, competitor brands with our same exact positioning in the market, best audiences to start from, etc.) and to be sure that our budget is spent first on what has the maximum chance to convert and then, if profit margins allow it, on what might convert.

This is a guest post by Gianpaolo Lorusso, a PPC & CRO consultant.

About the author: Gianpaolo Lorusso is a PPC & CRO consultant for several medium & large companies. He also founded ADworld Experience, the largest Pay Per Click & Conversion Rate Optimization event in Europe and the largest in the World based on real PPC Cases.

Improve your search and shopping PPC campaigns in just 2 weeks

It doesn’t matter how well your Google Ads accounts are performing – great marketers and agencies always want to do better. But there’s a perception among some marketers that it takes months to see meaningful improvements from your PPC campaigns.

This isn’t true.

With a tool like Optmyzr at your disposal and this playbook, you can start to see improvements in your Google search and shopping campaigns in 2 weeks – the same amount of time our free trial lasts.

So whether you’re just starting out with Optmyzr, thinking of giving us a shot, or want to onboard another client, here’s how we can help set your accounts up for success in just two weeks.

Note: We refer to Google Ads by default, but many of these capabilities can be applied to your Microsoft Ads campaigns as well.

Google Search Ads

Day 1: Set up alerts to monitor accounts and track budgets.

• Set up Account Alerts to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) like CPA and ROAS.
• Set monthly budgets on the MCC dashboard and get notified when an account is underspending or overspending.
• Install the Flexible Budgets enhanced script to make sure the account doesn’t overspend.
• Install the Check Destination URLs enhanced script to stop traffic from going to broken landing pages.

Pro Tip: Enhanced scripts can be installed at the MCC level. Read more about installing scripts.

Day 3: Analyze account performance and start optimizing.

• In PPC Policy and Audits, run ‘Sample Policy’ to find areas of improvement in the account and customize policies based on your strategy.
• Customize a weekly report from available Instant Report templates. Automate it to be emailed every Monday morning.
• Run Optmyzr Express and do quick optimization tasks like testing new ads, adding new keywords, and winning more traffic for converting keywords.
• Run PPC Investigator to see how and why conversions in your account changed in the last 30 days.

Day 5: Analyze search queries to add new keywords and negatives to your account.

• Run Keyword Lasso to add new keywords from ‘Top Suggestions’ or use a custom filter to find suggestions.
• Run Negative Keyword Finder to find account-level negatives and add them to shared negative lists.
• Run Search Terms N-Grams to analyze the highest-traffic search terms in a word cloud to identify trends and new ad group themes, and to add negatives.

Pro Tip: Combine these optimizations into a single workflow using Blueprints.

Day 6: Manage bids.

Manual Bidding

• Run Conversion Grabber to acquire more traffic for converting keywords losing impression share.
• Run First Page Bridger to push keywords with high Quality Scores to the first page of search results.
• Run Reduce Bids on keywords that have zero conversions and high cost/CPA.

Automated and Smart Bidding

• Run Optimize Target CPA and Optimize Target ROAS optimizations to change ad group-level targets for better performance when using Google Smart Bidding.

Pro Tip: Combine these optimizations into a single Workflow using Blueprints.

Day 7: Improve Quality Score and manage budgets.

• Run Analyze and Optimize Budget to reallocate budgets to campaigns that are converting but losing impression share.
• Use the Quality Score Tracker to analyze ad groups with low Quality Scores.
• Run Quick Optimizations from the Quality Score Tracker to pause and SKAG keywords with low Quality Scores.

Day 9: A/B test and create new ads.

• Use A/B Testing For Ads to pause underperforming ads and create new ones.
• Test your ad components and make bulk edits (if necessary) using Ad Text Optimization.
• Create new responsive search ads using the Responsive Search Ads tool to ensure all your ad groups have at least one responsive search ad.

Day 11: Set hourly bid adjustments and build custom optimizations.

• Use the Hour of Week Bid Adjustment to set bid adjustments for different times of the week based on your optimization goal.
• Try out Instant Strategies in the Rule Engine.

Bonus: Experiment with a custom strategy in the Rule Engine.

Day 13: Set bid adjustments for locations and demographics based on performance.

• Use the Geo-Bid Adjustment to target and set bid adjustments for locations based on performance.
• Run Optmyzr Express and perform quick optimization tasks like setting bid adjustments for age and gender.

Day 14: Create your own workflows and implement automation.

• Create your own optimization workflow by building a Blueprint.
• Automate your favorite optimization strategies using the Rule Engine.

Google Shopping Ads

Day 1: Set up merchant feed and monitor budget.

• Link your merchant feeds to Optmyzr.
• Install the Flexible Budget enhanced script to make sure standard shopping campaigns don’t overspend.

Pro Tip: Enhanced scripts can be installed at the MCC level. Read more about installing scripts.

Day 2: Filter out irrelevant shopping queries by managing negatives.

• Use Shopping Negatives to identify competing and underperforming queries, and add them as negatives.
• Try out the Instant Strategy ‘Non-Converting Search Queries(Shopping)’ via the Rule Engine to add negatives.

Pro Tip: Combine these optimizations into a single Workflow using Blueprints.

Day 4: Analyze feed and resync campaign structure.

• Re-sync your campaigns with your merchant feed using Shopping Campaign Refresher 2.0.
• Review attribute coverage for products using Merchant Feed Analysis.
• Try out the Shopping Campaign Analysis tool to:
  • Identify the distribution of products for important feed attributes
  • Analyze performance by price, ROAS, product type, or category

Day 6: Manage bids.

Manual Bidding

• Increase bids for product groups with high ROAS using Shopping Bidder.
• Increase bids for converting product groups losing impression share with Optmyzr Express.
• Reduce Bids for expensive product groups using Rule Engine (available under Instant Strategies).
• Use Attribute Bidder to identify products with price points that have high ROAS, and to increase bids for such products if you have a GRIP structure.

Automated & Smart Bidding

• Run Optimize Target CPA & ROAS to change ad group-level targets when running Google Smart Bidding for better performance.

Day 8: Create custom optimizations.

• Use Rule Engine to convert your PPC strategies into optimizations for:
  • Managing Negatives: Create recipes to manage underperforming search terms in shopping campaigns
  • Managing Bids & Target ROAS: Create recipes for setting bids and target ROAS based on in-house strategies

Pro Tip: Watch this video for ideas on how to use the Rule Engine to set up custom optimizations.

Day 10: Create your own workflows and implement automation.

• Create your own optimization workflow by building a Blueprint.
• Set up automation on your favorite optimizations.

Too good to be true? Try it for yourself.

Our mission at Optmyzr is to develop not just the tools that PPC marketers need today, but ones they can use to safeguard their true roles as digital marketing strategists.

That’s why everything in this onboarding guide has one eye on long-term results, and why we don’t gate any of our features to trial users.

Sign up for a 14-day free trial to experience for yourself how Optmyzr makes PPC management faster and your contributions more value-oriented. Use our roadmap and you’ll start to see improvements before the end of the trial period.

Offline Conversion Tracking Just Got a Whole Lot Easier with Enhanced Conversions from Google

Advertisers have a slew of best practices to choose from when optimizing their PPC accounts. But why are some of the best strategies so rarely implemented?

Take for example Offline Conversion Imports (offline conversion tracking), the process of recording conversions for actions that happen offline after the online conversion is recorded. These offline conversions are incredibly valuable pieces of data for Google’s machine learning systems to improve bidding to prioritize more valuable leads.

The reality is that implementing Offline Conversion Imports is hard. But Google has now made it easier, so we’ll explain exactly how it works and why it’s important.

Why Offline Conversions Matter

You’ve likely heard that tracking offline conversions is a good way to optimize your PPC campaigns. Let’s look at an example to explain this.

Say you generate leads for solar panel contractors and collect the names of prospects through a form on your landing page. When the lead comes in, your sales team calls the homeowner to schedule a free estimate. Later, some of the estimates are accepted and leads become paying customers.

In a conversion-focused optimization strategy without Offline Conversion Imports, all leads look the same because every prospect started by filling out the lead form on your landing page and that’s the only thing that is reported as a conversion.

What happens after that may be clear in your CRM, but Google Ads has no information about this. So when Google’s automated bidding strategies (like Maximize Conversion Value) are turned on, it thinks all leads are equally valuable and hence bids the same $10 for every prospect.

In reality, different prospects have different values.

As illustrated in the graphic above, three prospects took different actions and should get different values. The lead who never got an estimate is valued lowest; the lead who received a free estimate but did nothing with it is given a higher value; and the lead who went from estimate to buyer gets an even higher value.

These values can be communicated to Google through Offline Conversion Imports. With this additional insight, the Maximize Conversion Value bid strategy can now prioritize the more valuable leads by bidding more for them.

Why Advertisers Don’t Use Offline Conversion Imports (Even When They Know They Should)

It should be fairly obvious to most marketers that Offline Conversion Imports is a key strategy for advertisers who want to up their game and increase the value they get from PPC by upgrading from conversion-focused to value-based optimization.

But it’s not always adopted because it’s historically been difficult to implement.

The reason for this is simple. Advertisers are used to being able to control most elements of their campaigns through self-service tools provided by Google Ads, third-party PPC optimization software like Optmyzr, and landing page tools like Instapage.

But those same marketers usually don’t control the CRM systems where this valuable offline conversion data lives inside their organization. This dependency on other business teams (and sometimes even engineering) significantly reduces the adoption of Offline Conversion Imports.

How Offline Conversion Imports Works

The way Offline Conversion Imports works is by capturing every user’s unique click ID (GCLID) and adding it to the lead form. From there, the GCLID lives with the customer record in a CRM. When a lead moves through the conversion funnel, marketers can communicate these events to Google by passing back conversion actions and their corresponding unique GCLID.

It’s the GCLID that bridges the advertiser’s CRM data to Google’s data about each click that came from an ad auction.

But getting the GCLID into and out of the CRM can be a Herculean task in some organizations. Simply because control over implementation is out of the hands of the marketing team, it too often doesn’t get implemented right – or at all.

How To Do Offline Conversion Imports Without GCLIDs

Google now offers Enhanced Conversions for Leads, and without much fanfare solved one of these biggest challenges lead generation marketers have had with implementing Offline Conversion Imports.

While it still requires the unique GCLID, it now only has to be integrated with the lead form and no longer with the CRM. This is a major improvement that simplifies implementation.

Let’s look at how it works.

As the illustration shows, the advertiser gets to use a unique piece of customer information of their own to connect a Google click with different conversion stages in their CRM. And what better piece of unique lead data than someone’s email? It’s nearly always the first thing a lead form asks, so nearly every advertiser has it available.

Now the advertiser doesn’t need to remember the GCLID of each prospect in their CRM. They just tell Google which email address is associated with the GCLID (hashed for privacy) when the form is first filled out. From that point forward, they can just use the email address to tell Google a lead took the next step towards the ultimate conversion.

It’s a beautiful solution, really. Advertisers simply update the conversion tracking code on their landing page (which they likely already control and don’t need engineering’s help with), then use the existing email field from their CRM to tell Google when a lead turns into something more, like a customer.

Enhanced Conversions Allows For Enhanced Marketing

Optimization decisions are almost always based on data. When Optmyzr recommends a negative keyword, bid adjustment, or A/B ad test winner, it’s based on conversion data.

The better the conversion data available to platforms like Optmyzr or ad engines like Google, the better those tools can recommend optimizations that improve the performance of the KPIs you truly care about.

With Enhanced Conversions for Leads (or any form of Offline Conversion Imports), these tools get better data that aligns more closely with business objectives, and will offer better suggestions to improve your PPC campaigns.

So if you’ve not yet tried Offline Conversion Imports because it was too difficult to implement, now is a great time to try it again. Here’s a panel discussion with Google from last year going a bit deeper into offline conversions.

PPC Leaders Tell Optmyzr How to Build an In-House PPC Team

If online advertising plays a significant role in your growth strategy, it might be advisable to consider your own in-house PPC team.

Running an in-house PPC team gives businesses greater control over their PPC operations — from high-level strategy to details such as ad copy.

Another big reason why some businesses — especially bigger ones — build their own PPC teams is that in-house teams tend to have a deeper understanding of their business since they spend their full time working on just one business.

Before learning how to build your in-house PPC team, it’s essential to understand the differences between an in-house PPC team and an agency, and when to choose what.

Differences between in-house PPC and agencies, and when to pick each

Jannick Andersen, Traffic Manager at Proshop, points out some more differences stemming from his experience.

“My experience is that communication and time-to-market are a lot faster in-house. We are very satisfied with our agency (which currently has a more advisory/supportive role), but after we started our in-house team, we have both been able to run many more campaigns and have faster time-to-market.

After we started our in-house PPC team, PPC has become more important strategically. Meaning bigger budgets, more focus from management, and bigger interest from other departments.

When you do PPC through an agency, there’s a risk that it isn’t really on the radar in the company apart from a few key stakeholders who are in contact with the agency.”

Now that you’ve understood the core differences between the two, it’s time to know when you should pick one over the other.

When should you pick a PPC agency?

• You want to quickly expand and scale PPC marketing.
• You can’t afford to hire and train full-time staff.
• You want or need PPC specialists running your account.

When should you build an in-house PPC team?

• You want full transparency and greater control over your PPC activities; a dedicated team working solely on your brand.
• You want complete ownership of and security for your data.
• You want better communication between your stakeholders and the PPC team.
• You can afford to hire and retain permanent staff.
• You have access to good PPC talent.
• You are certain you’ll invest in PPC for a long period.
• You have access to technology and industry contacts.

Adding a bit more advice for marketing leaders building in-house PPC teams is Marin’s Anu Adegbola, one of PPC Hero’s top 25 experts for 2021.

“In the early days, there’s a lot of planning of what will happen in the transit.

It’s also important to know about access – what access level you have, what access level your team has, and where to go to remove unwanted access when you transit. And, timing is very important; you don’t want to make the transit during a time of the year when it’s going to be very busy for your business.

I won’t say there is much difference with moving your PPC operations in-house, just that you are a lot closer to the data and will need to lean on your in-house team instead of your agency team.”

How to build an in-house PPC team

Like Rome, in-house PPC teams aren’t built in a day. But with this three-point framework, you should be able to create a roadmap.

Create an advertising strategy.

Picking your strategy is the first step of making magic happen with PPC in-house. Don’t try to move ahead without a solid plan of action that’s in alignment with your overall marketing strategy.

Here’s a 5-step process to help you out.

1. Define your goals and what you want to achieve through PPC.

Whatever your goal is, it should tie directly to your business objective. Some of the more common goals companies have include:

• Lead generation
• Added sales and revenue
• Grow website traffic
• Increased brand awareness

2. Identify your target audience.

How well you identify your audience heavily influences the success of your ad campaign. If you don’t get your audience targeting right, you might cast too wide a net and burn through your budget.

So how can you get your targeting right?

If you’ve run campaigns in the past, gather insights from them and see what worked for you. Similarly, learn more from past sales and other marketing activities. They can be excellent sources of information.

If you’re new to PPC or haven’t had any past success with identifying your target audience, you can perform the following exercise:

• Conduct customer discovery calls every month along with your PPC team.
• Speak to 5-10 potential customers and really listen to what they say. Make sure that your advertising team is on the same page during this activity.
• Fine-tune your advertising efforts to address the insights and pain points that emerge from those conversations.

The more you do this, the better your targeting becomes. It gives you a clearer picture of your audience’s characteristics — demographics, psychographics, interests, fears, etc.

3. Choose the ad platforms.

PPC is a broad category that includes a variety of ad formats and ad platforms.

• Ad formats include search, display, video, shopping, email, etc.
• Ad platforms include Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, etc.

Based on the audience insights you gather in the previous step, you can understand where they spend their time. Target those platforms. A tool like SparkToro is a great way to find this information.

4. Create and run the ad campaign.

You got your audience targeting and ad platforms set. The next things to do are build your landing page, create your campaign, and take it live. Showcase your unique selling proposition well, write compelling ad copy, and launch your campaign.

5. Analyze your results and optimize your strategy.

Once you run an iteration of your campaign, you’ll see how your ads have performed, which keywords are working, and so on. Be sure not to judge too soon — most campaigns require a few weeks to gather statistically significant data, while using automation like Smart Bidding means you’ll need a threshold of ~50 conversions.

