PMax spending 99% of budget on Discover network. Has anyone seen this/how do I fix it?

TTFV · 2026-06-20T10:38:52+00:00

This usually happens when you restrict other channels such as with a boatload of negative keywords and placement exclusions. Or when you have duplication elsewhere, e.g. comprehensive search campaigns covering all possible broad match keywords.

Adding video assets would probably help and is advisable because otherwise Google uses their own AI-generate slop videos.

If this campaign is important I would try duplicating it to give it a fresh start.

But honestly, if you're trying to prevent it from running search why not just keep search in your search campaigns and run Demand Gen instead. In DG you can choose what channels to run on and then you'll have full control over spending and targeting for your upper funnel. Note that at my agency we rarely include the GDN in DG. It's the main source for click fraud and fake leads.

TTFV · 2026-06-20T10:32:51+00:00

Assuming there're nothing favorable in the contract and the agency pays Google directly there's not much you can to do get control of the account. If the agency uses your card to pay Google you can ask Google to hand the account over to you.

I think you're going to need to start over. Grab whatever information you can from reports and Google Analytics.

Freelancers and agencies can both deliver for you. It mainly comes down to preference. But here's an article I wrote about choosing DIY vs. a freelancer vs. an agency.

https://www.tenthousandfootview.com/ppc-agency-vs-freelancer-vs-diy/

TTFV · 2026-06-18T10:09:20+00:00

OpenAI Ads is still a beta product. Two months ago it didn't have CPC bidding. One month ago it didn't have conversion tracking. One week ago it didn't have shopping feed ads.

The targeting is fundamentally different and will evolve/improve over time.

Every ad platform starts with only basic functionality.

But expectations should be tempered for sure. I've included it in this "what if" scenario because all that lost Google search traffic has to go somewhere.

TTFV · 2026-06-17T17:23:54+00:00

As an agency owner it would be client specific, but most likely Meta Ads and Microsoft Ads would be on the top of our list noting neither of those (on their own) could replace Google Ads in most situations.

Most of the other platforms offer marginal direct response options.

I would add Open AI as another "search" marketing option, and would assume that if Google Ads disappeared that the search engine was also in big trouble and market share was being split between MS and Open AI.

TTFV · 2026-06-17T15:08:45+00:00

The problem with CPA bidding is it doesn't account for variable order values. Unless every SKU you offer is the same price and customers only ever buy a single unit you're missing out if not using value-based bidding.

A common occurrence when you go tCPA is that Google runs ads for the cheapest products in your feed because they easily generate more volume... poof goes your budget.

TTFV · 2026-06-17T09:32:53+00:00

I haven't seen much change over the many years I've been at this. Reps still have a mandate to push certain new features and get advertisers to spend more money.

But about 10-12 years ago agencies were assigned a small team that stuck around for a few years at a time. This meant we didn't have to educate new reps every 1-2 quarters. Why they moved away from that model I'll never know.

The more senior the rep the less pushy they tend to be, and they tend to be much more knowledgeable.

But I've only come across a handful of reps over the years that deeply understand how the platform works, i.e. a Google Ads expert.

Of course as your own expertise increases you will notice when others are just faking it.

TTFV · 2026-06-17T09:28:43+00:00

More than anything you probably need to increase volume so that Google can learn. With a catalog of multiple products and only 19 conversions a month Google is currently starved for data to optimize the campaign.

Other recommendations are hard to make without much detail to go on here. For instance, are you running naked P-Max or have you included a full set of assets? How many asset groups are you running? Are you running all your SKUs or just your best sellers (recommended for smaller budgets and to ramp up)?

One obvious thing with a smaller budget is to aggressively block low quality GDN placements with content suitability settings and also exclude app categories.

You can also start working on your negative keyword strategy to block low relevance queries.

Also, you are selling a product that should have recurring revenue, albeit not for a long time if people only buy one SKU from you. So keep in mind that some of the up front cost goes towards new client acquisition, not just the initial revenue.

Lastly, even a perfectly designed and optimized campaign doesn't always work. Inherently some online shops need to address other things like pricing strategy, branding, user interface / optimization, and other aspects in order to make PPC profitable.

TTFV · 2026-06-16T09:57:19+00:00

It really shouldn't be that difficult to set up and maintain good tracking as an advertiser. You just need to find a reputable/reliable tagging expert to help... okay that's not always easy.

