PPC mistakes frustrate even experienced marketers

Every PPC professional carries a few scars – the kind that get you when a campaign is launched too quickly, automation runs slow, or a “small” setting you’re sure you checked comes back to bite you.

At SMX Next, we had an honest, refreshingly honest conversation about the mistakes that still trip us up, no matter how long we’ve been in the game. I was joined by Greg Kohler, director of digital marketing at ServiceMaster Brands, and Susan Yen, who leads the PPC team at SearchLab Digital.

Read on to see some common mistakes that can frustrate even the most experienced search marketers.

Never launch campaigns on Friday

This may be the worst mistake in PPC – but it keeps happening. Yen shared that campaigns often go live on Fridays, driven by customer pressure and the rush to move.

The danger is obvious. If something breaks over the weekend, you won’t see it or you’ll spend Saturday and Sunday glued to your screen to fix it. One small slip — like setting a daily budget of $100 instead of $10 — can burn through a lot of money before anyone notices.

Kohler emphasized the importance of fresh eyes. Even if you created campaigns on Friday, wait until Monday to review and launch them. Experience can breed overconfidence. You start to believe you can’t make mistakes — until Friday’s launch proves otherwise.

Lesson: Don’t start before holidays, before a break, or on a Friday. If clients push back, be the “annoying salary person” who says no. You’ll protect your sanity – and campaign performance.

A disaster-oriented area

Kohler shared an error where targeting did not work properly when copying bulk campaigns with Google Ads Editor. By Saturday morning, those campaigns had already racked up 10,000 impressions — because the ads were running in Europe while the target US audience was asleep.

Lesson: Some settings, especially location targeting, are safer to configure directly in the Google Ads interface. There, you can clearly set “United States only,” which reduces the risk of mistakenly targeting other countries.

Trap this search term report

Yen made it clear: reviewing search term reports is not an option. It’s essential for every type of campaign—standard search, Performance Max, and AI-driven campaigns included. Skip this step, and it looks like you’re chasing clicks instead of qualified traffic.

The real damage comes months later. Explaining to the client where their budget went—where you may get irrelevant questions early—leads to uncomfortable conversations. Yen recommends reviewing search terms at least once a month. The time required is small compared to the money it can save.

Lesson: Regular reviews also help you decide what to add as keywords and what to block as keywords. The goal is balance. Too many keywords create crowded accounts. Too many negatives often point to deeper problems with match types.

Google Ads Editor vs. interface: A continuous battle

The conversation brought up a common frustration: Google Ads Planner and the main interface don’t always play well together. Features appear in the interface first, then gradually make their way to the Editor, creating gaps and surprises.

Yen explained that his team creates campaigns in Excel first, including character calculations for ad copy, before uploading everything to Editor. However, they avoid setting too many campaign settings there. Instead, they rely on the interface to visually confirm that all settings are correct.

Kohler added that Editor lights up franchise accounts with dozens — or even hundreds — of nearly identical campaigns. It is especially useful for identifying inconsistent settings on a scale.

Lesson: For precise work such as targeting or creating responsive display ads, the interface offers better control and clearer visibility.

The problem of inheritance created automatically

Kohler called automatically generated assets a major pain point. These settings default to “on,” and turning them off means clicking multiple layers – properties, additional properties, and choosing a reason to disable each one.

The frustration gets worse when Google introduces new types of default assets, such as dynamic business names and logos, and automatically applies them to every existing campaign. For Kohler’s team, which manages 500 accounts per product, that meant reopening every account just to cover the new features.

Lesson: Set recurring calendar reminders to update these settings every few months. Google doesn’t care about self-service, and most of them need to be out.

Imports campaigns from Google to Microsoft Ads

Yen warned of the dangers of importing Google campaigns into Microsoft Ads without a thorough review. The import tool sounds convenient, but it often presents real problems:

• Budgets that make sense at Google’s volume would be much higher than Microsoft’s.
• Automated bidding strategies don’t always translate well.
• Imports automatics from emerging schedules instead of one-time transfers.
• Smaller audience sizes require different budget assumptions.

