In the AI-driven landscape of our current digital advertising environment, maintaining clean and efficient Google Ads accounts has become even more important than ever. As Google’s automation and machine learning continue to evolve, the more traditional mentality focused primarily on tactical maintenance is a recipe for wasted budget and potentially diminishing returns. Instead, advertisers must become account strategists who actively guide the algorithms with high-quality inputs through consistent account hygiene.
Embrace a Strategic Approach Rather Than a Tactical One
Since Google AI is capable of controlling so many of the tactical details, your focus should shift upward. Account hygiene in 2025 is about providing the right signals and structure, not micromanaging every bid across keywords, device types, locations, etc.
- Â Accurate Conversion Tracking: Ensure your Google Ads and GA4 tracking tags are configured precisely. Incorrect tracking can feed AI bad data, causing it to optimize toward the wrong goals with detrimental impacts.
- High-Quality First-Party Data: In a privacy-first world, your own data is of premium value. Integrate your CRM to feed Google’s systems with valuable insights wherever possible, such as customer lifetime value (LTV). This helps create a flywheel effect, helping the algorithm find more of your most valuable customers.
Structure for the Machine Learning
Your account structure should be organized for automation and analysis.
- Simplify Ad Groups: The old single-keyword ad group (SKAG) structure of the past is a less effective approach. Avoid over-segmentation; instead, use consolidated, highly-themed ad groups with two or three closely related keywords and highly relevant ads. This gives the AI more freedom to test combinations, improving ad relevance and Quality Score.
- Separate Campaign Types: Utilize independent campaigns for branded and non-branded terms to provide a cleaner picture of your performance drivers. In Performance Max (PMax), use clearly defined asset groups to help the AI understand your key products or services.
Master the Automated Tools (with a Human Touch)
Automation can be your biggest ally, but it still requires thoughtful, active management.
- Guide Your PMax Campaigns: Use audience signals to help inform Google who your best customers may be. Also, provide text, images, and video collateral so the algorithm can create high-performing combinations across channels.
- Refine Automated Creative: With Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) as the default, provide 15 distinct headlines and four descriptions. Relying on static creatives can result in ad fatigue. Continue utilizing top-performing elements, and replace underperforming content.
- Leverage Broad Match or AI Max for Search (strategically): When paired with smart bidding and a robust negative keyword list, Broad Match and AI Max for Search can be a powerful tool for discovering new queries. Review your search term report regularly (even weekly) to find irrelevant queries, and add them as negative keywords.
Establish a Routine for Continuous Refinement
Consistent maintenance is key to limiting wasted spend and helping ensure the algorithms are able to work as effectively as possible.Â
- Weekly Audits: Monitor your search term report for irrelevant queries to add as negatives. Look for any ads or extensions that have been disapproved.
- Monthly Deeper Dives: Conduct a thorough audit of performance, focusing on KPIs like Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). Review your creative assets to see what’s working, and test new combinations.
- Quarterly Strategic Review: Evaluate your entire PPC campaign structure, test new bidding strategies, and assess the performance of all your campaign types (Search, PMax, Shopping, Demand Gen, Video, etc.).
Embracing this type of overall paid advertising strategy with a proactive approach toward account hygiene will allow you to stop fighting the algorithms and start working with them instead.