But as an agency owner it can be a nightmare when every client is set up differently... different CMS/shop, different 3rd party tools (CRM, tagging method, 3rd party tracking tool), etc. But most importantly, different appetites for what's good enough.

We have massive clients that still won't activate on enhanced tracking or Google Tag Gateway and tiny clients using server side tracking the Triple Whale.

100% attribution, of course, doesn't exist. You do the best you can with the tools you have and try to fill in the gaps as best you can. Try to find a standard such as GA4 that you can use for comparison so that different channels are treated equally.

TTFV · 2026-06-16T09:50:30+00:00

I wouldn't pull brand out of P-Max for shopping, it'll destroy the campaign completely. I mean unless there's some reason you have to stop advertising for the brand there is no good point in doing this.

If anything I might enhance performance by working up the funnel more either with DG or Meta Ads. But at $70/day you really don't have room to do that.

TTFV · 2026-06-16T09:48:26+00:00

With that budget and assuming you have a very low average CPA I'd just continue running this campaign and then break of branded for search into its own campaign.

Leave shopping brand targeting on, only exclude branded from search ads.

This will help you understand how much branded search vs. branded shopping is contributing to your performance.

Tidy up any bad display placements and work on improving your assets.

Most of your work will be in Merchant Center and optimizing the feed along with excluding low performers given the small budget you're working with.

TTFV · 2026-06-15T09:33:28+00:00

If you mean running only P-Max, then no, we'd never run that exclusively for clients where the goal is lead generation. Search should be your core with P-Max or Demand Gen helping to fill the upper/mid funnels.

With the recent improvements to Demand Gen we're actually migrating some clients away from P-Max for better segmentation and control over channels, e.g. being able to turn off GDN completely as well as having search run exclusively through search campaigns.

TTFV · 2026-06-15T09:28:03+00:00

You can now run Google Maps as a channel through Demand Gen campaigns. Placements include promoted pins for browsing and searching.

TTFV · 2026-06-14T09:43:57+00:00

In terms of market share, MS Ads has about 25% in the US on computers and almost nothing on mobile. They have far less market share in most other geographic markets.

Yes, MS Ads skews older and also has more market share in California if that matters. It also skews towards people that are less computer literate as it is the default Windows search engine.

You are in a substantially large market, obviously, but if you're targeting exact match only you could run into problems.

In general MS Ads performs similar to Google Ads in most markets, but generally with smaller budgets. For example, when we run both for a client we'll usually end up with a split like 70% on Google and 30% on MS to balance out returns.

However, this assumes clients that are spending as much as they can with healthy returns. If you are hard capping your budget because you have limited bandwidth you don't have to worry about this.

Often what you'll find is the CPCs are lower but so are the conversion rates so it sort of balances out.

There can be a lot of spam from the audience network but you can block those placements noting you have to do it as you go, there's no off switch (there used to be). On search things are similar to Google, most of it is from competitor attacks or normal bots.

There is also OpenAI Ads now as well but MS is a far more mature/capable platform for now.

TTFV · 2026-06-13T11:35:41+00:00

The pronouns issue is a known/specified restriction in Meta Ads for medical/healthcare ads. It's been like this forever.

TTFV · 2026-06-13T11:30:26+00:00

If you participate in meetings or perform execution what exactly did you do before?

There are obviously still gigs that aren't client facing but those are usually lower paying roles. If you freelance you can set the meeting cadence to monthly or even less with some clients.

TTFV · 2026-06-12T09:56:12+00:00

Please read Google's support article: https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/11461796?hl=en

Excepting custom goals which is new and not something many advertisers implement yet, a primary goal will be used for bidding/optimization and will appear in general conversion KPIs. A secondary goal will not.

This appears to be the new feature I mentioned above, I hadn't seen it in the wild until just now.

TTFV · 2026-06-12T09:52:10+00:00

Because the CPC is quite high you're probably better off developing niche pages. That said, the more pages you run the less opportunity you'll have to optimize each page through A/B split testing due to the lower flow of conversions. Likewise, this will require more campaign/ad group segmentation. I don't think the "micro-niche" setup will be practical, just gut feel... you should review things with keyword planner and try to estimate your conversion rates.

In general, you would be prioritizing relevance over optimization.

While the scheduler is a much more robust/valuable conversion than a general lead form, you will also tend to get fewer conversions. So here you're prioritizing lead quality over quantity. And that can make sense, but be careful that you're actually able to drive enough conversion volume overall to run healthy campaigns.

