WHAT HAPPENS IF ALL GOOGLE ADS RECOMMENDATIONS ARE ACCEPTED: A CLIENT EXPERIMENT
Marketing Link was only documenting this case, not the authors―rather, the anti-authors, as they warned the client about potential outcomes. We have concealed all the client’s commercial data—you can only see the consequences of marketing negligence and a misunderstanding of advertising processes, and what happens if all Google Ads recommendations are accepted.
This case shows how important it is to thoughtfully approach ad optimization and understand the purpose of each recommendation. Our client’s Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) worsened nearly 7 times, meaning the profit fell by 7 times with the same budget, by following the principle of “accept all” recommendations. Read the details in our case study.
What We’ll Discuss
How to Drop Profits by Nearly 7 Times
The client worked with Marketing Link from July 2020 to March 2023. This is a small business specializing in the sale of construction materials.
711%
ROAS at the end of the collaboration
113%
Current ROAS
While working with Marketing Link: a $1,000 advertising budget resulted in orders worth $7,370.
On their own: a $1,025 advertising budget now results in orders worth $1,160.
Earnings fell by $6,210.
What the Charts Look Like Without Proper Optimization
What the Numbers Mean
- We halted our work, and the client increased the advertising budget and paused some of the ad campaigns.
- The client implemented all automatic recommendations on their own.
Two months passed without competent systematic optimization, and the results significantly worsened.
What Caused the Deterioration of ROAS
In the first three months of 2020, we corrected the grouping and redesigned the campaigns.
Before we started our work, the ROAS was 82%, which means the revenue was below the investment. Since the acceptable margin was 40%, we aimed for a ROAS target of 250%.
By the third month of our work, the ROAS had already reached 278%, making the advertising profitable.
Over two years of collaboration, we achieved a ROAS of 616%. This data is from autumn 2022.
The last December was a record high with a ROAS of 743%.
Client Takes Over the Ad Campaigns
Subsequently, the client stopped working with us because he wanted better results. We thought this was a case of looking for a problem where none existed, but we agreed with the decision and offered to conduct a free audit if the client ever needed such a service.
Overall, during our management, our average ROAS was 449%.
However, immediately after our collaboration ended, the client had our settings audited by several companies.
Marketer’s Comment
We operate transparently and are not embarrassed when our accounts are analyzed by other agencies. I remember how our client, a champion of external audits, had our work reviewed by as many as 18 agencies and afterward, we still worked productively for another two years until the war started.
We are a process-oriented company, and we dedicate the necessary amount of time to optimizing each account and searching for effective ideas. Thus, as you can see, we are not afraid of audits and comments from market peers.
Since the auditors did not find any significant errors or ideas for improvement, the client decided to handle the advertising on their own.
January 2023 followed the usual pattern, it declined, hovering on the brink of profitability—ROAS was 291%. By the way, in January, the client did not make any changes to the account, just let it run on its own.
Early Warning Signs of the Decline
February-March 2023—the client begins to make changes independently, accepting everything that the Google Ads application suggests.
Then, in April, the client set a record for accepting recommendations: over 250, most of which were automatic.
The client decided why pay more if he could manage on his own, especially since Google has automated everything. However, it’s a mistaken belief that all recommendations should be accepted automatically.
Critical Mistakes Made by the Client
- Allowed Google to automatically add keywords in search campaigns.
- Allowed Google to expand ads to the Display Network (which resulted in ads running in apps).
- Allowed the creation of automatic Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) groups.
- Changed bidding strategies automatically, which disrupted Performance Max campaigns.
Google began offering “sly” double recommendations where the word “CHANGE ROAS” is written in caps, and in normal text: “increase budget”, or “add broad match keywords”. This means you can read only the text in caps and overlook the regular text.
We have an internal manual of 204 pages, detailing what recommendations to accept, which to confirm, and which to outright reject. Therefore, professional marketers won’t make such mistakes.
In addition to manual efforts, we use Google Ads scripts and our internal tool via the Google Ads API, which allows us to identify improvement vectors before the results become a problem. The complexity factors have increased: previously there were 20 reasons why ads might not be effective — now there are over 200.
Internally, we’re also experimenting a bit with AI, but it’s mostly a set of ‘If then, if then’ scenarios.
This is very similar to the saying: “Hard times create strong programmers. Strong programmers create frameworks. Frameworks create weak programmers. Weak programmers create hard times”.
Indeed, the capabilities of Google Ads recommendations have improved over the last two years. If previously Google offered only 30% useful recommendations, now it’s around 45%.
Working with the client was interesting, improving our result’s year over year in a highly competitive field with giants. However, we are losing hope for further cooperation and have warned the client about the consequences and the decline in ROAS.
What Marketers Recommend
Google’s recommendations are like general advice about something commonplace and acknowledged: take walks in fresh air, eat healthy food. They might be good, but they aren’t suitable for everyone and, more importantly, no one is responsible for them. You can follow the recommendations, but if they harm your project, that’s your own problem. No one will advise what to do about it. “Increase your advertising budget” is often the only “joke” mentioned.
With specialists, you enter into an agreement, and they bear responsibility at least with their professional reputation.
So, I can suggest: if you want to set up and optimize ads by yourself, read blogs and order audits so that professionals can guide you in the right direction and prevent losses.
Conclusions
- You should not accept Google’s recommendations without a full understanding, as they are called recommendations for a reason.
- You need to constantly and carefully monitor ROAS, make efforts if it falls, and continually generate ideas for increasing it.
- Although hiring a specialist for PPC advertising costs some money, it is still less than the lost budget due to inefficient management, not to mention the lost profits. Even by conservative estimates, the client missed out on receiving $16,210 in just one month.