Gather those metrics and analyze them. On a basic level, here are the most important metrics you should consider:

• Impressions/Views: Number of times your ad is shown to people you’ve targeted.
• Click-Through Rate: Percentage of people who see your ad and click on it.
• Cost Per Click: The amount you’re paying every time someone clicks on your ad.
• Cost Per Acquisition: The amount you’re paying to get a conversion. It might take multiple clicks to get a single user to convert.
• Conversions: The number of people who’ve taken your desired action, such as purchasing a product or submitting a form.
• Conversion Value: The worth of a given conversion, usually expressed as a currency amount.
• Quality Score: Unique to Google Ads, this score identifies how relevant your ads and landing pages are to user queries.
• Return On Ad Spend: The amount of conversion value generated divided by the total amount spent.

Focus on those metrics that directly affect your goals. For example, if sales are your primary goal, focus on Cost Per Acquisition, Conversions, and Return On Ad Spend. If brand awareness is your goal, focus on impressions and views.

The purpose of analyzing your results is to optimize your campaign to improve its performance.

Assemble your PPC Avengers.

In-house PPC teams look a bit different for everyone, depending on the size and needs of your business. But before you hire anybody, you should first know what kind of PPC experts you need.

If Google is your top channel for generating traffic, it makes sense to hire a Google Ads specialist. If you see that most of your audience spends their time on Facebook, look for a Facebook Ads specialist.

You may even hire a team of specialists if you have various categories of products to run campaigns for that you feel will be an excessive amount of effort on one person.

Remember that whatever channel is important to you, it’s important that your first hires have some experience under their belts.

In some companies, an in-house PPC team works alongside other departments. The SEO team helps with keyword research, the copywriting team helps with ad copy, the design team helps with creatives, and the PPC team takes on the role of optimizing the campaigns and reporting the results to the management.

One other skill you should look out for when hiring a PPC specialist is how well they can leverage past campaign performance data for future campaigns. The person should be able to make use of the past data — maybe by working with your engineering or data analytics team — to bring better results in the future.

You should also make sure that your team is constantly in the know about the latest PPC industry trends and updates to bring fresh ideas to the table.

Gianluca Binelli of BoosterBox has this to say about keeping up with PPC industry trends:

“Don’t forget to build a window on the outside world. It is a structured modus operandi to keep a close eye on the industry and can be done through conferences, external speakers, agency consultants, and more. There are so many smart people beyond your in-house PPC team who could share their views with you and expand your bubble of genius. It’s key that the team you’re building is exposed to new ideas and different perspectives. This is crucial for their continuous professional development, bringing fresh and innovative ideas to the table, increasing the quality of the work and talent retention.”

A summary of what you might look for when hiring your initial PPC team includes:

• Proven ability to execute a PPC strategy
• Strong technical advertising skills
• Experience with third-party PPC management software (like Optmyzr)
• Ability to work with cross-functional teams
• Analytical and communication skills
• Creativity and a willingness to learn
• Recognized PPC certifications are nice too, but rarely necessary

Deploy tools and software to make things smoother.

If you have experience running a large-scale PPC campaign, you may notice that much of your time goes into routine and repetitive tasks. Spending that precious time and manual effort on such tasks can not only be tedious but can take away your focus from other important things that need your attention.

Many agencies leave such tasks in the hands of PPC management tools, and for a good reason.

For instance, Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Builder can launch 2 campaigns with 14 ad groups in just 23 seconds, while the same task takes up to 10 minutes to complete using the regular Google Ads editor.

Just to clarify, these tools are not an alternative to the ad platforms. They only add an extra layer of functionality to help you get the most value out of your ad spend while saving on many resources.

Now, some PPC managers shy away from using automation tools because they are skeptical about the results. But what you have to understand is that as your business picks up the pace, scaling your advertising efforts will be extremely important.

In such cases, PPC automation will become inevitable. For that, there’s automation layering solutions like Optmyzr.

Here’s one more thing to keep in mind: when you start using such a tool, you may be tempted to apply automation to your entire process. But what you should do is carefully select only those areas where automation makes sense and invest your time in areas like copywriting, optimization, and performance analysis that cannot otherwise be handled by the tool.

And before you shop for any PPC management tool, you need to understand one crucial thing: what questions should I be asking the different vendors that provide PPC management tools?

Aaron Levy, Tinuiti’s Group Director of SEM, lays out 3 important questions below:

1. How does this tool make things better for me?

2. What does it do that other tools can’t?

3. What’s my return on investment?

Bonus questions to ask vendors:

1. How flexible is your tool provider? What kind of support will you get?
2. What’s the product roadmap?
3. Are you looking for a piece of software or a back-end process?

While the list of questions you could ask a PPC software provider can be endless, these are some of the more critical ones to consider. Focus on the needs and goals of your organization, keep your personal goals as a marketer in mind, and assess and analyze at length to make an informed purchase.

Most of all, be ready to ask some hard questions of software developers — and be prepared to walk away from something that doesn’t fit your needs. Software is not just about cost, but the value it provides and whether the two of you are a good fit together.

Here’s one more great piece of advice from Jannick Andersen about avoiding common mistakes when running an in-house PPC team.

“I have always found that putting PPC efforts in perspective compared to other channels is a good strategy – usually, the ROI and scalability are the biggest selling points.

Having worked both in-house and in an agency, I think one of the biggest advantages in agencies is having lots of specialist colleagues and a variety of clients. So, it’s easier to test hypotheses, new features and be inspired by colleagues, and see what works on various clients.

Depending on the company, an in-house PPC team is typically smaller. That’s why there’s a bigger risk of getting caught in a loop of doing things the same way over and over again.

So don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo. Try to always stay on top of things. Experiment often. Reach out to your PPC network for any help. Read blogs and attend conferences (but ALWAYS have critical thinking), and try to do things better and more efficiently.”

Conclusion

Having your own in-house PPC team comes with a lot of benefits. But look out for common pitfalls. If your marketing leaders don’t have PPC specialization or expertise, reach out to an experienced consultant to assist you with the migration.

Remember that it takes time to set up a good in-house team. With the right strategy, team, and tools by your side, you can produce excellent results.

Get actionable PPC tips, strategies, and tactics from industry experts to your inbox once a month.

Q4 Prep Checklist for Winning Black Friday & Cyber Monday

For advertisers, Q4 goes beyond the holiday chaos. It’s the most competitive season of the year.

To top it off, 2025 brings its own set of challenges, with rising CPCs, tighter buying windows, and AI-driven competition reshaping how brands prepare for Black Friday & Cyber Monday (BFCM). Success won’t come from spending the most but from preparing the smartest. The winners will have their budgets, feeds, and campaigns ready well in advance of the sales hit. Everyone else will be left scrambling in the most expensive auctions of the year.

This checklist is your playbook for the season. With steps like budget pacing checks, feed clean-ups, and smart automations set up ahead of time, you’ll be ready to scale profitably when the big days arrive instead of putting out fires at the last minute.

Your pre-season game plan to get your campaigns ready

Here is a step-by-step guide to everything you need to do to get your campaigns ready before Thanksgiving.

1. Turn your product feed into a sales driver.

Before you can win clicks, you need to make sure shoppers can actually find and trust your products.

A clean, optimized product feed is the foundation of every high-performing Shopping or Performance Max campaign, especially during BFCM, when competition peaks and search behavior shifts overnight.

Think of your feed as your digital storefront: if it’s messy, incomplete, or outdated, you’ll lose ground to competitors who are ready with polished, relevant listings.

That means going beyond basic compliance and focusing on details that directly influence conversion.

• Check for accurate titles & descriptions (shorter for mobile, human-friendly wording like “light brown” instead of “sand”).
• Add seasonal keywords (“holiday gifts,” “Black Friday deals”).
• Fix disapprovals early to avoid downtime.
• Add custom labels: hero products, deals, low-margin items.

Read More: Google Shopping Campaigns: 3 Examples You Can Copy Now

🧠 Smart Moves with Optmyzr

• Shopping Campaign Management: Build or restructure campaigns directly from your Merchant feed, keeping them synced with real-time updates so pricing, promos, and stock changes don’t slip through.
• Feed Audit: Fix issues like missing attributes or benchmark price errors before they derail your campaigns during BFCM.
• Shopping Analysis: See which brands, categories, or price points deliver the highest ROAS and double down where it matters.
• Attribute Bidder: Adjust bids based on feed attributes like color, size, or price, even if they aren’t part of your campaign structure, so you can optimize without a full restructure.
• Negative Keywords Finder (Shopping): Reduce wasted spend by cutting low-performing or irrelevant queries, and direct traffic toward the ad groups where it converts best.
• Smart Product Labeler: Segment products into performance buckets (stars, laggards, potentials) with custom labels, so budgets and bids focus on what drives the most sales.

Create new Shopping campaigns by linking your Merchant feed, reviewing product attributes, and syncing fresh data

We cover everything about how to set up your Shopping and PMax campaigns for Q4 in our Learn With Optmyzr session below:

2. Structure campaigns the smart way.

How you structure your campaigns can make or break Q4. Going live early isn’t just about having ads running; it’s about giving your Shopping and Performance Max campaigns enough time to learn before the holiday auctions get pricey. That’s why it pays to launch at least 30 days ahead of Black Friday & Cyber Monday.

When it comes to setup, don’t rely on a single structure. Each approach has strengths you can use to your advantage:

• Performance Max: Maximum reach and automation, great for scaling fast but with less transparency.
• Standard Shopping: Greater control and visibility, especially useful for protecting margins on specific products.
• Hybrid: The best of both worlds. Use PMax for discovery and Standard for precision on high-value SKUs.

🧠 Smart Moves with Optmyzr

• Campaign Automator: Turn your product data into ready-to-run campaigns. Structure campaigns by category, brand, margin tier, or seasonal labels, and let Automator keep them updated automatically as inventory, prices, or promotions change. This gives you a scalable campaign structure without the manual build-out.

• Rule Engine: Layer on custom rules to refine campaign structures over time. For example, pause underperforming ad groups, split out high-ROAS products into their own campaigns, or adjust targeting conditions dynamically. This keeps your campaign structure lean and responsive throughout Q4.

3. Plan your budgets the smart way.

Q4 isn’t the season to “set it and forget it” with budgets. Higher CPCs, shorter buying windows, and sudden traffic spikes can wipe out your daily spend long before the real shoppers even show up. The smarter move is to lock in your overall budget, set aside extra for peak days, and put guardrails in place so you don’t overspend or undershoot when it matters most.

Here are key steps to cover:

• Lock in budgets early: Decide your total Q4 budget, then set aside some extra spend for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and key shopping weekends. These planned increases in your daily budget ensure campaigns don’t cap out too early.
• Plan for higher CPCs: Adjust daily budgets upward so you don’t run out by midday when demand (and conversion rates) are highest.
• Audit your automations: Review scripts and alerts that could pause or cap spend at the wrong time. While safety nets are definitely much needed, they can backfire in peak season if you’re not keeping an eye on them.

🧠 Smart Moves with Optmyzr

• Budget Pacing: Track spend against targets across Google, Microsoft, Facebook, and Amazon accounts. Get alerts when pacing is off so you can shift budgets before it’s too late.
• Spend Projection: Forecast end-of-month spend using historical data and seasonality so you know whether to scale up or rein it in.

Aside from this, you can also use Optmyzr’s budget scripts and Rule Engine to automatically pause overspending campaigns, pace spend to hit monthly targets, and set holiday-specific rules that boost or cut budgets based on performance.

• Pause When Budget Exceeds Script: Automatically stop campaigns when they exceed daily/weekly/monthly limits so you can avoid “surprise” overspends.
• Reach Target Monthly Spend Script: Easily adjust budgets throughout the month so you end right on target, avoiding both early exhaustion and end-of-month underspend.
• Rule Engine (Budget Scope): Create holiday-specific rules (e.g., boost budgets on Black Friday morning, scale back on slower days) to keep spend aligned with performance.

4. Spot issues before they cost you.

Q4 can feel like chaos, but smart monitoring brings the calm. By setting up the right alerts, you’ll know exactly when performance shifts, what’s causing it, and where action is needed. That way, you can stay on top of changes without constantly refreshing dashboards or digging through reports.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Set KPI thresholds for ROAS, CPA, and CVR so you know when performance is slipping.
• Check feed health daily for product disapprovals, missing attributes, or out-of-stock items. If there’s something wrong in any of these aspects, it can impact the visibility of your products, hurt performance, or lead to missed sales opportunities.
• Track budget pacing across campaigns to avoid mid-day exhaustion or underspending.

🧠 Smart Moves with Optmyzr

• KPI fall-off alerts: Flag products that were previously top performers (e.g. top 10% by ROAS or conversions) but drop into the bottom 50% with rising CPA. That’s your early-warning system to investigate bids, assets, or inventory before revenue slides.
• Feed-health alerts: Trigger a notification if disapproved items cross a threshold (count or %). Fixing this fast protects visibility.
• Budget pacing alerts: Watch aggregate spend across accounts and portfolios. You can choose to receive these alerts on email/Slack/MS Teams. Or set up auto-actions like pausing before a threshold and re-enabling during the next cycle when it’s safe.
• Channel mix check (PMax): Get a breakdown of where your PMax spend is going (Search vs. Shopping vs. Display, etc.). If you see an outsized share of spend going to Display, that’s a red flag. You can then use Rule Engine strategies to automatically exclude poor placements (e.g., irrelevant sites, kids’ games).

See where your PMax budget really goes with the Channel Distribution View

Additionally, you can use Rule Engine to build custom rules and actions. You can start by using any of the pre-built templates in the Rule Engine (e.g. Exclude expensive listing groups, Clean low-value Placement, etc) and then tailor the rules to suit your business playbook.

Your next step for winning Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Black Friday & Cyber Monday aren’t won by the biggest budgets, but by the smartest preparation. By cleaning up your product feed, structuring campaigns with intention, setting budgets that can handle the pressure, and monitoring performance with the right alerts, you’ll be ready to scale profitably instead of scrambling during the most competitive days of the year.

The work you do now determines whether Q4 feels like controlled growth or chaos. With Optmyzr, you can put this checklist into action and stay ahead with automation, insights, and alerts that keep your campaigns sharp.

And this is just the beginning. This guide kicks off our BFCM Prep Series, where we’ll share more deep dives, resources, and tools to help you win the holiday season. Stay tuned; the next playbooks are coming soon.

Not an Optmyzr user? Sign up for our free 14-day trial and explore how you can elevate your campaigns this shopping season.

How Optmyzr’s Geo HeatMap Solves Common Google Ads Location Targeting Challenges

If you spend enough time in PPC forums or Reddit threads, you’ll notice a recurring complaint: “My ads keep showing in places I don’t serve, and my budget is disappearing.”

Or, “Google Ads says I’m targeting the right city, but half my leads are from somewhere else.”

Location targeting is supposed to help advertisers reach the right people in the right place.

But the reality? It’s one of the trickiest parts of PPC campaign management. Between confusing default settings, unreliable location signals, and the sheer volume of data to sift through, advertisers are likely to get confused and waste spend.

This is exactly why we built the Optmyzr Geo HeatMap tool.

It takes what would otherwise be hours of spreadsheet-wrangling and turns it into an at-a-glance view of where your ads are winning and where they’re draining your budget.

Let’s walk through some of the most common challenges advertisers face and see how the Geo HeatMap makes them easy to solve.

Ads showing in the wrong places

One of the most common ways advertisers unintentionally waste budget in Google Ads comes from the “Presence or Interest” location setting.

By default, Google Ads doesn’t just show your ads to people physically located in your target area; it also shows them to anyone, anywhere in the world, who has shown interest in that location.

That means a Chicago plumbing company could end up paying for clicks from someone overseas who once Googled “apartments in Chicago.”

On the surface, it looks like your ads are reaching people connected to your area, but in practice, those clicks rarely turn into customers.

How Geo HeatMap helps

With Geo HeatMap, you don’t just see where your ads are showing; you also see how those places are performing.

For example, if you set the view to Region and look at Clicks, areas with more clicks than average will show up in green, and those with fewer will show up in red.

But here’s the important part: green doesn’t always mean “good.”

A region outside your service area might light up green on clicks simply because it’s generating lots of traffic. To know if that traffic is valuable, you can switch the metric to Conversions or ROAS.

If that same region turns red, it means the clicks aren’t turning into business, and that’s your sign that the “Presence or Interest” setting is wasting budget.

In other words, the Geo HeatMap helps you see both the volume and the value of traffic by geography. This helps you spot leaks quickly and fix them by switching to Presence only and excluding irrelevant locations.

Overlapping or overbroad target areas

A lot of advertisers try to “play it safe” by stacking multiple target areas in Google Ads. Say, a 10-mile radius, a 20-mile radius, and the whole city all at once.

Or they pick a very wide radius around their business.

