Do you have a leak in your ad campaigns? Go check these 5 common leaks now.

Are your ad campaigns leaking valuable resources and missing out on potential customers? If you want to optimize your advertising efforts, it's crucial to identify and fix any common leaks that might be impacting your results. In this blog post, we will explore five common leaks in ad campaigns and provide step-by-step instructions to address them effectively. From ensuring that Google isn't misdirecting your traffic to refining audience targeting and location settings, we've got you covered. Additionally, we'll dive into scheduling your ad and call assets strategically and examine the impact of mobile apps on your campaign performance. By the end of this post, you'll have the tools and knowledge to plug those leaks and enhance the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.

1. Automatically Created Assets/Extensions

Do you have a carefully curated website that you are funneling potential customers to? If so, you likely don’t want any distractions that may take your prospects on a different customer journey than you intended. Let’s go make sure that Google isn’t misdirecting your traffic automatically.

First, go to the Ads & Assets section. Then filter by site link and source. We are looking specifically at the source column to see if this was created by an advertiser or automatically created. If you find any that don’t meet your current objectives then pausing them/removing them will stop the leak.

2. Audience Expansion

If you are running ads besides Search, then you will want to verify that you are targeting the specific audience you chose and not allowing Google to expand that audience to similar individuals (unless that is a goal for your campaign). This can be done by drilling down to a specific ad group, then viewing the audiences, and then looking at the audience segments table. There you will find a section called Total: Expansion and optimized targeting. If audience expansion has been turned off for the ad group then the total number of metrics (impr., clicks, conversions) should be zero.

If it is not zero, then we will want to turn audience expansion off (again, unless that is a goal for your campaign). In order to do that, we need to drill down into a specific ad group. Then go to settings, and click edit ad group targeting here you will see the setting for optimized targeting. We want it turned off.

3. Location Targeting

It’s simple, are you targeting the best locations for your business? For example, if you are a plumber with a specific service area are you targeting an audience beyond that service locale? Is your targeting set to include individuals with a presence or interest in the area? If you are in the travel industry then including individuals with an interest in the area would be beneficial, but in most cases targeting those with a presence in the area is usually the best bet. You can find these location options under Campaign Settings > Locations > Location Options.

4. Ad/Call Asset Scheduling

Is it one of your business priorities to make the phone ring? Have you scheduled your ads to run only when someone is available to answer the phone? Otherwise, you could be paying for calls that are going unanswered.

5. Mobile Apps

Have you ever played a game on your phone and accidentally clicked an advertisement? Are you also running any ads other than search? Display, Discovery, pMax, Shopping, etc? If so, you are probably paying the price for those accidental clicks on mobile apps. Check to see if you have a quality audience coming in from mobile applications and if not exclude, exclude, exclude.

Here is an example of what we are trying to avoid. A mobile messaging app with a CTR greater than 100, and a cost per click nearing almost $3 which is high for this particular client. However, we see that they are still converting, so instead of excluding them entirely, we will exclude this particular messaging app as well as review our app category exclusions.

In conclusion, optimizing your ad campaigns requires identifying and addressing common leaks that may be draining your resources and missing out on potential customers. By following the step-by-step instructions provided in this blog post, you can tackle five major leaks: ensuring that Google isn't misdirecting your traffic through automatically created assets/extensions, verifying audience expansion settings to target specific audiences effectively, refining location targeting to reach the right audience for your business, scheduling ad/call assets strategically to maximize their impact, and managing mobile apps to avoid paying for accidental clicks. With these improvements in place, you'll have the tools and knowledge to enhance the effectiveness of your ad campaigns.