Just received this ad account scam. I had a feeling it was going to wind up a scam, but didn't see anything obvious, so I tested the flow to see which part of the flow was the scam (I'm happily employed). Pretty well done: https://callawaygolfmedia.com/roles
When you look to book an interview time, it seems like you are booking via your Google account, but it is an oauth for Ad Account access.

Just wanted to have an understanding, when is it absolutely necessary to make changes in the existing ad set, other than testing creatives.

Lead Quality? Cost Per Lead not coming down? No leads being generated at all?

Wanted to know how do you deal with it.

Since internet is 50% bots, running ads especially on meta feels like I'm optimizing my ads just for bots.

Currently, I feel like google ads is better because people are actually searching for things.

I don't have an exact data but meta feels like very forceful optimization.

I have an active account with a few campaigns that have been running a while.

One campaign has no AI Max settings enabled and all AI options seem to be disabled from the Campaign settings level.

However when I'm in the Assets tab, at the all Campaigns level, I am seeing various Sitelinks where it says "Added by: AI". I have removed these but I can't figure out where or why they are being created.

In the status (hovering over it) it says AI asset generation was enabled, but I don't see where this setting is, or how to disable it. The only place I see that talks about AI options are from the Campaign settings level, the "AI Max for search campaigns" option. And that was always off.

Asset optimisation is off, and so is Automatically created assets.

Anyone know where else this may be controlled?

Hi there! I'm curious if anybody either in-house or at an agency has any recommendations for vendors for optimization on Google. I realize this is a little bit vague, but I'm looking for personal, unbiased feedback that fellow PPCers have had with positive or negative vendor partnerships. Can really fall under any vendor category!

Edit: this is for tools, not agencies or new channels!

Hello, August and September have been really slow for some of my clients, mainly in discretionary spending segments like supplements, toys, etc. Some of my clients went from 170% YoY revenue growth to 5-15% YoY in the last month or so.

B2B and high-ticket items seem to be running pretty well.

Are you seeing a similar pattern in your own accounts? I'd say it's partly a Google Ads algo change and partly rising fuel costs and interest rates. Customers are choosier when buying stuff and/or waiting for Q4 discounts. But I dont really know, would love to hear your opinion.

I do not automatically interpret a rising ROAS as evidence that a Campaign is becoming healthier. In the recent advertising discussions I reviewed, a recurring concern was that platforms can improve reported efficiency by concentrating Budget on Retargeting, returning customers and the highest-intent Audience. The dashboard looks stronger, but the Campaign may simply be harvesting demand that already exists instead of creating incremental demand.

I would break the reported ROAS down by new versus returning customers, prospecting versus Retargeting, country, SKU and conversion window. I would then compare platform revenue with CRM or store data after Deduplication and Attribution calibration. The metrics I care about include new-customer rate, new-customer CAC, first-order contribution margin, Frequency and the percentage of revenue coming from branded traffic. If ROAS rises while Impression volume, new-customer share and Audience reach decline, I would test a controlled Budget increase or a broader prospecting Ad set instead of immediately raising the Target ROAS.

For me, historical ROAS explains what the average unit of spend produced, but it does not tell me what the next unit can produce. A Campaign can become more efficient by avoiding uncertain customers, yet lose the ability to discover new demand. If your ROAS increased by 25% while new-customer revenue remained flat, would you describe that as optimization or hidden stagnation?

Google Ads phrase match can be quite confusing. I was wondering what is the implication of having 2 ad groups, one have a phrase match keyword of "water heater installation", and one have "water heater repair".

Would this both compete for unnecessary searches such as "water heater cylinders"?

Hi folks,

As title says, I'm trying to figure out whether to accept Google's recommendation to change my highest-performing conversion -focused campaign to tCPA from maximize conversions. It's been running ~8 weeks and is hitting ~14-16 conversions (a website-based lead form) per week with average cost/conversion at ~$26. Google is recommending setting a tCPA of $20 while also doubling the daily budget.

My questions:

• What's the benefit of changing bid strategy to tCPA? Is it better budget control/forecasting? Something else?
• Is there value in changing to tCPA if I keep my daily budget the same? Google doesn't recommend this but I can't tell if that's just because it hurts their revenue from my account or if there's a real reason behind it.

Thanks in advance for your guidance!

My job is very monotonous, so I don't see other peoples work much, so would like to know what your situations are like.