On the surface, this seems harmless. In practice, it makes reporting messy and often pushes the budget into areas that are too far away to actually convert. You end up with clicks spread across overlapping zones, and no clear idea which area is really delivering results.

How Geo HeatMap helps

Just switch to the Bubble Mode, available in the top right corner.

When you click on a bubble in Bubble Mode, you see a roll-up of performance across multiple locations in that cluster.

In this example, the bubble combines data from several states and regions: Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming, and even areas like the San Francisco Bay and Silicon Valley.

Instead of looking at each one individually, you get the total picture:

• 1,562 impressions and 77 clicks show the reach and engagement.
• $307.16 cost tells you how much spend is tied up in this cluster.
• 5.21 conversions and a conversion value of 6.52 tell you what you actually got back.

This cumulative view is especially useful if you’ve set a broad radius or overlapping targets.

Google might be serving across multiple states, but in Bubble Mode, you can instantly see how that entire cluster is performing overall. If the conversions or ROAS are weak compared to spend, you know the outer parts of your radius aren’t pulling their weight.

From there, you can zoom in or switch to Non-Bubble Mode to break it down further and decide whether to exclude specific states or carve them into a separate campaign.

Broad radius targeting around physical locations

It’s tempting to set a large radius around your business location, say, 50 miles, just to “make sure” you capture everyone nearby. But the problem is that broad radii don’t distinguish between customers who are close enough to buy and those who are technically within the circle but unlikely to convert.

A pizza shop 30 miles away, or a dental clinic 45 minutes out, probably isn’t going to win much local business. The result? Your ads rack up clicks from people who are outside your true service zone, wasting budget.

How Geo HeatMap helps

The tool lets you break down performance by city, region, or country and instantly see where traffic is coming from and whether it’s actually producing results.

• If you start with Clicks, you’ll see the cities or regions driving the most traffic.
• Then, by switching to Conversions or ROAS, you can see which of those are actually delivering value.

This makes it clear that not every location in your broad targeting pool is worth the spend.

You may discover that a handful of key markets consistently light up green for conversions, while dozens of others fade red.

With that insight, you can focus your budget where the real demand is, and stop paying for geographies that look busy but don’t drive results.

Not segmenting campaigns by geography

One of the biggest mistakes in location targeting is lumping too many geographies into a single campaign. When that happens, strong-performing regions are forced to share budget with weaker ones.

The result? High-value areas don’t get the attention or spend they deserve, while underperformers quietly eat up budget.

How Geo HeatMap helps

The tool makes this problem visible in seconds. By breaking performance down by country, region, or city, you’ll see exactly which areas are pulling their weight and which ones aren’t.

If certain locations consistently show up green on conversions or ROAS, they may deserve their own dedicated campaign or budget. If others are glowing red, it’s a clear sign they’re dragging performance down and need to be excluded or bid down.

Ignoring “Happy Accidents” outside target regions

A common reaction when advertisers see traffic from outside their target area is to exclude it immediately.

The assumption is simple: “If it’s not in my target, it must be wasted.” But that isn’t always true.

Sometimes, ads leak into unexpected geographies, and those clicks actually convert. By cutting them off too quickly, advertisers risk missing out on profitable new markets.

How Geo HeatMap helps

This is where the red vs. green visual is so powerful.

Instead of treating all “off-target” traffic as bad, the Geo HeatMap shows you whether those clicks are actually driving results. If a city you never planned to target lights up green for conversions or ROAS, that’s not waste, it’s an opportunity.

Rather than excluding it, you can test it in its own campaign and see if it deserves more investment.

Using generic ad copy for all regions

Another mistake advertisers make is running the same ad copy everywhere, regardless of location. While it saves time, it ignores the fact that different regions often respond to different messaging.

What feels relevant in one city, state, or country may fall flat in another.

This leads to lower click-through rates, weaker engagement, and missed opportunities to connect with local audiences.

How Geo HeatMap helps

By breaking down performance by city, region, or country, you can see which areas respond well to your current messaging and which don’t.

If a region is driving clicks but failing to convert, it might not be just the targeting; it could be that the ad copy doesn’t resonate with that audience. For example, you might see two regions with similar click volumes, but only one delivers strong conversions.

That’s a signal that your messaging is connecting in one place but not the other.

Instead of running generic ads everywhere, you can create region-specific campaigns or ad variations that speak directly to local needs, language nuances, or cultural references.

One budget covering too many time zones or countries

It’s tempting to simplify campaign management by running one campaign across multiple countries or time zones. On the surface, it might look efficient—one budget, one set of ads, one place to manage performance.

But in reality, this approach forces very different markets to fight over the same budget.

High-performing regions often lose out, because spend is eaten up by less effective locations or by markets that activate earlier in the day due to time zone differences.

How Geo HeatMap helps

By mapping performance at the country or region level, the tool makes it obvious where budget cannibalization is happening.

You may notice that one country consistently shows up green for ROAS or conversions, while others lag behind in red.

That’s your cue to spin the top performers into their own campaigns or portfolio strategies with dedicated budgets, ensuring they’re no longer starved of spend by weaker regions.

Forgetting to pair geo insights with bid strategy

Spotting weak or strong regions is only half the battle. A common mistake is seeing poor results in a geography but leaving the bid strategy untouched. When that happens, Smart Bidding will keep funneling budget into those underperforming areas because it has no corrective signal.

The insight is there, you just haven’t acted on it.

How Geo HeatMap helps

The tool highlights exactly where performance is strong (green) or weak (red), but the real magic happens when you connect those insights to Optmyzr’s Rule Engine.

You can set automated rules like:

• If ROAS < threshold in [region], apply a -20% bid adjustment
• If conversions > X in [region], apply a +15% bid adjustment

This way, the regions that waste money get dialed down, and the ones that drive results get more support, without you having to manually tweak settings every week.

Simplify Google Ads location targeting with Optmyzr

Poor location targeting is one of the biggest silent budget killers in Google Ads.

Whether it’s wasted spend in irrelevant geographies, strong regions being cannibalized by weaker ones, or missed opportunities in untapped markets, the cost of not having clarity is real.

Optmyzr’s Geo HeatMap turns scattered location data into actionable intelligence.

You see exactly where your ads are working, where they’re wasting money, and where untapped growth potential exists.

Ready to tighten up your geo strategy? Book a demo with our team today!

FAQs

1. How can I optimize location targeting in Google Ads?

Start by reviewing the Locations report to see where clicks and conversions are actually coming from. Exclude areas with high spend but no conversions, and consider creating separate campaigns for top-performing regions so they don’t have to share budget with weaker ones. Over time, refine your targeting by city, region, or country rather than leaving it too broad.

2. Should I run one Google Ads campaign across multiple countries?

It’s usually better to avoid running a single campaign across multiple countries or time zones. Budgets get stretched too thin, and time zone differences can cause high-performing regions to lose spend to weaker ones. Splitting campaigns by country or region gives you more control and ensures each market gets the right budget allocation.

3. How do I know when to exclude a location in Google Ads?

If a location is consistently driving clicks without conversions, or showing poor return on ad spend (ROAS), it’s a strong candidate for exclusion. Look at at least 30 days of data before making decisions, since short-term results can be misleading.

4. Can location insights improve Smart Bidding strategies?

Yes. Smart Bidding works best when it has accurate signals. If you know certain regions convert better, applying bid adjustments or splitting them into their own campaigns ensures Smart Bidding can optimize more effectively. Likewise, lowering bids in poor-performing areas prevents wasted budget.

5. Does location targeting work for both eCommerce and lead generation campaigns?

Yes. For eCommerce, precise location targeting helps direct budget to regions with strong ROAS and shipping coverage. For lead generation, it ensures you’re reaching prospects in serviceable geographies, preventing wasted spend on leads you can’t fulfill.

5 Google Ads Challenges PPC Managers Vent About (and How to Fix Them)

Most PPC problems don’t start with a disaster. They start with a slow bleed.

A report that takes three hours instead of one. A budget that stalls for no clear reason. A CPC that spikes without warning. An “urgent” client email that lands at 9:01 AM, and again at 9:05.

None of these issues are catastrophic. But stacked together, they grind teams down and make performance flatline. And if you’ve spent any time on r/PPC, you know this isn’t rare, it’s the norm.

We picked out five of the most common challenges PPC managers vent about and looked at how to actually solve them.

In this article, we’ll break down each pain point and show practical, time-saving ways Optmyzr can help turn those frustrations into wins.

Challenge 1: Client reporting is dreadful

Ask any PPC manager what consumes their time, and reporting is likely to be on the list.

It’s not just pulling numbers but wrestling with endless spreadsheets, formatting charts for picky clients, and answering the dreaded “so… how are we doing compared to last month?”

The problem? Advertisers spend hours packaging data when they’d rather be optimizing accounts. Worse, generic reports often overwhelm clients with raw numbers but fail to tell a story.

That’s why reporting often becomes a constant pain point.

How Optmyzr fixes it

Start with templates, not a blank page.

Pre-built templates like the Executive Summary Report pull in account-wide performance and instantly highlight wins and losses.

You can customize them so clients see what actually matters: conversions, ROAS, or top performers, without drowning in irrelevant metrics.

Reports that answer back.

Instead of static dashboards, Optmyzr gives you reports with a built-in AI sidekick.

You can click on pre-set questions like “Summarize the key points of this report” or “Identify 3 areas needing attention” and get instant answers.

It feels less like sifting through numbers and more like having a mini-analyst inside the report.

Add tools that explain the why.

Numbers alone don’t satisfy clients. If conversions drop, they’ll ask, “But why?” and that’s where the PPC investigator comes in.

It’s a widget you can drop right into your report.

Instead of you manually digging through campaigns, the tool maps how impressions, clicks, and conversions are connected, showing exactly what caused the change.

Turn data into stories with AI

Another widget, the PPC Narrator, auto-writes a summary of what happened in the account.

Think of it as a plain-English “executive note” that lives inside the report. You choose the sentiment (positive, neutral, critical), and it generates a narrative like:

“Conversions increased by 12% last month, driven by mobile traffic. CPCs remained stable, while impression share improved due to higher ad rank.”

Now, even if clients skim the report, they’ll still walk away with the big picture.

Automate delivery

Schedule reports to hit inboxes (or Slack/Teams) on the 1st or 5th of the month, so you’re not hesitating when a client asks for an update.

Also Read: 12 PPC Reporting Tools That Tell the Story Behind Your Campaigns

Challenge 2: No time to do ad optimizations

Running Google Ads simply means balancing a lot of moving parts. PPC managers are flooded with metrics, reports, and errors to check, so there’s rarely enough time to give every campaign the attention it deserves.

On top of that, Google Ads keeps throwing in asset optimization suggestions, random errors, and new features to monitor. It feels like almost every time you open the account, there are ten new fires to put out.

But the biggest challenge is there’s simply not enough time in the day.

Between reporting, client calls, and strategy, PPC managers struggle to give ads the optimization they really need. Important improvements get delayed, and campaigns run on autopilot longer than they should.

How Optmyzr helps

Think of Optmyzr Express as your daily to-do list for ad accounts.

Instead of digging through endless reports and dashboards, Optmyzr Express shows you optimization suggestions across Google Ads, Amazon Ads, Microsoft Ads, and even Yahoo Japan Ads, all in one place.

• Quick wins in minutes: It works like an inbox. You log in, see suggestions (like “pause low-performing ads” or “add high-converting search terms”), and take action with just one click.

• Fast actions: Each suggestion comes with an Apply button to make the change instantly, or a Snooze option if you want to revisit it later.
• Stay organized: You can filter suggestions by account or type, and archive the ones you don’t ever want to see again.
• Backed by data: Recommendations are based on performance data from the last 30–90 days, so they’re timely and relevant.
• Multi-account support: Whether you manage one account or dozens, everything shows up in one dashboard.

With Optmyzr Express, what normally takes hours of checking reports and accounts can be done within a few minutes. It saves time, reduces overwhelm, and ensures that important optimizations actually get implemented instead of being pushed aside.

👉 Check all the available optimizations in the tool here!

Challenge 3: Getting clicks but not conversions

Sometimes campaigns look healthy on the surface: clicks and impressions are steady, search terms look relevant, and the landing page is solid.

But conversions just don’t happen.

This is one of the most frustrating challenges for PPC managers. You try new campaigns, pause old ones, even reset your strategy, but leads still don’t come in.

And you’re left wondering: Was it the new keywords? A change in audience behavior? Competition? Or something in the account setup that’s blocking conversions?

How Optmyzr helps

Our PPC Investigator makes it easier to understand exactly why performance shifted. It shows not just what happened, but where and why it happened.

Cause Chart

The Cause Chart helps you trace how a change in one metric flows through the rest of your performance data.

In the example below, conversions increased by 46 during the selected period.

The chart shows that this growth was driven by a higher conversion rate (+42%) and an increase in clicks (+16%), which in turn came from a small lift in impressions (+0.86%) and a stronger CTR (+15%).

By mapping the relationships between impressions, clicks, CPC, CTR, and conversions, the Cause Chart makes it easy to see not just what changed, but how each metric contributed to the overall result.

Root Cause Analysis

Drill down to see whether the drop is tied to a specific campaign, ad group, keyword, placement, or device. In the example below, PPC Investigator shows conversions rising sharply from 9 to 84 in just 30 days.

The Optmyzr AI Summary explains the change clearly: growth came mainly from the keyword “X” (+42 conversions), users in the “Not a parent” audience segment (+29 conversions), and the male demographic (+29 conversions).

This makes it easy to see why conversions increased and which audience segments or keywords drove the improvement.

While PPC Investigator helps you uncover why conversions dropped or shifted, Conversion Grabber helps you recover lost leads and capture more.

The tool finds keywords that are already bringing conversions but aren’t showing often enough, and suggests a bid increase so they can capture more leads.

You can apply bid changes automatically (e.g., +10%) or set custom bids manually, depending on how aggressive you want to be.

Challenge 4: Google Ads won’t spend the full budget

You set the budget, but Google Ads doesn’t always spend it fully.

Campaigns crawl, pacing falls behind, and you end up explaining why the account isn’t using the money that was allocated.

The tough part is figuring out what’s actually causing the slowdown.

Sometimes there’s not enough search volume. Other times, the budget sits in campaigns that can’t scale, while stronger ones are left underfunded.

Either way, underspending means missed opportunities and accounts that feel stuck in first gear.

How Optmyzr helps

Our Spend Projection tool makes it easy to see whether you’re on track to hit your budget or if spend will fall short. It analyzes past performance, daily spend patterns, and seasonality to forecast how much of your budget will actually be spent by the end of the cycle.

Here’s how it helps with budget pacing:

• Clear Forecasts: Instead of guessing, you’ll know if your campaigns are likely to underspend, overspend, or hit the target.
• Daily Guidance: The tool shows how much you need to spend each day to reach your goal, helping you take corrective action early.
• AI Summaries: Get plain-language insights about trends, weekday patterns, or seasonal shifts so you don’t waste time digging through charts.

But spotting the pacing problem is only half the battle.

Sometimes campaigns don’t spend the full budget because funds are tied up in places where they simply can’t scale, while other high-performing campaigns remain underfunded.

That’s where our Optimize Budgets – Single Account tool comes in. It makes sure your ad money is spent in the best way.

You pick the campaigns and set your monthly budget. The tool then checks if you’re on track, underspending, or overspending, and shows you options to fix it.

For example, say the advertiser wants to spend $7,000 this month.

But based on current performance, Google Ads is only on track to spend about $5,987 (that’s just 85.5% of the target). The tool points this out clearly and even shows that you’d need to average $262 per day to hit the full budget, which is $78 more per day than what you’re currently spending.

The table below then gives you options. For example:

• If nothing changes, you’ll finish around $5,987 spend with 97 conversions.
• If you could push spend up to $7,157 (+20%), the model estimates you could reach about 102 conversions (a +5% lift).
• Going further to $7,287 (+22%) could push you to 103 conversions (+6%), though at a higher cost per conversion.

So in this view, Optmyzr is showing: “Here’s the gap between what you want to spend and what’s actually being spent. Here are scenarios for reallocating budget to help you capture more volume and get closer to the target.”

Challenge 5: Paying high CPC even with no competition

It can be confusing to see impression share at 90–100% and still notice CPCs holding steady around $1. Even in markets with limited competition (niche markets), advertisers often expect lower costs but don’t see them reflected in their reports.

The problem is that Google doesn’t only use competition to set CPCs.

Even if you’re the only bidder, other factors, like ad relevance, expected CTR, and landing page experience, decide how much you pay. Google also has minimum bid requirements for each auction, and those don’t vanish just because you’re the only one bidding.

If your ads or pages don’t hit Google’s thresholds, CPCs stay higher than you’d expect.

