Where Budgets Get Wasted
- Broad match keywords: Without proper negatives, broad match bleeds into irrelevant searches
- Poor geo-targeting: Showing ads outside your service area
- No dayparting: Spending equally at all hours instead of focusing on peak conversion times
- Low Quality Scores: Paying 2-3x more per click than necessary
- Undifferentiated landing pages: Low conversion rates mean more spend per lead
Optimization Strategies
- Allocate by performance: Shift budget toward campaigns, ad groups, and keywords with the best ROI
- Daypart bidding: Increase bids during high-converting hours, decrease or pause during low-performing times
- Device bidding: Adjust bids based on device performance (mobile vs. desktop conversion rates)
- Geographic bidding: Bid higher in locations that convert better
- Impression share analysis: If top-performing campaigns are losing impression share due to budget, reallocate from underperformers
- ROAS targets: Set target return on ad spend and let smart bidding optimize toward it
When to Scale
Scale when: you're consistently hitting target CPA or ROAS, top campaigns have impression share headroom, and your landing pages convert well. Scale by increasing budget 20-30% at a time and monitoring performance for 2 weeks before the next increase.