Google Ads management services for accounts where Performance Max is buying customers you already had
Branded searches convert at high rates and low cost, so an algorithm optimising for conversions learns to spend on your own brand name. The report improves every month. The business does not. It is the most common and most expensive failure in Google Ads right now.
Campaign types chosen per job, brand traffic separated properly, and reporting that shows incremental contribution rather than flattering totals.
What are Google Ads management services?
Google Ads management services cover running the account inside the platform: choosing campaign types for the job in front of them, structuring Performance Max asset groups and Search campaigns so they do not compete, applying negatives and brand exclusions, managing search themes and feeds, setting bid targets from margin, and reporting on what the advertising genuinely added.
The wider strategy, budget allocation across channels and what changed platform wide sits on our PPC management page.
This page is the Google Ads account itself, and in particular the campaign type decisions that decide where your money actually goes.
What Performance Max does when nobody constrains it
PMax is genuinely good at what it does. The problem is that what it does is optimise for the conversions that are easiest to get.
Brand cannibalisation is the default outcome. Your own brand searches convert at higher rates and lower cost than anything else in the account, so a campaign optimising for conversions gravitates towards them. You end up paying for customers who typed your name and were coming anyway, and the reported cost per acquisition looks superb while incremental contribution quietly falls.
Negative keywords finally work properly in PMax. Full negative keyword support now exists at campaign and account level, with room for up to 10,000 negatives on a campaign. For years the honest answer to controlling PMax was that you largely could not. That has changed, and most accounts have not been updated to reflect it.
Channel reporting shows where the budget actually went. Spend is now visible across Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps, alongside asset level ratings, audience insights and placement reports. If your agency still describes PMax as a black box, they have not looked recently.
Search themes tell you whether they were needed. You can add up to 50 per asset group, and Google shows a usefulness indicator revealing whether a theme brought in traffic PMax would not have found anyway. Themes scoring poorly are simply noise and should be replaced rather than admired.
Google changes this frequently, so confirm current behaviour in your own account. The direction is consistent: more automation, and more controls arriving quietly for the people who go looking for them.
Which campaign does which job
Most accounts run one type for everything. The point of having several is that they are good at different things.
| Type | What it is for | Where it goes wrong |
|---|---|---|
| Search | Your highest intent, highest value terms with specific messaging | Left too narrow to gather data, or too broad without negatives |
| Branded Search | Owning your own name cheaply and keeping it out of PMax | Not run at all, so PMax absorbs the brand traffic instead |
| Performance Max | Everything else: broader queries, shopping, display, video, discovery | Given the brand terms and then judged on the resulting numbers |
| Shopping | Product visibility driven by feed quality | Bids adjusted endlessly while the feed stays neglected |
| Demand Gen | Awareness and consideration before anybody is searching | Judged on last click conversions it was never going to produce |
The recommended shape for most advertisers now is Search and Performance Max running together with deliberate separation, rather than choosing between them. The separation is the work.
What our Google Ads management services cover
Structure and separation first, because those decide where automated spend lands before any bid is set.
Brand separation
A dedicated branded Search campaign, brand exclusions applied to Performance Max, and negatives that keep your own name out of the campaign that would otherwise eat it.
Campaign architecture
Types chosen per job and separated so reporting is legible. One campaign holding everything cannot be managed, only observed.
Negative keyword management
Applied at account and campaign level, including inside Performance Max now that it supports them properly. This is the recurring work that keeps waste down.
Asset groups and search themes
Grouped by product or intent rather than dumped into one, with themes reviewed against their usefulness indicator instead of left in place indefinitely.
Shopping feed work
Titles, attributes and product data, which drive Shopping and the shopping side of PMax far more directly than any bid adjustment.
Bid targets from margin
Derived from what a conversion is worth after cost of goods, then left stable long enough for automated bidding to learn from it.
Creative and assets
Headlines, descriptions, images and video supplied properly, because with automated generation the quality of your inputs is the ceiling on the output.
Conversion tracking
Measuring the outcome that makes money, with values attached. Automated bidding optimises confidently towards whatever it is told to value.
Incrementality reporting
Brand and non brand separated, channel breakdown reviewed, and results reported against what the advertising actually added rather than what it was credited with.
If you are sizing a budget rather than fixing an account, our Google Ads budget calculator will give you a starting figure from your own conversion value and margin.
How the account gets run
Split brand from everything else
Almost always the first change, and frequently the one that makes the reported numbers look worse and the business better. You cannot judge performance while brand traffic is mixed into it.
Rebuild structure and apply negatives
Campaign types matched to jobs, asset groups separated sensibly, and negatives applied at every level the platform now allows, including inside Performance Max.
Set targets from margin, then hold
Bid targets derived from conversion value after costs, then left alone long enough for the system to learn. Weekly target changes keep an account permanently in a learning phase.
Report brand and non brand separately
Every month, with channel breakdown. A single blended cost per acquisition hides the exact problem this page is about.
How to tell if brand traffic is inflating your results
Six checks you can run yourself this afternoon. If several apply, the account is probably reporting better than it is performing.