That gap between “no competition” and “still paying a dollar per click” creates doubt and frustration. Advertisers start wondering if Google is overcharging, and clients get concerned about costs eating into margins.

How Optmyzr helps

Optmyzr gives you visibility into why CPCs are high and the tools to bring them down.

The Quality Score Tracker breaks down each component: CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience, to help you spot exactly what’s dragging down performance.

If CPCs are being pushed up because of low relevance or weak CTR, you’ll see it right away.

The PPC Investigator takes this a step further by showing whether a spike in CPC is tied to a drop in CTR, a change in keyword performance, or shifts in impressions.

Instead of guessing, you know what triggered the increase.

When it comes to improving ad quality, Optmyzr has Ad Text Optimization (RSAs). This tool helps you test variations, refine headlines, and improve CTR, so your Quality Score goes up and CPC naturally comes down.

You can also clean up wasted spend with query mining tools like Search Term N-Grams and the Negative Keyword Finder, which help remove irrelevant clicks that hurt efficiency and CTR.

Finally, the URL Checker ensures landing pages aren’t quietly working against you.

If a page is broken, slow, or showing “out of stock” messages, Optmyzr flags it before it damages your landing page experience score.

Overcome your PPC challenges with Optmyzr

Running Google Ads will always come with hurdles: reports, optimizations, CPC swings, or budgets that don’t pace the way they should.

The hard part is keeping on top of all of it without losing focus on growth.

Optmyzr is built to take those frustrations off your plate. From reporting to optimizations, from CPC analysis to budget pacing, it gives you the visibility and automation you need to fix issues before they spiral.

Book a free trial and see how Optmyzr can help you run PPC campaigns more smoothly.

FAQs

1. What are the biggest challenges in Google Ads?

Common challenges include time-consuming reporting, budgets that don’t pace correctly, rising CPCs even with low competition, and campaigns that generate clicks but not conversions. PPC managers often struggle to balance these while still focusing on strategy.

2. Why is my Google Ads budget not spending?

Budgets may underspend if there’s limited search volume, if Google directs spend to campaigns that can’t scale, or if targeting settings restrict reach. Tools like budget pacing reports can highlight where money is stuck and how to reallocate it.

3. Why are my CPCs high with little competition?

High CPCs aren’t always caused by competitors. Google also factors in Quality Score, expected CTR, ad relevance, and landing page experience. Even with 90–100% impression share, weak Quality Score signals can keep CPCs elevated.

4. Why am I getting clicks but no conversions in Google Ads?

Clicks without conversions may be caused by mismatched keywords, poor audience targeting, landing page issues, or shifts in user behavior. Analyzing search terms, conversion paths, and audience segments can uncover the root cause.

5. How can PPC managers save time on Google Ads reporting?

Instead of manually building reports, using automated reporting tools with templates and AI summaries can speed up client reporting, highlight key wins and losses, and answer “why” performance shifted.

5 Underrated Google Ads Optimizations (That You Can Automate with Optmyzr)

Marketers on Reddit recently opened up about the less obvious Google Ads optimizations that delivered outsized results. The kind of tweaks that don’t get much attention but drive serious performance gains.

The catch? These tactics are often manual, time-consuming, and hard to scale across multiple accounts.

That’s where Optmyzr comes in.

You can automate, scale, and monitor all five of these underrated (but powerful) optimizations without adding more to your plate.

Here’s how to put them into action today.

1. Automate negative keyword management

Negative keywords tell Google which searches not to show your ads for, so you don’t waste budget on irrelevant clicks.

Simple in concept but messy in execution.

That’s what makes this optimization underrated: It’s easy to overlook, hard to scale, and almost impossible to manage well across multiple campaigns without automation.

How Optmyzr helps

For Search Campaigns

The Negative Keyword Finder (Search) pulls your Google Ads or Microsoft Ads search terms report and breaks queries down, showing you exactly which ones are wasting spend.

• See key metrics at a glance: impressions, clicks, CTR, cost, CPC, conversions.
• Add individual words or full queries as negatives.
• Bulk-edit match types, archive irrelevant suggestions, or apply changes to shared lists.
• Push changes to accounts or campaigns instantly (no spreadsheets, no tab-hopping).

For Shopping Campaigns

The Negative Keyword Finder (Shopping) acts like an A/B test for queries across ad groups:

• Duplicate Queries: Finds search queries showing in multiple ad groups, identifies the underperforming one, and suggests adding it as an exact match negative.
• Low-Performing Queries: Surfaces queries within an ad group that have low ROAS or high cost/conversion compared to the group average, and recommends them as negatives.

This ensures traffic is automatically funneled to the most profitable ad groups while cutting out generic or budget-draining clicks.

2. A/B testing ads

Running multiple ads per ad group is a smart move as it gives your account room to test, learn, and improve. But in the day-to-day of campaign management, it’s easy for ad copy to go untouched for weeks or months.

Ads stay live for months (sometimes longer) without being reviewed, rotated, or refreshed. And while Google may rotate ads automatically, it doesn’t always align with your actual business goals. Without a structured way to A/B test and replace ad copy, most campaigns face performance issues.

Why this optimization gets overlooked:

• One ad quietly eats up the budget but doesn’t convert.
• Another performs better, but never gets prioritized.
• Google rotates ads, but not always in a way that aligns with your goals.
• Without structured testing, performance flatlines, and you don’t know why.

A/B testing your ad copy is one of the easiest ways to improve CTRs and conversion rates. But only if it’s done consistently, which is tough to manage manually across multiple accounts.

How Optmyzr helps

Optmyzr makes it easy to test ad copy, find what works, and keep your best-performing ads live (all in one place).

Here’s how:

Automatically compare ad performance

Optmyzr’s A/B Testing tool compares ads within the same ad group and tells you which ones are underperforming. It will then suggest pausing these ads, and you can also create a new version right from the same tool.

Quickly create new RSAs

Need to replace a paused ad or create new ones from scratch? Optmyzr helps you build Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) in bulk:

• Use AI-powered suggestions for headlines and descriptions.
• Pull in content from your existing ads.
• Create RSAs across multiple ad groups and accounts in just a few clicks.

Update or repurpose winning ad copy

The Ad-Text Optimization (RSA) tool helps you iterate on ads without starting from scratch:

• Find and Replace: Make quick text edits to update tone, offers, or branding.
• Bulk CSV Upload: Download ad copy, make edits in a spreadsheet, and upload to create new ads fast and in bulk.

💡Also Read: New to Optmyzr? Here’s What You Should Test In Your Free Trial Period

3. Optimize budget allocation based on product profitability

Not all products are created equal, and they shouldn’t be treated that way in your ad campaigns.

Some products generate high profit margins, convert easily, and perform well even with minimal advertising spend. Others might look good on the surface but consistently drain your budget without delivering real returns.

However, standard campaign structures in Google Ads often treat all products the same.

Without clear segmentation based on actual performance, you might waste budget on the wrong products.

Why this optimization gets overlooked:

• Profitability isn’t always reflected in campaign data.
• High-performing, low-cost products often get buried.
• Manually segmenting product groups is time-consuming and hard to scale.
• Merchant Center feeds don’t automatically adjust to performance shifts.
• Managing bids across large inventories without automation is nearly impossible.

This makes it easy for inefficiencies to creep in, especially when product catalogs grow or performance fluctuates quickly.

How Optmyzr helps

Optmyzr’s Smart Product Labeler is built specifically to solve this challenge in Shopping and Performance Max campaigns. It helps you automatically segment your product feed based on real-world performance, so you can allocate budget and bids where they’ll have the most impact.

Segment products by performance

The Smart Product Labeler assigns every product to one of five custom performance categories:

• Heroes: Top-performing, high-ROAS products. Great candidates for increased bids and budgets.
• Sidekicks: Solid performers close to breaking out. Gradually increase spend here.
• Villains: High-spend, low-ROAS products. Reduce bids or consider excluding.
• Zombies: Low-traffic items that haven’t had enough exposure yet. Use test-and-learn strategies.
• Flukes: Surprisingly high-ROAS products with minimal exposure. Nurture with moderate bid increases.

The segmentation is based on ROAS and Cost, so you’re acting on what truly matters, not just impressions or clicks.

Keep labels automatically updated

No need to constantly download reports or adjust feeds manually.

As performance changes, the Smart Product Labeler automatically updates your product labels, keeping your strategy in sync with reality.

4. Selective conversion reporting on lead gen campaigns

Instead of counting every lead from your campaigns as a conversion (like anyone who fills out a form), only count the leads that are actually valuable, such as those that are qualified or result in a real sale.

When you do this, your cost per lead (CPL) may look a little higher, but it will be more accurate.

In the long run, your client will see a much better close rate (more sales from those leads) and will actually spend less money per sale overall.

👉 In short: Don’t focus on reporting every lead. Focus on the ones that matter; it saves money and gives a clearer picture of success.

How Optmyzr helps with selective conversion reporting

Optmyzr makes it easier to turn offline conversion data into actionable insights.

While the actual import of offline conversions happens in Google Ads (from your CRM or sales platform), once those conversions are in Google Ads, Optmyzr can help you report, analyze, and optimize campaigns around them.

Using the Rule Engine, you can:

• Build custom rules that track only qualified leads and closed deals (not all leads).
• Automate reporting so that only the most valuable conversions show up in your reports.
• Optimize efficiently by targeting your spend toward campaigns, ad groups, or keywords that drive real sales.
• Create scalable workflows that automatically identify high-cost/low-return segments and shift budget to better-performing areas.

Here’s a sample workflow:

If you’d like to see how this works in action, our team would be glad to walk you through this and other strategies you can build in the Rule Engine. Feel free to book a demo here.

5. Landing page A/B testing

Your ads can be perfectly targeted, but if the landing page falls flat, conversions won’t follow.

Small changes like making calls-to-action more prominent or trimming down long, cluttered pages can deliver massive lifts in performance.

Why this optimization gets overlooked:

• Landing page testing often requires designers, developers, or third-party tools.
• It’s hard to quickly see which pages are draining the budget without conversions.
• Winning page elements don’t always get reused across the account.

How Optmyzr helps with landing page optimization

Optmyzr’s Landing Page Analysis tool helps you zero in on which pages need improvement and which are worth replicating.

Here’s how it works:

• Aggregate data across the account: See performance metrics for the same landing page URL, no matter how many campaigns or ad groups use it.
• Spot problem pages instantly: Find “expensive” pages (high CTR, low conversion rate) or those with high potential (good conversions but low CTR).
• Learn from top performers: Identify pages with strong CTRs and conversion rates, then apply what works across weaker pages.
• Download and share insights: Export suggestions into CSV to review with your team or client.

While performance is one side of the equation, ensuring that all your ads actually point to live, functional pages is just as critical.

That’s where you can use Optmyzr’s URL checker. It automatically scans your ads, keywords, sitelinks, and even Performance Max asset groups to catch broken links, 404 errors, or out-of-stock messages, before they waste budget.

You can even set it to automatically pause ads with broken URLs or simply generate reports for your team. Together, Landing Page Analysis and URL Checker make sure your campaigns not only lead people to the right pages but also to pages that convert profitably.

Put these Google ads optimizations to work with Optmyzr

The best Google Ads optimizations aren’t always the flashiest ones.

As we’ve seen, tactics like smarter negative keyword management, consistent ad testing, profit-based product segmentation, selective conversion reporting, and landing page improvements can lead to significant wins, especially when automated.

The challenge is that doing these consistently and at scale is tough without the right tools.

From analysis to automation, it helps you cut out the manual work and focus on strategies that actually help you improve your Google Ads performance.

👉 Ready to put these underrated optimizations into practice? Start your fully functional 14-day free trial with Optmyzr today!

FAQs

1. Why are negative keywords important in Google Ads?

Negative keywords prevent your ads from showing on irrelevant searches. This saves budget and ensures clicks come from users more likely to convert.

2. Can negative keyword management be automated?

Yes. Tools like Optmyzr’s Negative Keyword Finder automate the process by scanning search terms, identifying wasted spend, and suggesting negatives across campaigns.

3. How does A/B testing improve ad performance?

A/B testing helps you compare multiple ads, identify the best-performing copy, and continually refresh underperforming ads to boost CTRs and conversions.

4. Does Google Ads rotate ads automatically?

Yes, but not always in a way that matches your business goals. Structured A/B testing ensures you’re optimizing toward meaningful results, not just impressions.

5. Why are landing pages critical for Google Ads success?

Even with great targeting, poor landing pages cause lost conversions. Testing layouts, CTAs, and copy can significantly boost conversion rates.

6. How does Optmyzr help with landing page optimization?

The Landing Page Analysis tool identifies high-performing and underperforming pages, showing where to improve and what to replicate.

7. How can I avoid broken or outdated landing page links in ads?

Optmyzr’s URL Checker scans your ads, sitelinks, and PMAX assets for broken links, 404 errors, or “out of stock” pages, and can even pause affected ads automatically.

Never Blow Your PPC Budget Again: 7 Smart Tactics Every Advertiser Needs

Managing PPC budgets can feel overwhelming; between tracking spend across accounts, preventing overspending, and making sure no budget goes to waste.

The truth is, even small inefficiencies can drain ROI fast.

That’s where Optmyzr comes in. In this article, we’ll show you how to simplify PPC budget management with smart, automated solutions.

You’ll learn practical ways to predict spend, reallocate budgets, and stay in control, without the stress of constant monitoring.

1. Use historical data to predict future spend.

One of the biggest challenges in PPC management is knowing whether your campaigns are pacing correctly against the budget you’ve set.

The Spend Projection tool takes the constant guesses out of this process.

It analyzes recent performance, historical seasonality, and day-of-week trends to forecast how much your account is likely to spend by the end of the selected date range.

Rather than showing a single number, the tool gives you a spend range: minimum, maximum, and expected. That way, you can anticipate whether you’re at risk of overspending or underspending.

What advertisers gain from Spend Projection:

• A clear view of daily and cumulative spend projections that show how budgets are likely to unfold
• The exact daily spend required to stay on track with your simulation budget
• AI-powered summaries that surface patterns like weekday fluctuations or seasonal spikes, so you don’t have to manually interpret the data
• Support for Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Amazon Ads, ensuring consistency across platforms

The data is available in three different places:

1. All accounts Dashboard: Set monthly budget targets for your connected ad accounts, receive email notifications when accounts overpace or underpace, and get an overview of all your accounts’ budget pacing in one place.

2. Spend Projection tool: If you’ve specified a target budget for the account on the All Accounts Dashboard, we’ll use the same amount as the simulation budget to show you some further insights in this tool. Based on your actual performance, we can tell you how you are pacing against your target.

For example, if you should have spent $100 by today but your actual cost is only $90, then you are pacing at 90%, slightly behind where you should be.

Try it now

3. Performance Reports: Whether you want to share a projection with stakeholders or simply stay informed about your spend, scheduling a report with the Spend Projection widget ensures that the data is consistently delivered to the appropriate people at the right time. Include visualizations of cumulative and daily spending trends against your spend target.

Try it now

2. Allocate budget efficiently for enhanced performance

Optmyzr offers two powerful budget optimization tools: Optimize Budgets (single account) and Optimize Budgets Across Platforms. Here are the key differences between the two:

Translate monthly budget targets into daily budgets

It’s important to note that Google Ads and other ad platforms typically operate with daily budgets at the campaign or ad set level, as well as shared budgets that encompass multiple campaigns. Use these optimization tools to bridge the gap between monthly budget targets commonly used by companies and the daily budgets required by ad platforms.

Let’s take a couple of examples:

Example 1: Avoid overspending.

In this case, the account is projected to spend $6,017 against a budget of $5,000, which means it is at risk of overspending by 20%. The overspend is primarily driven by one campaign, which accounts for more than half of the total projected spend, while a few others contribute moderately.

At the same time, some campaigns show little to no actual spend, even though budgets are allocated to them, leading to inefficient distribution of funds.

To avoid overspending, consider reducing the daily budget for the highest-spending campaign, as this will have the most direct impact on bringing costs closer to the budget target.

Additionally, review and reallocate budgets from inactive or underutilized campaigns to ensure that funds are concentrated on those that deliver meaningful performance.

This way, the account can remain within budget while protecting conversions.

Example 2: Avoid underspending

In our second example, we have clicked on the ‘Get Optimization Suggestions’ button, which provides us with various spend scenarios to consider. Here, the budget group is unlikely to reach the $7,000 monthly target, as the current projected spend is only $6,017 (86% of the target).

This creates a risk of underspending, which means the account may not fully utilize the allocated budget.

