Service
Google Ads management
Accounts built to be measured, then managed against what the measurement says.
Google Ads management means owning the whole loop: what the account is allowed to bid on, what counts as a conversion, and what the numbers mean once they arrive. We do all three. Most underperforming accounts we see are not badly optimised, they are badly measured, and no amount of bid tuning fixes a conversion action that fires on a thank-you page reload.
9x
ROAS increase in three months
2.5x average lift
60%
lower cost per conversion in one month
35% average improvement
The problem
Why do Google Ads accounts stop paying for themselves?
Usually because the conversion signal broke rather than the bidding. Duplicate actions, missing enhanced conversions, or every form fill counted equally all mislead Smart Bidding.
An account that worked at one spend level rarely keeps working at three times that spend. The queries that made it profitable get exhausted, broad match starts reaching for adjacent intent, and Smart Bidding optimises hard toward a conversion signal that nobody has checked in a year.
The usual symptoms look like a bidding problem: cost per acquisition climbs, volume plateaus, and the same handful of campaigns eat the budget. The usual cause is upstream. Duplicate conversion actions inflate the count. Enhanced conversions were never enabled, so the platform is learning from a fraction of the real signal. Or every form fill on the site counts equally, and the campaigns are quietly optimising toward the cheapest, worst leads.
We start by finding out which of those is true before touching a bid.
Scope
What does Google Ads management cover?
Search, Performance Max, Shopping and feeds, conversion tracking, bidding and budget, and remarketing, with the measurement layer treated as the foundation rather than an afterthought.
Every engagement starts with the account you already have, not a template.
Search campaigns
Keyword and match type strategy, negative keyword architecture that stops campaigns competing with each other, ad group structure tight enough that the ad matches the query, and responsive search assets tested against each other rather than left at whatever the wizard suggested.
Performance Max
Asset groups split by product or service line so reporting means something, brand exclusions applied so PMax does not bill you for traffic you already own, and search themes chosen deliberately. We report on PMax at the asset group and search category level, not as one opaque number.
Shopping and feeds
Feed error reporting, title and attribute structure, and the campaign hierarchy that lets you bid differently on your best margin products. Feed quality moves Shopping performance more than bidding does.
Conversion tracking
One conversion action per real business outcome, deduplicated, with values attached where a value exists. Enhanced conversions and offline conversion import where the sale closes off-site. This is the part that determines whether everything else works.
Bidding and budget
Target CPA or ROAS set from your actual economics, changed on a schedule that respects the learning period, and budgets allocated by marginal return rather than by whichever campaign is loudest.
Remarketing
Audience segments built from behaviour rather than one all-visitors list, with frequency capped so a week of following someone around the internet does not become the brand experience.
Process
How does a Google Ads engagement run?
Audit the account first, repair measurement before touching bids, rebuild only what genuinely blocks good bidding, then manage weekly against a target you set.
Audit first
We read the account before we propose anything: query reports, conversion action setup, change history, wasted spend, and the gap between what the account reports and what your CRM says happened.
Fix measurement
Nothing gets optimised against a broken signal. Tracking is repaired, deduplicated, and verified against a real submission before any structural work begins.
Rebuild what needs it
Sometimes that is a full restructure. Often it is three campaigns and a negative list. We tell you which, and we tell you when the answer is to leave something alone.
Manage against the number
Weekly optimisation against the target you set, with changes logged and explained. You always know what changed and why.
Report in plain terms
Spend, conversions, cost per acquisition, and where the money went, in language you could forward to a finance team without translating it first.
Coverage
What does the audit behind this work look at?
Every engagement opens with the audit, and these are the first of the areas it reads before anyone recommends a single change.
Account structure and campaign architecture
Whether campaigns are split along lines that let you control budget and read results, or along lines that made sense to whoever built them three years ago. Structure decides what you are able to steer later, so a structural fault caps every other improvement.
Campaign type mix
Where the money actually sits across Search, Performance Max, Shopping, Demand Gen, Display and Video. Most accounts have drifted into a mix nobody deliberately chose, usually one campaign at a time and often after a platform representative recommended it.
Budget allocation and pacing
Whether budget follows marginal return or last year's habit, and whether campaigns are capped, underspending, or spending the day's budget before the hours that actually convert.
Bidding strategy and the signals feeding it
Which strategy each campaign runs, whether it has the conversion volume that strategy needs to work, and what signal it is optimising toward. A bidding strategy is only ever as good as the data feeding it.
Conversion actions
What the account counts as a conversion, which actions are set to Primary, and whether each one is worth steering spend toward. This is where most accounts turn out to be quietly broken.
Conversion tracking integrity and import paths
Whether conversions are counted once, counted at all, and imported from the systems that hold the truth. We verify this rather than assume it, because every other number in the account is derived from it.
- 12 further areas are covered on the audit page.
All 18 are listed on the Google Ads audit page.
Deliverables
What do you receive?
A written account audit, verified conversion tracking documented action by action, campaign rebuilds with reasoning recorded, a negative keyword architecture, and a full change log.
- A written account audit with prioritised findings
- Verified conversion tracking, documented action by action
- Campaign builds or restructures with the reasoning recorded
- A negative keyword and exclusion architecture you own
- Monthly reporting tied to your cost per acquisition or ROAS target
- A change log covering every optimisation made
Start with the audit
Google Ads audit
What we read before recommending any of this, and what it covers. There is a free version if you would rather start there.
Related reading
How to audit a Google Ads account
The long-form version of the thinking behind this service.
Related services
- Marketing analytics services
Measurement you can act on, and an honest account of what it cannot tell you.
- Conversion rate optimization services
Find the friction, form a hypothesis, run it to a decision.
Before you brief anyone
- What this kind of work costs
Third-party benchmark data, named and dated. We publish no rate card and the pages say why.
- Whether an agency is the right model at all
Agency against in-house and against a freelancer, each reaching a recommendation rather than a pitch.
- What is different in your vertical
Platform policy constraints, conversion definition problems and negative keyword themes by industry.
- What your own numbers support
Calculators for target cost per lead, in-house cost against an agency, and whether you can test at all.
Questions
What do buyers ask about Google Ads management?
How long results take, whether the account needs rebuilding, who owns it, how low conversion volume changes the approach, and how long any contract runs.
How long before Google Ads management shows a result?
Measurement fixes show up within days because they change what the account can see. Structural changes need a full learning period, which is typically two to three weeks per campaign, and longer on low-volume accounts. Any agency that promises a specific result in a specific week is guessing.
Do we need to rebuild the account from scratch?
Usually not. A rebuild throws away conversion history that Smart Bidding depends on, which costs you performance while the new campaigns relearn. We rebuild when the structure genuinely prevents good bidding, and we say so explicitly when it does not.
Who owns the Google Ads account?
You do, always. We work inside your account through manager access. If we stop working together you keep the account, the history, the conversion setup, and the documentation, with nothing to migrate.
Can you work with our existing in-house team?
Yes, and it is often the better arrangement. We tend to take the measurement layer and the strategic structure, and leave day to day creative and landing pages with the people closest to the product.
What if our conversion volume is very low?
Low volume changes the approach rather than ruling it out. Smart Bidding needs conversions to learn from, so on low-volume accounts we often optimise toward a reliable upper-funnel action and import the real sale offline, rather than starve the algorithm and blame the algorithm.
Do you require a long contract?
No. Retainers run month to month after the first engagement period, which exists because restructuring an account and then leaving before the learning period finishes would leave you worse off than when you started.
Start with an audit
Send us what you are running. We will tell you what we would look at first in Google Ads, and whether it is the right place to start at all.