Kohler added that the forced installation of Microsoft Ads on the audience network made matters worse. Unlike Google, Microsoft does not offer an easy exit from the display. Advertisers must manually remove placements when they occur, or work directly with Microsoft support for products with legitimate placement issues.

Lesson: enter once to find the starting point, then stop. Manage Microsoft Ads as its own platform, with its own strategies, budgets, and ongoing optimization.

App placement nightmare

Audience member Jason Lucas shared a painful lesson about forgetting to turn off app audiences for B2B display campaigns. The result was a flood of money spent on “Candy Crush” viewing – completely ineffective in business marketing.

Yen confirmed that this is a common problem, made worse by the way Google hides settings. To exclude all apps from the interface, advertisers must manually enter the mobile app category code 69500 ​​in the app categories section. In Editor, it’s easy — you can uninstall all apps in one go.

Kohler added another common mistake: forgetting to exclude children’s YouTube channels. His producers accidentally spent so much money on Ryan’s World YouTube channel that they made a joke about helping fund a kid’s college tuition.

Lesson: Create a comprehensive exclusion list that includes apps, children’s content, and inappropriate placement, and apply it to all campaigns – no exceptions.

Excluded content and placement control

Apart from the rollout of the app, the group stressed the need for full rollout of content for all campaigns. Their advice is to use these omissions at launch, then review placement reports a few weeks later to catch anything that slips up.

Lesson: Consistency. Even if something is released, Google doesn’t always honor it. That makes regular placement monitoring essential. Automation can override manual rules, so authentication is still the only real protection.

Call tracking quality issues

When the conversation turned to tracking calls, Yen emphasized the need for consistent customer communication. Many businesses do not have a CRM or close alignment with their sales teams, making it difficult to assess call quality.

Lesson: Hold a monthly check-in that focuses more on call quality, Yen said. If the calls are not converting, the problem may be what happens after the phone rings, not the marketing.

Kohler added a tech tip for CallRail users. Separate initial callers from repeat callers in your conversion setup. Submit both to Google Ads, but mark the callbacks as secondary conversions. That way, automated bidding doesn’t target repeat callers the same way it does for new prospects.

Litner noted continued frustration with scheduled title goods appearing outside of target dates, particularly time-sensitive promotions. Although the problem now seems to be solved, you still double check at the beginning and end of each promotion period.

Kohler reported similar problems with automatic rules. Scheduled rules sometimes don’t run at all or trigger a day early, which can stop campaigns too soon or run them too late.

Lesson: If you schedule a launch for a specific day, confirm it in person on that day. Don’t rely on automation alone.

Settings and control of AI Max

The discussion also touched on Google’s AI Max campaigns. Chad pointed out that all AI Max settings default to “on,” with no bulk way to disable them. The only option is to drill down into individual campaigns and ad groups.

Kohler suggested checking Google Ads Planner for workarounds. In some cases, the Editor makes it easy to control settings such as landing page extensions across multiple ad groups at once.

Lesson: Although AI Max and Performance Max have improved, Yen noted that they still require close supervision and manual release to avoid wasting money.

Account level settings that bother you

Yen called it an easy-to-miss issue: account-level default settings that don’t play well with AI Max and Performance Max campaigns. These controls sit in three different places on the interface, making it easy to overlook them unless you’re exploring on purpose.

Lesson: Create a standard checklist for account-level settings and use it whenever you contact a new account or start automated campaign types.

Last wisdom

A few themes kept coming up throughout the discussion:

• Trust issues with ad platforms are justified, so verify everything.
• New eyes catch the mistakes of hidden familiarity.
• Clear client communication prevents undue blame when performance goes smoothly.
• Manual testing is still important, as automation increases.
• A well-maintained exclusion list prevents recurring problems.
• The Google Ads Editor and interface serve different roles, so use each one for what it does best.

The main message: Mistakes happen to everyone, no matter how experienced you are. The real difference between beginners and experts isn’t avoiding mistakes — catching them quickly, learning from them, and building plans so they don’t happen again.

As Kohler puts it, these platforms will eventually humble everyone. The key is to stay alert, ask automatically, and never launch campaigns on Friday.

Watch: PPC Mistakes I’ve Made