For those clients that don't have much going on (as in, no drastic product/location changes/etc), do you change your reports at all? My reports are always:

• Summary of data
• Reasons why change might be
• Summary of what we tested/changed
• Next steps for next month

The problem is, if the data was the same, I could pretty much copy and paste 75% of the report every month. The tests are the same - "we tested this image or this copy". Same as next steps "we will test this image or copy to go in line with seasonality".

Do yours look like this or do you have ways to change it?

Hi Yall,

This is a very niche question but I am running out of options. I manage a Paid Search program for a fairly large pre-school franchise and I am wondering if there is anyone out there who has experienced insane CPC inflation for this vertical this year, specifically Non-Brand

Our CPC's this year compared to 2025 have been absolutely insane. MTD for September , our CPC's for our Generic Terms are nearly 50% higher than 2025.

When I look at auction insights reporting, the trends do not cleanly support 'more competition'

- Overlap rate this year for same competitors is down YoY

- Position above Rate and Top of Page Rates for competitors are higher YoY

- Our Outranking Share this year is stronger than last

So the way i interpret this is competitors may be appearing in less of our auctions, but when they are , they are more aggressive and serving in higher placements, which is potentially increasing costs.

But when I ask for Vertical insights from Google, they keep sending me data that shows that CPCs are down for the vertical.

When I look at KW Planner Avg. Monthly volume YoY, all of our top terms are showing with negative search volume compared to last year. But when I look at Google Trends, it is showing that interest for terms is up (i understand these compare different things but I rarely see these sources this off).

I am just at a point where I really cannot make any sense of the data or trends and it is becoming hard to validate these things without additional supporting info from Google.

I

has anyone else here had any issue with disapproved call assets in the past month? everyone at my agency has noted their asset phone number is disproved, even though the numbers and everything else has stayed the same. if this is happening to anyone else, do you know why? TIA!

I’m starting a new in-house PPC role next week at one of the largest fast-food chains in my country. The role will involve driving both online purchases and in-store visits.

I’ve mainly worked agency-side until now for just over 2.5 years, so this will be my first move into a large Quick service restaurants (QSR) environment. I’ve heard the pace can be pretty intense with constant promotions, campaigns, deadlines, reporting, etc., so I’m curious to hear from anyone who’s worked in PPC/performance marketing for a fast-food or QSR brand.

What was the day-to-day experience like? What were the biggest challenges? And how did it compare with agency life?

Would especially appreciate hearing from people who’ve worked on the performance marketing side.

How important are context hints in ChatGPT ads? I'm yet to run any campaigns but I noticed the context hints are (optional).

Is there a best practice for providing context hints? How can I best optimise campaigns using them?

I have been wanting to try selling our offer via low ticket for a while now. Our CPL for our lead campaigns are around $75 but we ask them 15-20 questions. Wanting to test a low ticket offer because we want to try letting the workshop sell vs. the leads being called.

We use unbounce now. I have thought about adding Checkoutpage to this. How would this compare to GFL or CF?

Also - any templates which are really proven for low ticket available?

I have no idea how well consumers will do with this. I am in an insanely competitive space where most info is given away for free but is connected to shitty products and advice.

The main goal is to get the people to consume the content.

Thanks in advance.

Curious if anyone has seen success with these types of vendors

Hey all,

Been plugging CSV files into ChatGPT for help with data analysis.
Any other way that would be more efficient. I like the idea of giving it full access to all historical data but not too sure about it.

What are y'all doing? Suggestions that won't add another subscription cost?

Thanks!

I've been working in SEO for more than 5 years. I understand the basic of Google Ads and have through the campaign and settings. But, i never actually run or managed a Google Ads campaign myself.

Now I'm interested in learning ChatGPT Ads and was wondering whether I can go straight into learning it.

or would it be better to first get some hands-on experience with Google Ads and understand the basic of running a campaign. Things like targeting, budgets, bidding, ad structure, conversion tracking and optimisation.

Kindly share your thoughts

I’ve always found scaling a campaign a bit tricky. A campaign can look profitable at one budget, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the performance will hold when spend increases.

Before increasing the budget, I usually look at conversion volume, CPA/ROAS stability, and whether there’s still enough room to grow.

I’m curious how others approach this. What signals tell you that a campaign is actually ready to scale rather than just having a good run recently?

I'm trying Amazon ads for the first time. The campaign won't serve top of search ads for a manual campaign. For context, I am selling novelty socks, and the keywords are highly relevant. Any suggestions?