To address this, we can use the optimization table to analyze different spend scenarios and evaluate their impact on performance metrics such as conversions, cost per conversion, and conversion value.

By selecting higher-spend scenarios (for example, the row projecting $6,641 or $6,901), we can explore how increasing daily budgets in specific campaigns could generate more conversions and raise overall spend closer to the $7,000 goal.

While this increases costs, it helps maximize budget utilization and ensure the account reaches its monthly target, thereby optimizing conversion value.

Try Optimize Budgets (Single platform) now.

Try Optimize Budgets Across Platforms now.

3. Identify and fix lost impression share across accounts quickly.

Optmyzr Express shows you bite-sized suggestions for all of the most important aspects of your ads for continual account improvement.

The Fix Impression Share Lost Due To Budget - Campaign Budget Express optimization focuses on boosting the budget for campaigns experiencing impression share loss due to budget constraints.

By increasing the budget, you can capture a greater number of impressions and improve visibility. The tool provides initial suggestions and allows for further adjustments, giving you flexibility in optimizing your campaign’s budget allocation.

You can breeze through the suggestions across accounts in a matter of minutes. And make sure to check out the other Express optimizations available for your favorite accounts while you’re at it.

Try Optmyzr Express now

Also Read: Why Your Google Ads CPC Spiked Overnight (And How to Prevent It)

4. Automated budget control to prevent overspending

Flexible Budgets is an Enhanced Script™ for Google Ads that provides automation for budget management.

If you’ve been spending time manually checking budgets on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to make sure you’re not overshooting the target, this script will automatically do this for you every single hour.

By setting up this script, you can automate the process of pausing campaigns, ad groups, and keywords and labeling them when the cost exceeds the specified maximum. You can also have the script re-enable the same entities when your budget resets.

Let’s take a couple of examples:

Example 1: Pause campaigns when weekly spend cap is reached.

Here’s how you’d set this one up to prevent an account from spending significantly more than $5,000 per week:

This script can be copied and pasted into Google Ads (either at the Manager/MCC or individual account level) and scheduled to run automatically every hour.

Example 2: Test new keywords without exhausting too much budget

While this script is very useful for monthly budget management, it can do a lot more.

For example, you can apply budgets at any level of the Google Ads hierarchy: account, campaign, ad group, keyword, or ad. You can set budgets to be monthly, weekly, or daily.

An example use case is to enforce a daily budget for a set of experimental keywords (which you have labeled) so that they are not taking up too much budget from old keywords you already know to be performing well.

Try it now

5. Avoid underspending with smart adjustments

With the second budget management Enhanced Script™, you can effortlessly stay on track with your clients’ budget targets and ensure optimal spending without the hassle of constant monitoring and manual adjustments. By combining this script with Optmyzr’s solutions to stop budgets from overspending, you gain better control over your monthly spend.

Distribute the remaining budget intelligently

One of the standout features of this script is its ability to intelligently distribute the remaining budget across the days left in the month, whether you’re working with campaign or shared budgets.

You can choose from different allocation methods, like our advanced approach that leverages historical data to allocate higher budgets on days with greater potential for clicks.

For example, if Mondays typically see higher search volumes and engagement, the script can allocate a larger budget for that day.

To fine-tune the script’s behavior, you can adjust settings such as the number of weeks of data to consider for determining day-of-week spend. Additionally, you have the option to carry over any unused budget from the previous month, ensuring efficient budget utilization.

With the Enhanced Scripts™, you can focus on delivering exceptional results for your clients while staying within their budgetary constraints. It’s a user-friendly solution that empowers you to optimize budget allocation and drive engagement.

Try it now

6. Allocate different budgets for different days of the week (and other rule-based optimizations).

With the Rule Engine, you have the power to tailor your daily budgets to align with performance metrics and even external factors like the day of the week.

Imagine having the ability to fine-tune your budget allocation with precision. The Rule Engine empowers you to do just that; you can set logical rules that automatically adjust your daily budgets based on specific criteria and schedule your strategies to run on partial or full automation.

Here are a couple of examples.

Example 1: Lower budget for weekends and holidays.

Depending on your business, you may see lower conversion rates or potential customer activity on specific days - e.g., on public holidays or certain days of the week.

To maintain a consistent ad presence throughout the week while prioritizing higher budgets for weekdays, you can easily implement a rule similar to the example provided above: “Allocate a daily budget of $100 if today is Saturday or Sunday. For all other days, set the daily budget to $120.”

This approach enables you to maintain visibility and engagement over the weekend while strategically allocating higher budgets to weekdays.

Example 2: Increase budget for high-return, low-CPC campaigns

Using the if-then-else statements, you can increase your daily budget on days when the cost-per-click (CPC) is low and the return on ad spend (ROAS) exceeds a certain threshold.

In this scenario, the objective is to identify all the campaign-level budgets that meet specific criteria in order to optimize their performance. With a rule like this, you can increase the daily budget by 10% for any campaign budget that has exhibited the listed characteristics within the last 14 days:

• ROAS exceeding 500%
• An average CPC lower than $1.10
• A daily budget below $330
• Currently underperforming (underpacing) with a spend utilization of less than 70%.

Additionally, as you have full control over the conditions and actions, it’s easy to define limits within which the budget changes need to happen.

With this rule, we can effectively identify campaigns that demonstrate strong ROAS and cost efficiency while having room for improvement in terms of spend utilization. This allows us to focus on optimizing these campaigns to increase their performance and maximize the return on investment.

Try now

7. Monitor budgets seamlessly with the budget dashboard

Managing PPC budgets isn’t only about fixing issues or reallocating funds; it also requires a clear view of how budgets are pacing, where money is being spent, and which opportunities need attention.

The Budget Dashboard in Optmyzr provides this visibility in one place, making it easier to monitor and adjust budgets across single accounts or multi-account portfolios.

What you’ll find in the Budget Dashboard:

Budget Target widget: Set or edit monthly budget targets and cycle dates, so your pacing aligns with business reporting needs.

Cost Summary and Pacing: Quickly see how much has been spent, whether you’re on track, and how many days remain in the cycle.

Spend Projection widget: Access projections directly, with the option to dive deeper into the full Spend Projection tool.

Day-of-the-Week Trends: Identify high- and low-performing days to allocate budgets more strategically.

You can get an AI-generated summary of the chart by clicking on the ‘Summarize with AI’ icon (✨). The summary will highlight your high and low spend days of the week, helping you optimize your daily budget allocations and refine your bidding strategies.

Media Mix and Performance Distribution: Understand how spend is distributed across platforms and accounts, with AI summaries to highlight key insights.

Budget Monitoring and Scripts: Review all budget monitors and automation scripts in place, so you always know what guardrails are active.

Consolidating this information into one dashboard can help you save time and reduce the risk of missing critical signals. Instead of switching between multiple views, you can monitor pacing, detect overspending, and uncover optimization opportunities at a glance.

The Budget Dashboard works both at the single-account level and across multi-account portfolios, making it equally useful for in-house teams and agencies managing multiple clients.

Budget management doesn’t have to be daunting

From tracking spending across multiple accounts to optimizing budgets for maximum performance, these tools offer automation, insights, and control.

We hope you’ll give them a try. We built these based on our customer feedback, and we’d love to hear more feedback from you about how else we can make these more useful, or what completely new methodologies you wish Optmyzr would build next.

If you’re not an Optmyzr user yet, consider signing up for our 14-day free trial to try all these tools and check how they fit your needs.

Related reading: Optmyzr Spend Projection vs. Google Budget Reports: More Than Just Visualization

FAQs

1. How can I prevent overspending on PPC campaigns?

Overspending often happens when daily budgets aren’t aligned with monthly targets or when traffic surges unexpectedly. Advertisers can prevent this by monitoring pacing regularly, setting clear budget caps, and using automation to pause or slow spend when thresholds are reached.

2. How do I know if my PPC campaigns are under-spending?

Underspending typically shows up when actual spend falls short of the pacing needed to reach your monthly target. Monitoring projections and impression share can help identify whether campaigns have room to spend more and drive additional results.

3. Should PPC budgets be adjusted on weekends or holidays?

Yes. Many advertisers see performance shifts depending on the day of the week or during holidays. Lowering budgets on low-conversion days and increasing them on high-return days can improve overall efficiency.

4. What’s the difference between managing budgets for one account vs. multiple accounts?

Single-account management focuses on reallocating spend within one platform, while multi-account management involves coordinating spend across platforms or clients. The latter requires consolidated tracking and a higher-level pacing strategy.

5. What factors should I consider when reallocating PPC budgets?

Key factors include campaign performance (clicks, conversions, ROAS), impression share lost due to budget, and seasonality. Budgets should be moved toward campaigns with proven potential and away from those that are capped or underperforming.

The PPC Stress Test: ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. Gemini (and Where Optmyzr Wins)

Reddit is filled with marketers complaining that AI tools are too generic, too vague, or too “copy-only” when it comes to paid ads.

So instead of arguing theory, we put three of the most popular AI tools: ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, through five real PPC tests based on tasks advertisers do every week: writing ad copy, reporting, analyzing seasonality, running an audit, and doing a KPI comparison.

Here’s what worked, what failed, and where Optmyzr fills the gap.

Overall performance summary

Test 1 → AI ad copy generators for Google Ads: ChatGPT vs Claude vs Gemini

Use case goal: Can an AI tool generate RSA ad copy that’s compliant, engaging, and ready to launch without spending hours tweaking headlines/descriptions?

We didn’t want to feed the AI tools a fluffy “write some ads” prompt. So we gave them the kind of brief a PPC copywriter would actually get from a SaaS client.

This is important because, as Amy Hebdon pointed out in our recent PPC Town Hall, our industry doesn’t usually create proper briefs for ad copy. That’s a big miss; without a brief, we don’t really know what to write or how to make ads connect to strategy.

A good brief gives clarity, constraints, and direction. It’s not just for AI, it’s what human copywriters need too.

Claude gave good angles but made risky claims

Claude did a decent job of sounding like a marketer. Its headlines tackled pain points head-on: “Stop Project Chaos Today,” “Ditch the Tool Juggling,” “No More Missed Deadlines.” Solid, straightforward stuff that speaks to frustrated project managers.

It also grouped its variations logically, and the structure made sense for A/B testing.

But here’s the problem: Claude tends to make things up at times. It confidently claimed “1,000+ teams” were already using WorkSync and promised “40% fewer delays.” We never gave it those numbers.

That kind of creativity is fine in a brainstorm doc. In live PPC ads, it’s a compliance risk waiting to happen.

ChatGPT sounded too formulaic at times

ChatGPT played it safe with headlines like “Manage Tasks in One Place” and “Simple Project Tracking” - technically correct, but bland.

Where ChatGPT stood out was in structure. It delivered five clear creative angles: efficiency, simplicity, collaboration, reliability, and the free trial offer.

Each is tied back to a real buyer pain point. It even suggested a smart A/B testing setup.

It got the rational benefits right (automation, faster setup, cost savings), but didn’t lean into the emotional relief FlowSync promises. Things like: fewer late nights, fewer fire drills, less chaos.

That’s what makes ads stick, and ChatGPT just didn’t go there.

Gemini played it safe but lacked creativity

Gemini sat somewhere in between: not reckless like Claude, not rigid like ChatGPT, but missing the spark. Many headlines felt generic - “The Right Tool for Your Team,” “Better Project Management,” “Simplify Your Workflows.”

A few lines did hit closer to the mark, like “A project management tool non-technical teams will actually use.”

Unfortunately, those moments were the exception rather than the rule.

Why Optmyzr takes this further (for RSAs)

AI tools can help with generating RSA copy ideas quickly, but they don’t help you manage those ads once they’re live in Google Ads. That’s where Optmyzr’s Ad Text Optimization tool steps in.

With this tool, you can:

• Edit RSA assets safely: Change any headline or description, save it, and track it as “modified.” Nothing goes live in Google Ads until you give the green light.
• Use AI as a helper: Get smart AI-powered suggestions for headlines, descriptions, or even full drafts, but always with the option to review before applying.
• Focus on what needs fixing – Filter by Ad Strength so you can improve weaker RSAs while leaving the stronger ones untouched.
• Bulk edits without errors: Use Find & Replace to update copy across multiple RSAs, whether it’s updating outdated promos or replacing legacy terms.
• Work at scale: Spell check across languages, CSV workflows for client approvals, and even full-ad views where you can edit multiple assets at once.

Test 2 → AI PPC Reporting: Can ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini build reports for CMOs?

Use case goal: Can AI tools build a goal-focused, ready-to-send report with summaries and insights?

ChatGPT initiated with a 2-step plan

ChatGPT delivered a basic 2-page report covering the executive summary and MoM comparison.

Next, we ran a similar test by uploading charts from a Google Ads account. The result was a 9-page report, with each page dedicated to explaining specific insights, such as:

If you’re after a straightforward report with clear explanations, ChatGPT does the job well.

Don’t expect flashy visuals; instead, you’ll get concise insights with all the essentials covered. The output could be improved, though; with more specific prompts, you might coax a bit more design flair out of GPT.

Claude came up with a good analysis

We first fed Claude the Google Ads chart data I’d extracted, and I was pleasantly surprised. The initial report looked polished and professional.

As shown in the screenshot below, Claude often produces a plain document-style report.

Other times, it goes a step further and builds an interactive prototype, like this:

The advantage of these prototypes is that you can either download the code to implement elsewhere or publish the artifacts and open them directly during presentations.

You can check the one we built here: Claude Reporting Artifact V1

We further prompted it with:

As we mentioned, the report was meant for a busy CMO, but Claude made it a little too concise. That’s a common limitation with AI tools: they often miss the balance.

So, we asked it to dive into the details after presenting the big picture.

Here’s what it produced:

You can check out the full Claude Artifact V2 here!

It was significantly better in terms of visuals and understanding.

Now for the MoM comparison, here’s the report it came up with, consisting of 9 different sections neatly presented:

You can check the full artifact here: Claude MoM comparison report

The bottom line? When it comes to visually compelling reports, Claude still has the edge over ChatGPT.

Gemini gave a fairly mediocre response initially

When we fed the MoM comparison data to Gemini and asked it to create a report for a busy CMO, there were quite a few assumptions and inconsistencies.

In the first attempt, Gemini fell short on several fronts:

• Inaccurate data representation: e.g., a nonsensical ‘100% decline’ claim.
• Lack of revenue clarity: no clear view of the pipeline or revenue loss to guide budget decisions.
• Absence of actionable recommendations: no concrete recommendations to address the gaps.

When asked to create visuals, Gemini (2.5 Flash) built a code-based dashboard. It lagged endlessly, and the data it showed was inaccurate.

However, upgrading from Gemini (2.5 Flash) to Gemini (2.5 Pro) delivered far better results.

Here’s what Gemini (2.5 Pro) got right:

• Accurate data interpretation with correct numbers and analysis.
• Flagged key issues like tracking gaps, mobile exclusions, and budget pacing.

Where it fell short:

• Shallow demographic analysis with no guidance on business strategy.
• Couldn’t generate charts; instead, produced a limited dashboard (see below).

In conclusion, Gemini delivered a solid, safe executive report that identified problems and suggested next steps. However, it lacked the strategic depth and growth vision a CMO needs for major budget decisions.

Optmyzr helps you build reports you can talk to

With Optmyzr, you don’t have to jump through hoops, extract sheets, switch modes, or double-check data accuracy. You can generate reports with a simple prompt or start with pre-built templates.

If you’re using AI, you can jump right in with pre-built prompts. Prefer a custom setup? Just describe what you want in your report, and we’ll build it for you.

The real differentiator? Once your report is ready, Optmyzr’s built-in AI (Sidekick) lets you talk to it. It takes away the hassle of digging into charts or slides.

Simply ask it to summarize the key points, highlight areas that are performing well, and those that need improvement.

If I were a busy CMO, I know I’d prefer a report I can actually have a conversation with, not just one I have to read.🫡

Once the report’s ready, Optmyzr even helps with the last mile: drafting the emails for your scheduled report deliveries, so you don’t spend extra time packaging the story for your CMO or client.

Instead of wrestling with widgets or hoping an AI deck lands right, Optmyzr gives you a reporting workflow that’s both smart and repeatable.

Test 3 → AI Seasonality Analysis in PPC: Forecasting Demand with GPT, Claude, Gemini

Use case goal: How can PPC marketers use AI tools for seasonality analysis to forecast demand, optimize budgets, and improve ROAS during peak and slow periods?

ChatGPT came up with a neat plan..

We started the test with ChatGPT 5 (instant), and it devised a plan for the seasonality analysis:

It began with a time series decomposition and explained the results clearly, even for someone not deep into statistics.

