It’s no secret that Google wants you to turn on every single automated feature and targeting option they offer. Besides the obvious “Recommendations” and onslaught by Google reps, Google also uses more subtle tricks to get you to activate various ad “features.”
First, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that all automation and extended targeting options are bad. Far from it, each of these can be useful under certain circumstances. At my agency we use a wide range of these features as appropriate for the client and situation. The problem is Google blindly telling you to turn them all on without any context for your budget limitations or business goals.
In this post I’m going to explore some of the different ways Google tricks you into to activating the features they want you to use.
Default Settings
An oldy but a goody, many of Google’s default settings include targeting and features that most advertisers shouldn’t be using. Take for example, the search campaign default network settings. Google has two tricks in store for you here. Most advertisers know they should never run display network ads within a search campaign and deactivate that option. But the other “checked” option makes it appear that this is the search network being selected. It’s not! The search network is always on and there’s no way to turn it off. The checkbox is for including search partners. While search partners can perform well and should be tested on new accounts and for aggressive budgets, most advertisers will find they get subpar performance from that channel.
Another great example is the default location target option. Google sets this to include Presence or Interest, which is the far less used option for most advertisers. Worse, Google hides the setting under a roll-up. Unless you know about this you’re likely to miss it and notice later that you’re getting clicks from outside of your geographic target market.
Hidden Settings
Another tactic Google uses is to make you click through several steps to turn off a particular feature. For example, disabling automated extensions requires following this procedure:
- Click on Ads and Assets
- Click on Assets
- Click the small hamburger menu on the far right
- Click Account-level automated assets menu item
- Click on the next hamburger menu on the far right
- Click on advanced settings
- Unroll the automated sitelink of interest
- Select the off option
- Select a reason
- Add a comment
- Click save
- Optionally repeat steps 7 to 11 for the other 9 asset types
One tip I have for you is that you can skip a lot of these steps by using the search bar to find “automated extensions” which takes you to step 5. But really, what new advertiser would figure this out on their own without some help?
Work Intensive Settings
If you want to turn off features Google doesn’t want you to deactivate they will often make it difficult and time consuming to do so. For example, if you want to block all app-categories for a campaign you need to select them one by one, and there are around 150 to go through. This is very annoying when Google could easily include a select all option. There is a workaround for this by using Google Ads Editor, but not everybody has downloaded that tool or is even familiar with it.
Want to block all app-categories at the account-level? Well even Editor can’t help you with that. Oh, and once you’ve done this do you think this includes P-Max campaigns? It doesn’t! Keep reading…
Targeting Options You Can’t Change Online
Want to add negative keywords, placement or topic exclusions to your P-Max campaign? Well it’s not easy. You’ll need to fill in a spreadsheet and upload it using a poorly documented online request form. While this is far simpler than reaching out to your rep as we used to do, it’s still a rigamarole that most advertisers will never figure out.
Using Completion Bias
Google uses completion bias in their Recommendations Optimization and Ad Strength Scores to get you to implement things they want you to. While all advertisers should be optimizing, that doesn’t mean blindly accepting Google’s suggestions to get a better score that has no direct bearing on business results. Yes, that’s right, neither of these scores properly describe optimization for your own business goals.
Scary Status Notices
Google uses various notifications with red backgrounds and bold fonts to make it appear something is very wrong with your campaigns. One common example is the campaign status column which will often display “Limited by budget” or “Limited by bid strategy” or “Limited by target.” These warnings are designed to get you to increase your budget, bid, or targeting, respectively. All of them will lead to increased spending and in some cases at reduced performance such as paying a higher cost per conversion or getting a lower return on ad spend.
Taking the first example, “Limited by budget,” a better solution is often to actually lower your bid to make more efficient use of the available traffic. And honestly, if you’re using automated bidding such as Max Conversions, Google is already getting you the best performance possible for your budget. Bottom line, you should generally ignore these notices unless you are actively scaling up your campaigns.
Bad “Recommendations”
I’ve touched on this already but want to delve into specific recommendations a little more. Recommendations like increasing your bid or adjusting your budget lack any context for advertisers’ business goals. Recommendations to switch to all broad match keywords really only makes sense if you are trying to grow your account. When you do opt-in you need to up your negative keywords game and be prepared to get far less relevant reporting on keyword performance. Invariably, on all broad keyword strategy will lead to less even distribution of spending per keyword which can make keyword analysis and optimization more difficult. There are definitely cases where broad match makes sense, but not in every single account Google!
To add insult to injury, Google offers “auto-apply” Recommendations settings. Once on, Google can automatically do things like increase your budget, change bid strategies, lower bids, add keywords, add ad copy, and more. This is extremely bad for most accounts.
Automatically Generated Creative
Part of Recommendations and Default Settings, automatically generated creative comes in many forms. The way Google promotes this feature you would think their AI writes ad copy like the Bard… pun intended! In truth, the ad copy Google automatically generates is often for the wrong offer, includes telephone numbers (which will get your ads disapproved), or just doesn’t make any sense. And there are so many different ways Google “implements” this that you need to watch the video I’ve linked to believe it.
Maybe in another year or two the AI will really “get it.” But when Google has to turn off human face generation due to a prejudice AI and Gemini keeps making things up, is it really the right time to hand over the keys to your advertising budget?
Google Reps and their Mandate
Google Reps are commissioned salespeople, period. It doesn’t matter if they are working for a 3rd party, an agency rep, or part of the accelerator team. They are SALESPEOPLE! Their mandate is to get advertisers to spend more money. If they can align that with advertiser business goals that’s ideal. But if not, that’s alright also as long as the advertiser is willing to spend more money.
To that end, every strategy a Google Rep recommends is designed to run more ads to more people. If you’re like me and have spoken with hundreds of reps you’ll have yet to hear, “I think you should lower the budget or bid on this campaign.”
Summary
Google’s first responsibility is to Google’s shareholders. As long as you remember that when you approach Google Ads, you’ll be in good shape. Beware of Google tricks that persuade you to spend more money without necessarily driving better business outcomes. Be on the lookout for all of these things:
- Confusing default settings that include features most advertisers do not want
- Hidden settings that require multiple clicks to disable
- Difficult to exclude unwanted targeting options
- Misleading “scary status notices” to pressure you into spending more
- Offering recommendations that prioritize increased spending over advertiser goals
- Automatically generating nonsensical and underperforming ad copy
- Sales reps who are incentivized to increase ad spend, not necessarily optimize campaigns
Not all of these settings or recommendations are necessarily bad. But they sure can be when there is no context for an advertiser’s business goals. And that’s where Google needs to dramatically improve their platform.