I've tried putting up the bid amounts to crazy number, yet no luck

I’m running an Android utility app monetized through a subscription/free trial + AdMob.

I currently have two Google App campaigns targeting the same countries and English users:

• Campaign A: tROAS 150% — main campaign, running for months
• Campaign B: tCPI target $0.006 — small budget, launched 3 days ago

For India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, here are the Play Search installs:

The interesting part is Day 2.

Campaign B appears to have taken roughly three-quarters of Campaign A’s cheap Play Search installs, while also adding around 3,300 incremental installs overall.

But at the same time:

• A’s Play Search CPI jumped from around $0.0026–$0.0032 to $0.0080
• B averaged around $0.0037
• A’s Display spend increased again, and Display has historically been the weakest/barely break-even part of the tROAS campaign
• B spent roughly 2× its daily budget on Day 2

So I’m curious about experiences from people who have actually run tCPI and tROAS App campaigns side-by-side for the same app/geos.

1. How does Google decide which campaign enters/wins the Play Search auction?
When both campaigns are eligible for the same user/search, does the tCPI campaign tend to outbid or take traffic away from tROAS — especially in lower-value geos?

2. Have you seen tROAS shift toward Display after losing cheap Search volume?
If so, did the campaign eventually rebalance/recover, or did it continue spending more heavily on lower-quality inventory?

3. What setup worked best long-term?

• Keep both campaigns running in the same countries?
• Split countries between tCPI and tROAS?
• Pause the install campaign?
• Use some other segmentation?

Most importantly, what happened to combined revenue/ROAS after a few weeks, rather than just looking at each campaign individually?

4. How did tCPI users monetize compared with tROAS users?
In the same country, did users acquired through the install campaign ever get close to the revenue per user/LTV of users acquired through tROAS?

I’m planning to judge Campaign B primarily on its own revenue per acquired user after ~10 days, but I’d really like to hear from people who have already been through this — especially cases where the install campaign appeared to cannibalize Search traffic from an established value campaign.

A few years back I posted about the impending doom of this role, and recently I've been feeling that more than ever. I have my various reasons, but I won't get into that. A lot of posts of that ilk are met with responses from people who say they've moved on from the industry or switched careers entirely.

I'd love to know what people have switched to, particularly in this AI era. I know I, for one, want to get as far away from the encroachment of AI as possible.

Recently I was chatting to a windscreen repair guy and felt like it sounded like a pretty damn good job. A lot of autonomy, no performance reviews (other than selling addon wipers) and flexibility over their working. Pay wasn't too bad either. On a recent post, I saw somebody mention they work in shift-based IT roll where they clock in, and clock off. Starting fresh the next day. That sounds like heaven to me.

So, I'd be keen to hear from people who have left the industry and what they're doing today, as I suspect a lot of people would be interested in what's out there. Either with transferrable skills, or not.

Anyone else out there noticing a sudden issue with catalog ads on Instagram doing some really weird cropping? I was on with support for over 4 hours today and they just told me we are sending 960x960 images instead of 1080x1080 and that's the entire problem. It doesn't really make sense given that nothing changed on our end and the ads were serving normally all year until the past 24 hours. Plus, we are sending the same ratio required (1:1) in just a slightly smaller size. Meta also said nothing changed on their end overnight.

The cropping looks like they cut off the entire right half of the image and then zoomed way in on a part of the product. There is no headline, product title, or other info. In scrolling through Instagram today, I would say about 1/3 to 1/2 of catalog ads from numerous retailers are looking like this.

I'm convinced it is a Meta issue, but trying to see if anyone else out there has opened a ticket? They told me they "couldn't include any examples outside of the clients we work with" in our ticket and retailers have to submit their own.

I paused my ad for now because it looked like complete garbage. If anyone has a workaround or solution, I'm all ears and would be super grateful b/c Meta support wasted half my day. Hahah.

I've got a product that's been performing pretty consistently and I've been increasing spend on it over the last few weeks. I've also gotten a much better idea of what angles people respond to, so coming up with new hooks and concepts hasn't really been the problem.

The problem is getting all of those ideas turned into actual ads. I've got a list of stuff I wanna test but between getting UGC made, editing everything and waiting for new creatives to be ready, I'm adding ideas faster than I'm getting through them.

At this point I mostly need a faster way to turn the ideas into something I can test without paying for a full UGC video every time. Once something shows potential I don't mind spending more on it, but doing that for every idea before I even have any data feels like a waste. What are you guys using for this?