No branded Search campaign exists
If nothing is deliberately capturing your own name, something else is. Usually Performance Max, and usually at a cost per acquisition that looks wonderful.
PMax cost per acquisition is far below everything else
Occasionally a genuine result. More often a sign the campaign found the cheapest conversions in the account, which are the people already looking for you.
Conversions rose but revenue did not
The clearest signal available. If attributed conversions climbed while total sales stayed flat, the advertising moved credit around rather than adding demand.
Brand exclusions are not switched on
The control exists. Plenty of accounts predate it or were set up by somebody who never went back to check what had been added.
Nobody has read the search terms
Search originated traffic is reportable. If nobody has looked at what queries actually triggered spend, nobody knows what is being bought.
Reporting shows one blended number
Brand and non brand averaged together produces a figure that always looks acceptable and never tells you anything actionable.
The honest test is uncomfortable and simple: pause brand spend for a fortnight and watch total revenue rather than attributed conversions. If revenue holds, you were buying customers you already had.
What we will tell you before taking the account
Three things worth agreeing early, because all three are easier to hear before an invoice than after one.
Fixing brand separation usually makes your dashboard look worse. Cost per acquisition rises because the cheap conversions were removed from the blend. That is the correct outcome and it needs agreeing in advance, otherwise month one reads as a failure.
Google Ads cannot rescue thin margins. If the click price in your market exceeds what a customer is worth, no campaign structure fixes that. More volume makes it worse, and finding out slowly is the expensive way.
Small accounts and Performance Max are an awkward pair. PMax needs conversion volume to learn from. Below a certain level, a tightly targeted Search campaign on high intent terms will usually outperform it and be far easier to understand.
And we do not charge a percentage of ad spend, for the same reason as everywhere else on this site: it pays us more for spending more of your money, which is the wrong incentive when the first fix is nearly always removing waste.
How much do Google Ads management services cost?
A flat monthly fee based on the work the account needs, not on the budget flowing through it.
Account audit
Brand and non brand split, wasted spend, structure, tracking accuracy and whether targets match margin. Delivered as findings you could hand to anyone.
Restructure project
Brand separation, campaign rebuild, negatives, asset groups, tracking and feed work. A one off, scoped after the audit.
Ongoing management
Weekly search terms and negatives work, target management, creative refresh and monthly incrementality reporting. Flat fee, cancellable.
Judge us on total revenue and on incremental cost per acquisition with brand stripped out. Blended return on ad spend is the easiest number in this industry to make look good.
Google Ads alongside the rest of the marketing
Google Shopping Ads
Feed quality, titles and attributes, which decide Shopping visibility and the shopping half of Performance Max more than bids ever will.
See Shopping Ads →PPC audit services
A one off review if you want the brand and non brand split checked without committing to a management arrangement.
See PPC audit →Landing page development
Where the click lands decides whether the spend was worth it. Improving the page is frequently cheaper than raising the bid.
See landing pages →Common questions about Google Ads management
Frequently because it found your brand traffic. Branded searches convert at high rates and low cost, so a campaign optimising for conversions learns to spend there. The reported figure looks excellent while incremental contribution falls, because you are paying for people who typed your name and were coming anyway. The test is whether total revenue rose, not whether attributed conversions did.
Two things together. Run a dedicated branded Search campaign so the traffic has a proper home, and apply brand exclusions plus a campaign level negative keyword list to Performance Max so it stops serving on your own name. Doing only one of the two leaves a gap, and doing neither is the default state of most accounts we audit.
Yes, and this genuinely changed. Full negative keyword support exists at campaign and account level, with room for up to 10,000 negatives on a campaign. For years the honest answer was that PMax could not really be controlled that way. Any advice you read describing it as impossible predates the change.
For most advertisers, both, with deliberate separation between them. Search takes your highest intent, highest value terms where specific messaging matters. Performance Max takes everything else, including broader queries, shopping inventory, display, video and discovery. The separation is the actual work, because without it they compete for the same conversions and one takes credit for the other.
Considerably less than it was. Channel level reporting now shows spend across Search, Shopping, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail and Maps, alongside asset level ratings, audience insights, placement reports and search terms for search originated traffic. If somebody is still describing it as unknowable, they have not looked recently.
They are Performance Max's version of keyword guidance, up to 50 per asset group. Usefully, Google shows an indicator of whether a theme brought in traffic the campaign would not have found anyway. Themes scoring poorly on that measure are not helping and should be replaced, which is a check almost nobody runs after setup.
Initially, yes, and it is worth agreeing that in advance. Removing cheap brand conversions from the blend raises your reported cost per acquisition. The number gets worse and the business gets better, because you are now measuring what the advertising adds rather than what it takes credit for. If that trade is unacceptable, we are probably not the right agency.
Find out how much of your spend is buying your own brand
We will split brand from non brand, check whether Performance Max is absorbing traffic that belongs elsewhere, review your negatives and exclusions, and show you what the advertising is genuinely adding. On most accounts that number is meaningfully lower than the dashboard suggests. No obligation, no sales pitch.
Get my free Google Ads audit- Brand and non brand split
- PMax exclusions check
- Incremental cost per acquisition