The output included the following chart with clear explanations:

Similarly, we were presented with day-of-week patterns and monthly/quarterly trends:

Overall, the charts were clear and easy to interpret, and the accompanying text made the data even more accessible.

If you’d like a deeper dive into how to run seasonality analysis with ChatGPT, here’s an article that can help!

Claude was a bit overwhelmed with the data at first

Claude’s response wasn’t as instant due to our large dataset (over 900 days), taking some time to process.

Once it finished, though, it produced a comprehensive document.

Unlike ChatGPT, it didn’t include charts by default, but with a couple of extra prompts, you can easily generate them. The analysis itself was detailed, useful, and, most importantly, explained in a way anyone could follow.

It even went a step further by predicting performance for Q4 2025 and Q1 2026, which was pretty impressive:

Next came a strategic plan of action, followed by a checklist with weekly tasks.

Overall, Claude delivered a solid analysis, but in my view, ChatGPT did a better job with this dataset. A smart workflow might be to extract insights with ChatGPT, then use Claude to turn those findings into an action plan or checklist.

Gemini also did a great job

Lastly, Gemini (2.5 Pro) also delivered strong results.

It generated a variety of charts, including conversion forecasts, anomaly detection, quarterly cost-per-conversion patterns, and monthly trends.

Interestingly, using the same prompt, Gemini also produced additional visuals like day-of-week cost-per-conversion analysis and conversions with anomalies.

The generated charts were also clear and easy to interpret, as you can see below:

A small but useful detail: Gemini also lets you instantly download the charts (look at the icon in the corner), something GPT doesn’t offer.

Overall, Gemini came out on top for generating clear, reliable seasonality analysis charts. GPT does have an edge in providing detailed explanations, but with a couple of extra prompts, Gemini can break down the insights just as effectively.

Want to skip the hassle of writing endless prompts just to run a seasonality analysis?

We built a seasonality analysis tool using Lovable that makes it super simple. Just upload your CSV file, no mega prompts, no back-and-forth, and you’ll get a clear, detailed analysis.

Upload your data and get a clear seasonality analysis instantly. Need a quick summary? Just hit Explain in plain English for an easy breakdown.

When you hit Show full analysis, you get a bunch of options: seasonality focus, decomposition, stats, business insights, and even a campaign view, all with a handy sidebar that explains the charts as you go.

Curious already? Give our seasonality analysis tool a spin here!

Test 4→ Get quick insights into strengths, weaknesses, and improvements in your PPC account

Use case goal: How can PPC marketers use AI tools to quickly identify strengths, weaknesses, and optimization opportunities in their Google Ads account performance?

Claude surprisingly interpreted the data wrong (in the first go)

Claude surprisingly got the data wrong on the first attempt. Even though it’s often my go-to for summarizing numbers, this time the response was riddled with miscalculations.

Here are the major accuracy issues I spotted:

• Claimed conversion rate ‘surged 193%’ when it actually declined 43%.
• Stated ‘total conversions increased 59%’ when they actually dropped 69%.
• Reported ‘cost per acquisition dropped’ even though conversions had collapsed.
• Praised ‘remarkable conversion efficiency improvements’ when performance had clearly deteriorated.”

On the flip side….

ChatGPT was far more accurate with its analysis

• Correctly flagged a ~22% cost reduction (actual: -21.6%)
• Accurately noted a ~50% drop in clicks/interactions (actual: -45.6%)
• Properly identified a ~69% collapse in conversions (actual: -69.0%)
• Correctly highlighted a ~14% decline in impressions (actual: -15.1%)
• Pinpointed CTR decline as the core issue behind performance shifts

Here are some recommendations it gave based on the identified strengths and weaknesses:

Still, I wanted to give Claude the benefit of the doubt (call it favoritism), so we ran the test again.

Same prompt, same document, and this time, it delivered the best response yet.

What stood out in this response:

• Comprehensive, with granular campaign-level analysis
• Professional formatting with clear sections and priority levels
• Recommendations neatly ranked by high/medium/low urgency
• Read more like a polished agency report than an AI output

The risk with relying on AI for PPC data accuracy

What if I had gone further without double-checking whether the responses were actually accurate?

That’s the risk AI tools sometimes carry.

And let’s not forget their ever-convincing tone that makes everything sound correct.

The issue with general AI tools like Claude or even GPT is that they’re great talkers, but not always great with the math. For instance, Claude claimed conversions had “surged 193%” when in reality they had collapsed by 69%.

That’s not a minor slip; it’s the kind of error that could drive completely wrong strategic decisions.

Gemini delivered conversion-focused insights

Gemini’s response was short and to the point.

It did a good job of identifying critical problems and gave good suggestions.

However, it missed broader account efficiency trends and didn’t provide sufficient context on absolute volume sizes.

Find Your PPC strengths, weaknesses, and fixes with Optmyzr Sidekick

So, with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini, you first need to extract and format your data, then carefully prompt the AI to get insights. Once you get the insights, you need to cross-check them to make sure the responses are accurate.

With Optmyzr Sidekick AI, you skip the hassle of uploading data, writing prompts, and praying the AI doesn’t mess up the math.

The moment you log in, it’s already working for you.

👉 Every session starts with three things marketers care most about:

• One clear win: what’s working well this month
• One weakness: where performance is slipping
• One recommendation: the next step you can act on right away

💡And when you want to dig deeper? You don’t need to build a query or export a report. Just type or ask:

• “Which campaigns are overspending this week?”
• “What’s my best converting landing page?”
• “Where did CTR drop compared to last month?”

Sidekick responds instantly, with the right PPC context baked in.

And that’s the difference. A general AI assistant can talk about anything, but it doesn’t know your Google Ads metrics, ROAS goals, or budget strategies. Sidekick does.

Test 5 → AI Metric Comparison in PPC: Clicks vs. Cost Accuracy Test

Use case goal: How can PPC marketers use AI tools to accurately compare key metrics like clicks vs. cost in Google Ads campaigns?

Note: We started by giving the AI the same comprehensive dataset used in earlier tests, to see if it could accurately pull out and create charts for the specified month.

ChatGPT’s strengths and limits in Clicks vs. Cost analysis

ChatGPT handled the data correctly and produced an accurate chart.

The only minor drawback was that the orange line occasionally blended with the blue, making it a bit harder to distinguish.

While it didn’t offer additional insights upfront, a quick follow-up prompt easily drew out more detailed analysis.

Gemini delivers accurate insights with clear explanations

Gemini nailed both the analysis and interpretation of the data.

It introduced no inaccuracies and correctly highlighted the peaks and valleys when fed the full dataset from 2024–2025.

This shows you don’t need to manually extract data for a single month to get an accurate analysis, unlike Claude (more on that below).

With Gemini, you can also ask for deeper explanations, and it delivers them accurately.

Claude struggled with PPC metric accuracy

When given data for the past year, Claude’s output included several issues:

• Reported the wrong average CPC
• Missed the most significant data point (July 17th, with 560 clicks), the chart showed only ~90 clicks for that day
• Incorrectly claimed a performance increase from July 24–31, even though July 24 had just one click

What happened when we fed it data for just July 2025

This time, Claude performed much better. It:

• Correctly captured the July 17 peak (and other key data points)
• Generated proper dual Y-axis scaling for easier interpretation
• Highlighted key insights clearly in a yellow callout box

Why Optmyzr’s metric comparison widget beats GPT/Claude/Gemini for comparing metrics

If all you need is to compare two metrics, say, clicks vs. conversions, you could export your data, feed it into GPT, Claude, or Gemini, and prompt it to plot or summarize the relationship.

But let’s be honest: that’s a lot of extra steps.

You have to prepare the data, explain the context in your prompt, maybe re-ask if the chart isn’t quite right… and you’ll probably end up repeating that whole process every time you want to switch metrics.

Plus, you’re gambling with accuracy at times.

As we’ve seen from testing multiple tools, some tools completely misinterpret it, showing wrong peaks, missing critical drops, or calculating metrics like cost-per-click incorrectly.

You end up having to double-check every number and extract data for exact date ranges just to verify you’re not getting wildly inaccurate responses that could lead to wrong business decisions.

With Optmyzr’s Metric Comparison Widget, it’s just… built in. Two clicks, and you’re instantly looking at any pair of metrics you want.

Want to flip from Clicks vs Cost to Cost vs Conversions? Just switch the dropdown.

Want to smooth out the noise and view weekly instead of daily?

Change the frequency and it’s done.

The best part? The widget doesn’t just show the lines. It gives you an AI-powered summary right alongside the chart, written specifically for PPC context.

So, instead of you trying to coax a useful interpretation out of a general AI, you get a clear, campaign-focused takeaway immediately.

Investigate metrics with PPC investigator

Comparing two metrics is a good start, but what if you want to dig deeper and actually understand why performance changed?

That’s where Optmyzr’s PPC Investigator comes in.

With just a few clicks, it pinpoints the exact element driving a metric up or down, whether it’s a keyword, placement, or even an entire network.

So instead of just seeing that conversions dropped last month, you can see what caused the drop and take action faster.

And to make analysis even more intuitive, PPC Investigator includes a colorblind-friendly mode with icons that clearly show positive or negative trends.

See It in Action: Want to watch how this works in a real account?

In the video below, we walk through how to investigate changes in your PPC performance using PPC Investigator along with other Optmyzr tools. You’ll see how quickly you can spot what changed, why it happened, and what to do next.

Where PPC Pros rely on Optmyzr (beyond AI assistants)

Generic AI tools will always have limits in PPC. They don’t know your accounts, your budgets, or your business goals; they just generate words and numbers based on the data you feed.

Optmyzr was built for paid media from the ground up. That means:

• Ad copy tools that improve RSAs without compliance risks.
• Reports you can interrogate with Sidekick instead of wrestling with decks.
• Diagnostic tools that find the “why” behind every performance shift.
• AI Audit Summaries that instantly flag strengths, weaknesses, and missed opportunities across your account.
• Competitor Widgets that show top entrants and exits in your auctions.

While Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT can brainstorm, Optmyzr helps you act.

See the difference in your own accounts. Start a fully functional 14-day trial today — no credit card required.

FAQs on Using AI for PPC

1. Can AI actually write high-converting Google Ads?
A. Yes, but not reliably. AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini can generate RSA copy fast, but they either sound formulaic, make compliance-risky claims, or lack emotional punch. These drafts still need to go through expert copywriters to be published-worthy.

2. Is AI good enough to replace my PPC reporting dashboard?
A. Not yet. GPT tends to produce clear but plain summaries; Claude often adds better visuals but can misrepresent data; Gemini improves accuracy in Pro mode but still struggles with strategy.

3. Can AI forecast seasonality and budget spikes for PPC?
A. It can, with caveats. GPT explains patterns well, Claude builds detailed plans, and Gemini generates reliable charts. But AI needs carefully formatted data and multiple prompts.

4. Will AI tools catch strengths and weaknesses in my Google Ads account?
A. Sometimes. GPT is more accurate with math; Claude can miscalculate but improves with retries; Gemini is safe but shallow. The bigger risk: over-confident AI tone that hides errors.

5. Can AI compare PPC metrics like Clicks vs. Cost without errors?
A. Partially. GPT and Gemini usually handle it, though Gemini gives cleaner charts. Claude is inconsistent, sometimes fabricating numbers.

6. Should I trust AI with PPC strategy at all?
A. Use AI for drafts, brainstorming, and data exploration, not as your sole decision-maker. Think of it as an intern: fast, helpful, but in need of supervision.

4 Campaign Hygiene Optimizations for PPC Advertising Success

Account management is a necessary task that all PPC managers have to perform on a regular basis.

While it can be time-consuming and tedious (like flossing your teeth), it’s unavoidable if you want to keep your account in good health.

In this article, I’ll share four of the most important “campaign hygiene” tasks our PPC managers at WebMechanix perform on an ongoing basis to keep their accounts humming.

1. Audit the search terms report

Auditing the search terms report at different levels is one of the most time-consuming PPC tasks, but also one of the most vital to keep your account’s performance trending up and to the right.

You need to monitor the search terms like a hawk for three key reasons:

1. Make sure the search terms you show for align with what you bid on

This is especially important with the changes Google has made to match types over the last two years. We now see more close variant search terms showing for Exact Match and Phrase Match keywords, some of which are not relevant.

You also need to make sure that the right ad groups are triggering the correct queries. This is a tactic known as “query funneling”. Query funneling by campaign or ad group ensures that the right keyword, ad, and landing page show for the correct query, thereby increasing the chances of a click and conversion.

2. Save money

By looking at the queries, you can start to compile a list of negative keywords. These are keywords that you do not want to show for.

Negative keywords typically fall into two categories:

1. Keywords that aren’t relevant to your business goals
2. High-click queries that have not led to a conversion.

By excluding these queries, you free up money to spend on relevant queries that do convert well.

3. Find new keywords to bid on

Typically, you can find a few high-converting queries that you may not have as an exact match keyword. By adding these high-converting queries as exact match keywords, you make sure that you show for that query more often.

Bottom line: The search terms report is a goldmine for negatives, new keywords, and ensuring search intent. Mine it frequently and extensively.

2. Monitor your quality scores

Quality score (QS) is often an overlooked metric when assessing account performance.

I find PPC managers often fall into two camps.

Camp 1 says, “Quality score is an important metric to assess and try to improve.”

Camp 2 says, “Quality score, shmality score… doesn’t have an iota of impact on account performance.”

At WebMechanix, we fall in the first camp. We’ve found that you can improve quality score while optimizing your accounts!

Besides, quality score is one of two metrics used to determine ad rank and how much you will ultimately pay if your ad is clicked on. So it’s worth paying attention to.

And since Smart Bidding is prevalent in most accounts these days, quality score can often be your only lever to lower your cost per click (CPC).

When assessing quality score, I look at keywords with high click volume to see which ones have low quality scores, and then the reason Google gives for the low quality score. Finding a high-click keyword with a low quality score due to ad relevance is like finding gold within your account.

With the exception of competitor keywords, you should never have a keyword that has an ad relevance below average. That’s because ad relevance is the easiest metric that a PPC manager can influence.

It can easily be improved by adding the keyword with a low quality score to your ad copy. By doing this simple task, you can end up saving literally hundreds of dollars a month (if not thousands).

Bottom line: Quality score is a powerful lever to lower your cost per click and crank up return on ad spend (ROAS). Make efforts to improve quality score a part of your weekly routine.

3. Prune out non-serving keywords

Easier-to-manage accounts are typically the ones that perform the best. So stop overbuilding accounts and adding an unnecessary amount of keywords to each ad group!

One easy way to make your accounts easier to manage is by removing non-serving keywords. Within almost every account, there will be several keywords that have not shown an impression for a large period of time (often 90+ days).

Ask yourself: Are these keywords really necessary, or are they getting in the way and making it harder to assess performance?

Don’t be afraid to go through and hit “pause” on clutter keywords like these. Your future self will thank you when you go to build reports and optimize your account.

Bottom line: Don’t make your job as a PPC manager harder than it has to be. Clean out dead weight keywords regularly and watch your effectiveness soar.

4. Cut ties with low-performing keywords

I know, you probably picked the keyword and really feel that it should be performing for you. But if a keyword isn’t delivering results within a reasonable period of time, you have to make that critical decision and pause.

When onboarding new accounts, this is one of the first tasks our account managers perform. We have seen accounts where only 2% of the keywords that had been clicked over the last 30 days were responsible for a conversion. That’s a lot of wasted spend!

By pausing the high-click non-converting keyword, you are able to spend more on your high-converting keywords — which means more bang for your PPC buck at the end of the day.

Bottom line: Stop wasting spend on low-performing keywords, especially if you have high-converting keywords that are losing search impression share due to budget constraints.

Block and tackle like the PPC pros to win on search

No one said everything about managing a paid search account would be sexy.

In fact, it’s often the unsexy things done consistently over time that drive growth, not the flashy or big sweeping account changes.

And you don’t have to go at it alone — Optymzr has some great PPC tools to help make that daily PPC grind a little bit more automated.

But by executing these four activities on a consistent basis, you’ll be doing the work that most advertisers are too lazy to perform. And you’ll get the results those other advertisers can’t.

Optimizing Campaign ROI: Get the Highest-Value Leads Your Ad Budget Will Allow

Google’s Smart Bidding has evolved over the years to have a better understanding of what works for many PPC accounts. It wasn’t too long ago that advertisers preferred manual bidding outright.

Smart Bidding is now commonly used and much more effective than ever before — over 92% of Google Ads accounts linked to Optmyzr use Smart Bidding in at least one campaign.