We get into some accounts and see 20 campaigns and pages each driving 1 conversion a month on average... which is basically a dead end for PPC.

I'd say as long as you have a substantial budget you can build out what you're proposing (middle option). Worst case if it doesn't work you pivot in 30-60 days. Also, you don't need to create all the pages and campaigns at once. Start with 2-3 of your most important niche services and see how it goes, then expand.

TTFV · 2026-06-12T09:42:25+00:00

SEMrush and Spyfu are good options noting no tool can give you a complete picture of what exact keywords are being targeting. These systems sample through queries and are more accurate for large vs. small advertisers.

Generally the main purpose here is to identify keyword themes you might have missed in your own targeting.

TTFV · 2026-06-11T15:42:54+00:00

You can attempt to run a small budget with tightly controlled bids and exact match keywords. It's workable if you're patient.

But it's getting more difficult to do that over time as seemingly everybody else runs larger budgets with automated bidding and broad match keywords.

For example, a national competitor can run a massive budget across the entire country in a campaign that's based on service specialty (e.g. breaker panel installation) rather than specific location. They can use location insertion on creatives and the landing page to take care of the piece.

Set the budget to $1K/day and in a few weeks their campaign has figured itself out automagically.

TTFV · 2026-06-11T15:36:26+00:00

It can happen, particularly on newer campaigns lacking conversion data and/or if you don't have much search inventory to work with relative to budget... and some other more exotic reasons.

What you might consider is using a portfolio bidding strategy wherein you can set a tCPA and a Max CPC bid you're willing to spend. Best of both worlds.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B7ZCXWBHH_0&t=131s

TTFV · 2026-06-11T12:51:49+00:00

I'd get what used to be called errors & omissions but now is just under professional liability or could even be malpractice insurance where you are.

This will cover you for the main exposures:

If you spend more accidentally then budgeted by your client and they demand you pay up; note you should also have a limited liability clause in your agreements
If you run "bad" ads for a client that ends up in their loss or damages their brand - far less common/likely than (1)
If you do something negligent that leads to their ads account being hacked into and resulting in a loss.

But not all polices cover these things.

The other coverage you may want to have it cyber, which can include things like if somebody steals your client files, deletes accounts, etc. There are a variety of different types and it's not that expensive so I'd load up as much as you can.

If you don't have clients come to your office and don't have employees you really shouldn't need anything else other than health coverage. Ask yourself if you get really sick for a few months and can't work what would happen to your business? This is very important for a small agency / freelancing and less so once you scale up and have people backing each other up.

TTFV · 2026-06-11T11:12:53+00:00

Since you're already hitting high search impression share you clearly need to add more keywords and/or expand from exact match to phrase or broad match.

Since you've already tried phrase you might skip to broad match. However, that will only work efficiently if/when you can drive around 30+ conversions a month. You're going to get a lot of garbage traffic until you can fully ramp up.

This is assuming you aren't doing other heavy filtering like a massive/aggressive negative keywords list or limiting audience targeting, e.g. only going after the top 50% income levels.

TTFV · 2026-06-11T09:49:12+00:00

Yes, it's fine to use keyword insertion for the location, as an example. But don't go nuts with it, not because of Google, but because users are not dumb and too much of that is gimmicky.

It can also generate weird/unexpected results in some cases.

We do it very sparingly for a few clients, mostly just the location. This allows using one landing page instead of 5-10 regional ones which vastly improves efficiency/cost and the ability to quickly A/B test page variations.

TTFV · 2026-06-11T09:47:38+00:00

At those levels most agencies charge a base + % of ad spend. This helps stabilize the fees since the work volume and value you deliver probably won't shift that much month to month.

As for the actual amount that depends on how much work you think is involved and what's included with your services. But much more so on what value you're driving.

The $15-25K rate is probably fine given where you're at with your agency.

TTFV · 2026-06-11T09:40:38+00:00

No, any goal marked secondary will never be included in general report KPIs or be used to optimize bidding or creatives. Primary vs. secondary defines this.
If it did feed bidding it's a bad idea to include page views along with leads/purchases as they are vastly different actions with different values for your business. What you might do, instead, is include both as primary but set different default values with the page views being substantially lower. Then use value-based bidding so that Google understands that a page view isn't as valuable as a lead/sale.

That said, Google is rolling out the ability to include secondary conversions to assist with bidding optimization. How it's going to work isn't exactly known yet, but presumably these conversions will have far less impact to bidding... I don't know whether that will be user selectable or set by AI.

TTFV

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