Playbook · Google Ads
Stop paying Google to sell to people who’d have bought anyway.
A practical approach to paid search that protects margin — by not spending to reconvert existing demand and not mistaking brand traffic for performance.
The biggest Google Ads waste isn’t bad bidding — it’s paying for clicks from people who already knew you and were coming anyway. This playbook is about spending on incremental demand, not billing yourself for your own brand.
1 · Separate brand from non-brand
Report them apart, always. Brand search converts beautifully and proves nothing about your acquisition. Blending them flatters your numbers and hides the truth.
2 · Match intent to the page
The ad and the landing page must answer the same question. Most wasted spend is a great click landing on a page that doesn’t deliver what the search promised.
3 · Negative keywords are the strategy
What you exclude matters more than what you target. Disciplined negatives are where profitable accounts are actually built.
4 · Measure incrementality, not attribution
The real question is what wouldn’t have happened without the spend. Last-click attribution will happily credit ads for conversions you’d have won for free.
Before optimising bids, split brand from non-brand and check your message match. Most accounts have more to gain from those two fixes than from months of bid tuning.
Common questions
Should I bid on my own brand name?
Sometimes — to defend against competitors or control messaging — but report it separately. Brand search often converts people who’d have arrived anyway, so counting it as acquisition flatters the numbers.
What’s the biggest Google Ads mistake?
Optimising to last-click attribution instead of incrementality, and blending brand with non-brand search so the account looks more effective than it is.
Related: the funnel · the assumption nobody checked.