But while Smart Bidding strategies aim to drive volume-based KPIs such as clicks or conversions, not all conversions are created equal.

With bid strategies like Target ROAS and Maximize Conversion Value, there’s a much stronger case to bid for value rather than volume.

The Optmyzr suite currently has three tools to help advertisers and agencies implement these strategies effectively and easily.

In this article, you’ll learn:

• What these tools are
• How to use them
• Common use cases
• Best practices to maximize effectiveness

Create training data using Segment Scorer

The Segment Scorer lets you easily rate segments from your online audiences based on their value to your business. These ratings should be based not on Google metrics like click-through rate, but on how they perform after converting.

With these scores, you create training data for Optmyzr to suggest the best Conversion Value Rules for your campaigns. Conversion Value Rules are similar to bid adjustments for Smart Bidding and put your scores in a format that Google can understand.

Go to Segment Scorer

Let’s look at an example of this in practice. When you’re asked to score a segment like the one below (United States), you first need to analyze the value of this segment to your or your client’s business:

• Are people from the US more likely to buy from you?
• Do they return fewer products or have a shorter sales cycle?
• Is the average order value higher among US customers?

Based on the angles important to the business, give it a score between 1 and 5 with 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest.

You can score segments from five categories in this tool: City, Region, Country, Device, and Audience.

Adjust conversion values using Optimize Value Rules

The Optimize Value Rules tool suggests conversion value rules based on your data inputs from the Segment Scorer. Conversion Value Rules let you better express the importance of your conversions as they relate to your business.

This tool bridges the gap between your business knowledge and Google’s ability to use that knowledge to get you the most profitable conversions.

Go to Optimize Value Rules

The magnitude of a suggested adjustment depends on the scores for the primary and secondary segments. However, you can always change the adjustment for each entry by editing the fields in the ‘New Adjustment’ column.

Note: Before applying adjustments, read up on the common pitfalls of value-based bidding so you can better monitor performance.

Discover insights using Segment Explorer

The Segment Explorer lets you visualize your Google Analytics audiences’ performance by multiple dimensions in Optmyzr.

Many times in Google Analytics, it’s difficult to segment and visualize multiple audiences together. But with Segment Explorer, getting those insights becomes straightforward.

Go to Segment Explorer

Check out the performance of multiple audiences in terms of behavior, geography, and demographics — all at once. This lets you create targeted audiences for your Google Ads campaigns, faster than you could do manually.

How conversion values can vary: use cases

Let’s look at how different industries might use these tools to optimize the ROI of their ad spend. Remember that after Google reports a conversion, its final value to a business varies based on several factors including location, ticket size, product type, and more.

Home Services

Example: Roofing

Google conversion event: Lead gen form completed

What can happen afterward:

1. Roofing company contacts the lead to schedule a free estimate
2. Estimator meets the prospect
3. Prospect reviews the estimate
4. Prospect becomes a paying customer

What can affect the final value:

• Some zip codes have bigger houses. Bigger houses mean bigger roofs. And bigger roofs mean higher average project values.
• There are different types of roofing materials that vary with geography and customer preferences. For instance, customers in warmer locations like Los Angeles may prefer solar roofing. Different materials have different margins, making a job more or less profitable than usual.

Education

Example: University

Google conversion event: Lead gen form completed

What can happen afterward:

1. College contacts applicant to discuss the education program
2. Applicant may apply for financial assistance
3. Applicant is admitted and becomes a paying customer

What can affect the final value:

• Depending on the area of study the prospect indicates, it can be a longer or shorter program and have a different total cost.
• Applicant proximity to campus impacts the chance they attend virtual or in-person programs, which may have different associated costs like room and board.
• Preferred degree may make them more or less likely to get a high-paying job, thus influencing their ability to make charitable donations to the university after they graduate.

Ecommerce

Example: Cosmetics

Google conversion event: Purchase/checkout

What can happen afterward:

1. Order is returned for a refund, either in part or in whole
2. Customer buys additional products of equal or greater value

What can affect the final value:

• Someone who buys a big bottle of shampoo will be less likely to be a repeat customer in the short term than someone who buys a trial size of several shampoos.
• Some customers will return more of their purchases. For example, different demographics may correlate with higher impulse purchase behavior i.e. they buy several products but return most of them.

Using ROI optimization as a control tool for Performance Max

Among all of Google’s advertising products, Performance Max is the most comprehensive example of automation yet. It promises a new way to advertise across all of Google’s channels, which also means fully automated bidding and budget allocation.

This calls for a new approach to ROI optimization that’s less about pushing buttons or turning dials and more about feeding the right first-party data that’s not accessible to Google or your campaign.

If you’re an ecommerce clothing store, that data can be detailed stock information like availability per size or color, margin, sell-through rate, return rate, etc.

Feeding this data to Google along with Conversion Value Rules offers you better control over your Performance Max campaigns. A good strategy here would be running Maximize Conversion Value with tROAS.

Best practices for ROI optimization

We suggest the following best practices to produce optimal results when using a value-based bidding strategy.

1. Score your segments based on their ultimate value to the business, not according to metrics or KPIs that Google can easily see.
2. Check your campaign performance after four weeks of making adjustments. The Smart Bidding algorithms need some time to learn what the right traffic looks like to you.
3. Re-score your segments in the Segment Scorer if there are changes in your business priorities (like a discontinued product), or when you have to optimize your campaign performance (a product that isn’t moving). We still recommend spacing adjustments four weeks apart.
4. Be sure to set your bidding strategy to Maximize Conversion Value (with or without a target ROAS) so that Smart Bidding can take different conversion values into account.

Solutions to common concerns around ROI Optimization

Errors in reporting due to ‘Adjusted Conversion Value’

When you work with Value Rules, there will be differences between your original conversion values and adjusted conversion values. This leads to discrepancies in reporting.

To overcome that, we added ‘Unadjusted Conversion Value’ to the ‘KPIs’, ‘Summary’, ‘Top Campaigns’, and ‘Performance Comparison’ widgets in our single account report. When you’re reporting metrics to your clients, you can clearly communicate the actual conversion value and the adjustment made to it.

Knowledge gap between you and your client

We’ve heard from some customers — especially agencies — that it can be challenging to obtain scores for the Segment Scorer. To make that easier, we’ve created a template you can share with clients or stakeholders to fill out.

In the ‘Start Scoring Segments’ dropdown, select ‘Bulk Score Segments’. You can download the template, add the scores and then upload it back to the tool.

This template can serve you in two ways:

1. You can score multiple segments at once without the need to score a large set of scoring cards one after another.
2. You can share this template with your clients requesting them to score the segments based on their business goals. This bridges the knowledge gap between you and your client, ultimately bringing more accurate Value Rules suggestions for your Google Ads account while respecting a client’s need for privacy.

Data is your most valuable asset

ROI optimization is the next evolution of account optimization after a conversion-based strategy. But for any optimization to work, you must collect the right data to enable smarter decisions from ad platforms like Google.

Unique business data is your most powerful asset, and the optimization tools that we’ve built can help you make the best use of that data in a smooth process.

Why optimize for numbers when you can optimize for actual profitability?

Get started with a 14-day free trial today.

Agile Target Layering: What It Is and How It Helps Maximize Your PPC Profits

Has the world of PPC as we knew it come to an end?

The short answer, my friend, is not yet and, if you continue reading this article, you’ll understand what I mean :-)

I’ve avidly read all articles and reports by Frederick Vallaeys and several of the top most important Google Ads professionals in the world. I’ve also performed a lot of experiments myself and I am sure that there still is a wide scope for manual selective targeting to perform better than machine learning.

But then the real question becomes: how to do it (without losing the immense possibilities provided by AI)? And, under what circumstances is it worth it?

The answer as often is the case in the digital marketing industry, is not easy and has to be applied on a case-by-case basis, after an evaluation of running campaigns.

When is automation worth it?

My almost 20 years in PPC have taught me that there is not a right or wrong way of doing Google Ads, but several more or less effective ways to target your ideal prospects or customers.

I’ve literally seen things in Google Ads campaigns (that you wouldn’t believe) working well, and technically perfect structures failing to meet even the minimal goal they were built for.

This is why I’ve always tried to reach my ideal target audience in the most complete (& simplest) ways the platform allows me to do. This way of doing campaigns will never fail.

But it also means you cannot use a fixed model or structure to promote everything. You always have to try almost completely different approaches to meet your campaign’s goals.

Anyway, after having tested several different ad structures I come to elaborate on a general wireframe, which I hope can help you too.

What is ‘Agile Target Layering’ and how does it work?

I named it “agile” because it is not built on a fixed structure. You have to change it as soon as you see it does not achieve results or if you find better ways to effectively address your audience.

I used the words “target layering” because to get the most out of your campaigns you have to be sure that machine learning perfectly understands which are your ideal audiences and covers them completely.

If it doesn’t, you have to pair it with some manual target “layers” to be sure to cover what you know performs best at the lowest cost possible.

Presently the only way to achieve this goal is to add some “old school” campaigns to the PPC AI, which we are only slowly starting to taste these days.

To explain it in a simple way, you should address the top of the iceberg’s best-converting search intent of your audiences with a phrase or exact match campaign (starting from branded keywords, for instance).

Then leave the conversion stars scouting to machine learning (ML), sculpting these campaigns out with negatives for irrelevant terms and what already is performing well in your “old school” campaigns.

Once ML finds something that converts, you can loop again into the process, and build a new manual target layer upon it, or simply enjoy all the benefits of ML and spend your saved time thinking of other approaches you could use to your target users (or even better spending time with your family 😊).

Agile Target Layering applied to a hyper-competitive industry

Imagine you have to sell luxury home rentals in Sorrento (one of the best seaside spots in Italy) on a global scale.

Your Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU) keywords to build specific phrase or exact match search campaigns could then be: “Sorrento luxury villas”, “Sorrento luxury rentals”, “Sorrento villas with private pool”, “Sorrento luxury apartments” etc. That is “specific location + a luxury related term + home rental term”.

Nothing, except branded terms with the name of the villa or website, will ever attract more in-target users to your site.

If your budget allows it, you could then add some broad match MOFU campaigns with keywords like: “Sorrento villas”, “holiday rentals Sorrento”, “Sorrento home rentals,” etc., and see if machine learning can do the magic of finding juicy audiences for you.

Then again you could add a final layer with totally machine-learning-driven campaigns like Performance Max or Discovery/Display to address TOFU audiences to see if you can convince someone who isn’t even aware of the existence of so a beautiful place like Sorrento and only wants a place to literally “spend” their time (and money, of course).

After an initial training period (the lower the budget, the longer the period) you will be able to check what needs adjustments, what has to be stopped, and what deserves more push and optimization.

Final takeaways

I firmly believe that our mission as PPC professionals in this time of great change in our industry is to instruct machine learning on what it doesn’t or cannot know (marginality of sales, seasonality, competitor brands with our same exact positioning in the market, best audiences to start from, etc.) and to be sure that our budget is spent first on what has the maximum chance to convert and then, if profit margins allow it, on what might convert.

This is a guest post by Gianpaolo Lorusso, a PPC & CRO consultant.

About the author: Gianpaolo Lorusso is a PPC & CRO consultant for several medium & large companies. He also founded ADworld Experience, the largest Pay Per Click & Conversion Rate Optimization event in Europe and the largest in the World based on real PPC Cases.

Improve your search and shopping PPC campaigns in just 2 weeks

It doesn’t matter how well your Google Ads accounts are performing – great marketers and agencies always want to do better. But there’s a perception among some marketers that it takes months to see meaningful improvements from your PPC campaigns.

This isn’t true.

With a tool like Optmyzr at your disposal and this playbook, you can start to see improvements in your Google search and shopping campaigns in 2 weeks – the same amount of time our free trial lasts.

So whether you’re just starting out with Optmyzr, thinking of giving us a shot, or want to onboard another client, here’s how we can help set your accounts up for success in just two weeks.

Note: We refer to Google Ads by default, but many of these capabilities can be applied to your Microsoft Ads campaigns as well.

Google Search Ads

Day 1: Set up alerts to monitor accounts and track budgets.

• Set up Account Alerts to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) like CPA and ROAS.
• Set monthly budgets on the MCC dashboard and get notified when an account is underspending or overspending.
• Install the Flexible Budgets enhanced script to make sure the account doesn’t overspend.
• Install the Check Destination URLs enhanced script to stop traffic from going to broken landing pages.

Pro Tip: Enhanced scripts can be installed at the MCC level. Read more about installing scripts.

Day 3: Analyze account performance and start optimizing.

• In PPC Policy and Audits, run ‘Sample Policy’ to find areas of improvement in the account and customize policies based on your strategy.
• Customize a weekly report from available Instant Report templates. Automate it to be emailed every Monday morning.
• Run Optmyzr Express and do quick optimization tasks like testing new ads, adding new keywords, and winning more traffic for converting keywords.
• Run PPC Investigator to see how and why conversions in your account changed in the last 30 days.

Day 5: Analyze search queries to add new keywords and negatives to your account.

• Run Keyword Lasso to add new keywords from ‘Top Suggestions’ or use a custom filter to find suggestions.
• Run Negative Keyword Finder to find account-level negatives and add them to shared negative lists.
• Run Search Terms N-Grams to analyze the highest-traffic search terms in a word cloud to identify trends and new ad group themes, and to add negatives.

Pro Tip: Combine these optimizations into a single workflow using Blueprints.

Day 6: Manage bids.

Manual Bidding

• Run Conversion Grabber to acquire more traffic for converting keywords losing impression share.
• Run First Page Bridger to push keywords with high Quality Scores to the first page of search results.
• Run Reduce Bids on keywords that have zero conversions and high cost/CPA.

Automated and Smart Bidding

• Run Optimize Target CPA and Optimize Target ROAS optimizations to change ad group-level targets for better performance when using Google Smart Bidding.

Pro Tip: Combine these optimizations into a single Workflow using Blueprints.

Day 7: Improve Quality Score and manage budgets.

• Run Analyze and Optimize Budget to reallocate budgets to campaigns that are converting but losing impression share.
• Use the Quality Score Tracker to analyze ad groups with low Quality Scores.
• Run Quick Optimizations from the Quality Score Tracker to pause and SKAG keywords with low Quality Scores.

Day 9: A/B test and create new ads.

• Use A/B Testing For Ads to pause underperforming ads and create new ones.
• Test your ad components and make bulk edits (if necessary) using Ad Text Optimization.
• Create new responsive search ads using the Responsive Search Ads tool to ensure all your ad groups have at least one responsive search ad.

Day 11: Set hourly bid adjustments and build custom optimizations.

• Use the Hour of Week Bid Adjustment to set bid adjustments for different times of the week based on your optimization goal.
• Try out Instant Strategies in the Rule Engine.

Bonus: Experiment with a custom strategy in the Rule Engine.

Day 13: Set bid adjustments for locations and demographics based on performance.

• Use the Geo-Bid Adjustment to target and set bid adjustments for locations based on performance.
• Run Optmyzr Express and perform quick optimization tasks like setting bid adjustments for age and gender.

Day 14: Create your own workflows and implement automation.

• Create your own optimization workflow by building a Blueprint.
• Automate your favorite optimization strategies using the Rule Engine.

Google Shopping Ads

Day 1: Set up merchant feed and monitor budget.

• Link your merchant feeds to Optmyzr.
• Install the Flexible Budget enhanced script to make sure standard shopping campaigns don’t overspend.

Pro Tip: Enhanced scripts can be installed at the MCC level. Read more about installing scripts.

Day 2: Filter out irrelevant shopping queries by managing negatives.

• Use Shopping Negatives to identify competing and underperforming queries, and add them as negatives.
• Try out the Instant Strategy ‘Non-Converting Search Queries(Shopping)’ via the Rule Engine to add negatives.

Pro Tip: Combine these optimizations into a single Workflow using Blueprints.

Day 4: Analyze feed and resync campaign structure.

• Re-sync your campaigns with your merchant feed using Shopping Campaign Refresher 2.0.
• Review attribute coverage for products using Merchant Feed Analysis.
• Try out the Shopping Campaign Analysis tool to:
  • Identify the distribution of products for important feed attributes
  • Analyze performance by price, ROAS, product type, or category

Day 6: Manage bids.

Manual Bidding

• Increase bids for product groups with high ROAS using Shopping Bidder.
• Increase bids for converting product groups losing impression share with Optmyzr Express.
• Reduce Bids for expensive product groups using Rule Engine (available under Instant Strategies).
• Use Attribute Bidder to identify products with price points that have high ROAS, and to increase bids for such products if you have a GRIP structure.

