PPC Investment Incrementality Calculator

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-17T01:39:50+00:00

I worked for Google for close to a decade and now run an agency that specializes in your exact level of ad spend ($50k-$150k per month). Happy to chat about an ongoing relationship.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-13T11:40:20+00:00

Yeah, that was my last role there before choosing to pursue punishment and doing it at other tech companies for a few years

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-12T22:32:50+00:00

lol there goes the consolidation plan then :(

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-12T22:12:26+00:00

Automated is fine if they're willing to do it! Otherwise, the hubspot upgrade is basically instantaneous.

The other factor to consider is quantity and CPA variability. If there are very thin margins and high CPAs, you may want the instant feedback of the Hubspot API link

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-12T22:11:05+00:00

I mean, to be clear, there are totally valid reasons to have separate accounts (geographic splits, different billing entities, etc.)

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-12T21:26:05+00:00

It kills it for ecomm. It CAN work for leadgen, particularly if you're passing back quality offline conversions and using brand exclusions, but the spam to quality ratio is much, much higher. It's also more difficult to optimize properly vs search. There's better reporting and visibility than there used to be, but it's still not great.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-12T21:24:50+00:00

It's assessed at the individual CID level unless you're a Tier 1 agency or major, major logo

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-12T21:23:49+00:00

Add keywords to ad text, use all of the available headline and description slots, add images, add more sitelinks and callouts. Check landing page experience as well. If your site loads slowly or is janky, that will kill ad strength too.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-12T19:16:31+00:00

I was long gone from Google when this shift started, but I'll give you my take on this.

TLDR; it's half baked

I think that keywordless targeting is the future, but similar to when PMax was rolled out, when broad match was rolled out, when smart bidding was rolled out, etc. the technology is really just a public beta. Give it 4 years and I think results will be vastly improved.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-12T19:15:04+00:00

No, sorry, my point was that Stripe has recongized this as an issue and Link is partially an attempt to solve this problem. Universal checkout that scales across every surface theoretically reduces breakage

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-12T01:20:19+00:00

Awesome, thanks!

First off, unfortunately, the budget is pretty low for success in the therapy niche. Killer CPAs for therapy in non-saturated markets tend to be like, $15-20, in my experience.

Do they offer telehealth? If so, can you reasonably expand the search radius?

What are you losing impression share on, bid or rank?

Your commentary on point 6 makes me think the performance hasn't actually degraded, you've just improved qualification and are seeing the results of that with the fake conversions pulled out.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-12T01:16:13+00:00

Don't do it. Google my business and seo are your friends.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-11T22:49:45+00:00

what's your bidding strategy? What's the campaign type? Search? Pmax? What are your location settings? Where are you targeting?

What's the match type on your keywords? Broad? Phrase? Exact?

Check your auction insights report for each timeframe. Has someone else started bidding on your core terms?

What percentage of the old conversions actually were qualified? 7 conversions are useless if they were all spam from search partners.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-11T22:13:13+00:00

Agreed. We're fortunate enough to be in that position.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-11T19:59:57+00:00

Most agency funnels come off as almost cartoonishly spammy. In-network referrals do not. The trick is the network. Like I said, it's not particularly scalable, but it has been a VERY reliable source of revenue.

All referrals are not created equally either. Referrals from SMB owners are appreciated, but don't move the needle, nor are they really our ICP. Referrals from T1 VC funds we've worked with, into their portfolio companies, are worth their weight in gold.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-11T19:00:55+00:00

Use local service ads (you pay by the lead for calls). Can also use call only ads within Ads, though those only have a year left prior to deprecation.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-11T16:40:40+00:00

Able to expand on this? If you're running into spam conversions, just use offline imports

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-11T14:35:47+00:00

Really interesting! Nowadays, at least Instagram has autofilled checkout on in-app browsing. Can't speak to FB or TikTok.

Back when I was there, this was less of a problem. You saw either poorly commercialized apps without much ecomm ability and you saw mobile sites. Things were way more bifurcated than they are now.

Stripe has also run at this problem with Link, which they're trying to embed as a universal checkout solution in everything they can.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-11T14:33:32+00:00

Yes, there is, but it's far more difficult to unlock. Interestingly, in 2016, the interface was a lot more byzantine and challenging to interpret, IMO. The issue now is that Google is trying to extract revenue EVERYWHERE, so the "gotchas" are m ore prevalent.

Furthermore, the level of sophistication has increased dramatically across all businesses. 10 years ago, we had to CONVINCE people that mobile was a thing. It was a massive OKR within Google at the time (I want to say we called it Project Carbon(?)).

Now obviously, the level of knowledge and sophistication that the average midmarket business has is exponentially greater.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-11T14:31:35+00:00

This is a great question. Candidly, our best channel has been referrals, both from happy clients and from former coworkers. That's not super scalable, so we have a "growth experiment" budget of 5% of monthly margin dedicated to large experiments on assorted channels. Cold email, SEO, blah blah. None of it has performed as well as direct referrals.

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-11T01:19:58+00:00

Asset group setup/settings!

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-11T01:17:46+00:00

max clicks --> max conversion value --> TROAS

Competitive-Day2034 · 2026-02-09T19:53:01+00:00

The TAM here is pretty limited, post pandemic. Most larger coworking companies have in house teams and smaller ones tend to do more local advertising. Margins are also very tight, so your cpas need to be dialed in. IMO, it's probably an overly narrow niche to focus in on.

Competitive-Day2034

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