Automated & Smart Bidding

• Run Optimize Target CPA & ROAS to change ad group-level targets when running Google Smart Bidding for better performance.

Day 8: Create custom optimizations.

• Use Rule Engine to convert your PPC strategies into optimizations for:
  • Managing Negatives: Create recipes to manage underperforming search terms in shopping campaigns
  • Managing Bids & Target ROAS: Create recipes for setting bids and target ROAS based on in-house strategies

Pro Tip: Watch this video for ideas on how to use the Rule Engine to set up custom optimizations.

Day 10: Create your own workflows and implement automation.

• Create your own optimization workflow by building a Blueprint.
• Set up automation on your favorite optimizations.

Too good to be true? Try it for yourself.

Our mission at Optmyzr is to develop not just the tools that PPC marketers need today, but ones they can use to safeguard their true roles as digital marketing strategists.

That’s why everything in this onboarding guide has one eye on long-term results, and why we don’t gate any of our features to trial users.

Sign up for a 14-day free trial to experience for yourself how Optmyzr makes PPC management faster and your contributions more value-oriented. Use our roadmap and you’ll start to see improvements before the end of the trial period.

Offline Conversion Tracking Just Got a Whole Lot Easier with Enhanced Conversions from Google

Advertisers have a slew of best practices to choose from when optimizing their PPC accounts. But why are some of the best strategies so rarely implemented?

Take for example Offline Conversion Imports (offline conversion tracking), the process of recording conversions for actions that happen offline after the online conversion is recorded. These offline conversions are incredibly valuable pieces of data for Google’s machine learning systems to improve bidding to prioritize more valuable leads.

The reality is that implementing Offline Conversion Imports is hard. But Google has now made it easier, so we’ll explain exactly how it works and why it’s important.

Why Offline Conversions Matter

You’ve likely heard that tracking offline conversions is a good way to optimize your PPC campaigns. Let’s look at an example to explain this.

Say you generate leads for solar panel contractors and collect the names of prospects through a form on your landing page. When the lead comes in, your sales team calls the homeowner to schedule a free estimate. Later, some of the estimates are accepted and leads become paying customers.

In a conversion-focused optimization strategy without Offline Conversion Imports, all leads look the same because every prospect started by filling out the lead form on your landing page and that’s the only thing that is reported as a conversion.

What happens after that may be clear in your CRM, but Google Ads has no information about this. So when Google’s automated bidding strategies (like Maximize Conversion Value) are turned on, it thinks all leads are equally valuable and hence bids the same $10 for every prospect.

In reality, different prospects have different values.

As illustrated in the graphic above, three prospects took different actions and should get different values. The lead who never got an estimate is valued lowest; the lead who received a free estimate but did nothing with it is given a higher value; and the lead who went from estimate to buyer gets an even higher value.

These values can be communicated to Google through Offline Conversion Imports. With this additional insight, the Maximize Conversion Value bid strategy can now prioritize the more valuable leads by bidding more for them.

Why Advertisers Don’t Use Offline Conversion Imports (Even When They Know They Should)

It should be fairly obvious to most marketers that Offline Conversion Imports is a key strategy for advertisers who want to up their game and increase the value they get from PPC by upgrading from conversion-focused to value-based optimization.

But it’s not always adopted because it’s historically been difficult to implement.

The reason for this is simple. Advertisers are used to being able to control most elements of their campaigns through self-service tools provided by Google Ads, third-party PPC optimization software like Optmyzr, and landing page tools like Instapage.

But those same marketers usually don’t control the CRM systems where this valuable offline conversion data lives inside their organization. This dependency on other business teams (and sometimes even engineering) significantly reduces the adoption of Offline Conversion Imports.

How Offline Conversion Imports Works

The way Offline Conversion Imports works is by capturing every user’s unique click ID (GCLID) and adding it to the lead form. From there, the GCLID lives with the customer record in a CRM. When a lead moves through the conversion funnel, marketers can communicate these events to Google by passing back conversion actions and their corresponding unique GCLID.

It’s the GCLID that bridges the advertiser’s CRM data to Google’s data about each click that came from an ad auction.

But getting the GCLID into and out of the CRM can be a Herculean task in some organizations. Simply because control over implementation is out of the hands of the marketing team, it too often doesn’t get implemented right – or at all.

How To Do Offline Conversion Imports Without GCLIDs

Google now offers Enhanced Conversions for Leads, and without much fanfare solved one of these biggest challenges lead generation marketers have had with implementing Offline Conversion Imports.

While it still requires the unique GCLID, it now only has to be integrated with the lead form and no longer with the CRM. This is a major improvement that simplifies implementation.

Let’s look at how it works.

As the illustration shows, the advertiser gets to use a unique piece of customer information of their own to connect a Google click with different conversion stages in their CRM. And what better piece of unique lead data than someone’s email? It’s nearly always the first thing a lead form asks, so nearly every advertiser has it available.

Now the advertiser doesn’t need to remember the GCLID of each prospect in their CRM. They just tell Google which email address is associated with the GCLID (hashed for privacy) when the form is first filled out. From that point forward, they can just use the email address to tell Google a lead took the next step towards the ultimate conversion.

It’s a beautiful solution, really. Advertisers simply update the conversion tracking code on their landing page (which they likely already control and don’t need engineering’s help with), then use the existing email field from their CRM to tell Google when a lead turns into something more, like a customer.

Enhanced Conversions Allows For Enhanced Marketing

Optimization decisions are almost always based on data. When Optmyzr recommends a negative keyword, bid adjustment, or A/B ad test winner, it’s based on conversion data.

The better the conversion data available to platforms like Optmyzr or ad engines like Google, the better those tools can recommend optimizations that improve the performance of the KPIs you truly care about.

With Enhanced Conversions for Leads (or any form of Offline Conversion Imports), these tools get better data that aligns more closely with business objectives, and will offer better suggestions to improve your PPC campaigns.

So if you’ve not yet tried Offline Conversion Imports because it was too difficult to implement, now is a great time to try it again. Here’s a panel discussion with Google from last year going a bit deeper into offline conversions.

PPC Leaders Tell Optmyzr How to Build an In-House PPC Team

If online advertising plays a significant role in your growth strategy, it might be advisable to consider your own in-house PPC team.

Running an in-house PPC team gives businesses greater control over their PPC operations — from high-level strategy to details such as ad copy.

Another big reason why some businesses — especially bigger ones — build their own PPC teams is that in-house teams tend to have a deeper understanding of their business since they spend their full time working on just one business.

Before learning how to build your in-house PPC team, it’s essential to understand the differences between an in-house PPC team and an agency, and when to choose what.

Differences between in-house PPC and agencies, and when to pick each

Jannick Andersen, Traffic Manager at Proshop, points out some more differences stemming from his experience.

“My experience is that communication and time-to-market are a lot faster in-house. We are very satisfied with our agency (which currently has a more advisory/supportive role), but after we started our in-house team, we have both been able to run many more campaigns and have faster time-to-market.

After we started our in-house PPC team, PPC has become more important strategically. Meaning bigger budgets, more focus from management, and bigger interest from other departments.

When you do PPC through an agency, there’s a risk that it isn’t really on the radar in the company apart from a few key stakeholders who are in contact with the agency.”

Now that you’ve understood the core differences between the two, it’s time to know when you should pick one over the other.

When should you pick a PPC agency?

• You want to quickly expand and scale PPC marketing.
• You can’t afford to hire and train full-time staff.
• You want or need PPC specialists running your account.

When should you build an in-house PPC team?

• You want full transparency and greater control over your PPC activities; a dedicated team working solely on your brand.
• You want complete ownership of and security for your data.
• You want better communication between your stakeholders and the PPC team.
• You can afford to hire and retain permanent staff.
• You have access to good PPC talent.
• You are certain you’ll invest in PPC for a long period.
• You have access to technology and industry contacts.

Adding a bit more advice for marketing leaders building in-house PPC teams is Marin’s Anu Adegbola, one of PPC Hero’s top 25 experts for 2021.

“In the early days, there’s a lot of planning of what will happen in the transit.

It’s also important to know about access – what access level you have, what access level your team has, and where to go to remove unwanted access when you transit. And, timing is very important; you don’t want to make the transit during a time of the year when it’s going to be very busy for your business.

I won’t say there is much difference with moving your PPC operations in-house, just that you are a lot closer to the data and will need to lean on your in-house team instead of your agency team.”

How to build an in-house PPC team

Like Rome, in-house PPC teams aren’t built in a day. But with this three-point framework, you should be able to create a roadmap.

Create an advertising strategy.

Picking your strategy is the first step of making magic happen with PPC in-house. Don’t try to move ahead without a solid plan of action that’s in alignment with your overall marketing strategy.

Here’s a 5-step process to help you out.

1. Define your goals and what you want to achieve through PPC.

Whatever your goal is, it should tie directly to your business objective. Some of the more common goals companies have include:

• Lead generation
• Added sales and revenue
• Grow website traffic
• Increased brand awareness

2. Identify your target audience.

How well you identify your audience heavily influences the success of your ad campaign. If you don’t get your audience targeting right, you might cast too wide a net and burn through your budget.

So how can you get your targeting right?

If you’ve run campaigns in the past, gather insights from them and see what worked for you. Similarly, learn more from past sales and other marketing activities. They can be excellent sources of information.

If you’re new to PPC or haven’t had any past success with identifying your target audience, you can perform the following exercise:

• Conduct customer discovery calls every month along with your PPC team.
• Speak to 5-10 potential customers and really listen to what they say. Make sure that your advertising team is on the same page during this activity.
• Fine-tune your advertising efforts to address the insights and pain points that emerge from those conversations.

The more you do this, the better your targeting becomes. It gives you a clearer picture of your audience’s characteristics — demographics, psychographics, interests, fears, etc.

3. Choose the ad platforms.

PPC is a broad category that includes a variety of ad formats and ad platforms.

• Ad formats include search, display, video, shopping, email, etc.
• Ad platforms include Google, YouTube, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, etc.

Based on the audience insights you gather in the previous step, you can understand where they spend their time. Target those platforms. A tool like SparkToro is a great way to find this information.

4. Create and run the ad campaign.

You got your audience targeting and ad platforms set. The next things to do are build your landing page, create your campaign, and take it live. Showcase your unique selling proposition well, write compelling ad copy, and launch your campaign.

5. Analyze your results and optimize your strategy.

Once you run an iteration of your campaign, you’ll see how your ads have performed, which keywords are working, and so on. Be sure not to judge too soon — most campaigns require a few weeks to gather statistically significant data, while using automation like Smart Bidding means you’ll need a threshold of ~50 conversions.

Gather those metrics and analyze them. On a basic level, here are the most important metrics you should consider:

• Impressions/Views: Number of times your ad is shown to people you’ve targeted.
• Click-Through Rate: Percentage of people who see your ad and click on it.
• Cost Per Click: The amount you’re paying every time someone clicks on your ad.
• Cost Per Acquisition: The amount you’re paying to get a conversion. It might take multiple clicks to get a single user to convert.
• Conversions: The number of people who’ve taken your desired action, such as purchasing a product or submitting a form.
• Conversion Value: The worth of a given conversion, usually expressed as a currency amount.
• Quality Score: Unique to Google Ads, this score identifies how relevant your ads and landing pages are to user queries.
• Return On Ad Spend: The amount of conversion value generated divided by the total amount spent.

Focus on those metrics that directly affect your goals. For example, if sales are your primary goal, focus on Cost Per Acquisition, Conversions, and Return On Ad Spend. If brand awareness is your goal, focus on impressions and views.

The purpose of analyzing your results is to optimize your campaign to improve its performance.

Assemble your PPC Avengers.

In-house PPC teams look a bit different for everyone, depending on the size and needs of your business. But before you hire anybody, you should first know what kind of PPC experts you need.

If Google is your top channel for generating traffic, it makes sense to hire a Google Ads specialist. If you see that most of your audience spends their time on Facebook, look for a Facebook Ads specialist.

You may even hire a team of specialists if you have various categories of products to run campaigns for that you feel will be an excessive amount of effort on one person.

Remember that whatever channel is important to you, it’s important that your first hires have some experience under their belts.

In some companies, an in-house PPC team works alongside other departments. The SEO team helps with keyword research, the copywriting team helps with ad copy, the design team helps with creatives, and the PPC team takes on the role of optimizing the campaigns and reporting the results to the management.

One other skill you should look out for when hiring a PPC specialist is how well they can leverage past campaign performance data for future campaigns. The person should be able to make use of the past data — maybe by working with your engineering or data analytics team — to bring better results in the future.

You should also make sure that your team is constantly in the know about the latest PPC industry trends and updates to bring fresh ideas to the table.

Gianluca Binelli of BoosterBox has this to say about keeping up with PPC industry trends:

“Don’t forget to build a window on the outside world. It is a structured modus operandi to keep a close eye on the industry and can be done through conferences, external speakers, agency consultants, and more. There are so many smart people beyond your in-house PPC team who could share their views with you and expand your bubble of genius. It’s key that the team you’re building is exposed to new ideas and different perspectives. This is crucial for their continuous professional development, bringing fresh and innovative ideas to the table, increasing the quality of the work and talent retention.”

A summary of what you might look for when hiring your initial PPC team includes:

• Proven ability to execute a PPC strategy
• Strong technical advertising skills
• Experience with third-party PPC management software (like Optmyzr)
• Ability to work with cross-functional teams
• Analytical and communication skills
• Creativity and a willingness to learn
• Recognized PPC certifications are nice too, but rarely necessary

Deploy tools and software to make things smoother.

If you have experience running a large-scale PPC campaign, you may notice that much of your time goes into routine and repetitive tasks. Spending that precious time and manual effort on such tasks can not only be tedious but can take away your focus from other important things that need your attention.

Many agencies leave such tasks in the hands of PPC management tools, and for a good reason.

For instance, Optmyzr’s Shopping Campaign Builder can launch 2 campaigns with 14 ad groups in just 23 seconds, while the same task takes up to 10 minutes to complete using the regular Google Ads editor.

Just to clarify, these tools are not an alternative to the ad platforms. They only add an extra layer of functionality to help you get the most value out of your ad spend while saving on many resources.

Now, some PPC managers shy away from using automation tools because they are skeptical about the results. But what you have to understand is that as your business picks up the pace, scaling your advertising efforts will be extremely important.

In such cases, PPC automation will become inevitable. For that, there’s automation layering solutions like Optmyzr.

Here’s one more thing to keep in mind: when you start using such a tool, you may be tempted to apply automation to your entire process. But what you should do is carefully select only those areas where automation makes sense and invest your time in areas like copywriting, optimization, and performance analysis that cannot otherwise be handled by the tool.

And before you shop for any PPC management tool, you need to understand one crucial thing: what questions should I be asking the different vendors that provide PPC management tools?

Aaron Levy, Tinuiti’s Group Director of SEM, lays out 3 important questions below:

1. How does this tool make things better for me?

2. What does it do that other tools can’t?

3. What’s my return on investment?

Bonus questions to ask vendors:

1. How flexible is your tool provider? What kind of support will you get?
2. What’s the product roadmap?
3. Are you looking for a piece of software or a back-end process?

While the list of questions you could ask a PPC software provider can be endless, these are some of the more critical ones to consider. Focus on the needs and goals of your organization, keep your personal goals as a marketer in mind, and assess and analyze at length to make an informed purchase.

Most of all, be ready to ask some hard questions of software developers — and be prepared to walk away from something that doesn’t fit your needs. Software is not just about cost, but the value it provides and whether the two of you are a good fit together.

Here’s one more great piece of advice from Jannick Andersen about avoiding common mistakes when running an in-house PPC team.

“I have always found that putting PPC efforts in perspective compared to other channels is a good strategy – usually, the ROI and scalability are the biggest selling points.

Having worked both in-house and in an agency, I think one of the biggest advantages in agencies is having lots of specialist colleagues and a variety of clients. So, it’s easier to test hypotheses, new features and be inspired by colleagues, and see what works on various clients.

Depending on the company, an in-house PPC team is typically smaller. That’s why there’s a bigger risk of getting caught in a loop of doing things the same way over and over again.

So don’t be afraid to challenge the status quo. Try to always stay on top of things. Experiment often. Reach out to your PPC network for any help. Read blogs and attend conferences (but ALWAYS have critical thinking), and try to do things better and more efficiently.”

Conclusion

Having your own in-house PPC team comes with a lot of benefits. But look out for common pitfalls. If your marketing leaders don’t have PPC specialization or expertise, reach out to an experienced consultant to assist you with the migration.

Remember that it takes time to set up a good in-house team. With the right strategy, team, and tools by your side, you can produce excellent results.

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