PPC mistakes that humble even experienced marketers

Every seasoned PPC pro carries a few scars — the kind you earn when a campaign launches too fast, an automation quietly runs wild, or a “small” setting you were sure you checked comes back to bite you.

At SMX Next, we had a candid, 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, PPC team lead at SearchLab Digital.

Read on to see the missteps that can humble even the most experienced search marketers.

Never launch campaigns on a Friday

This might be the most notorious mistake in PPC — and yet it keeps happening. Yen shared that campaigns often go live on Fridays, driven by client pressure and the excitement to move fast.

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

Kohler stressed the value of fresh eyes. Even if you build campaigns on Friday, wait until Monday to review and launch. Experience can breed overconfidence. You start to believe you won’t make mistakes — until a Friday launch proves otherwise.

The lesson: Don’t launch before holidays, before time off, or on Fridays. If clients push back, be the “annoying paid person” who says no. You’ll protect your sanity — and the campaign’s performance.

Location targeting disasters

Kohler shared a mishap where location targeting didn’t carry over correctly while copying campaigns in bulk through Google Ads Editor. By Saturday morning, those campaigns had already racked up 10,000 impressions — because the ads were running in Europe while the intended U.S. audience slept.

The lesson: Some settings, especially location targeting, are safer to configure directly in the Google Ads interface. There, you can explicitly set “United States only,” which reduces the risk of accidental international targeting.

The search term report trap

Yen made it clear: reviewing search term reports isn’t optional. It matters for every campaign type—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 shows up months later. Explaining to a client where their budget went—when you could’ve caught irrelevant queries early—leads to uncomfortable conversations. Yen recommends reviewing search terms at least once a month. The time required is small compared to the spend it can save.

The lesson: Regular reviews also help you decide what to add as keywords and what to block as negatives. The goal is balance. Too many new keywords create cluttered accounts. Too many negatives often signal deeper issues with match types.

Google Ads Editor vs. interface: A constant battle

The conversation surfaced a familiar frustration: Google Ads Editor and the main interface don’t always play well together. Features roll out to the interface first, then slowly make their way to Editor, which creates gaps and surprises.

Yen explained that her team builds campaigns in Excel first, including character counts for ad copy, before uploading everything into Editor. Even so, they avoid setting most campaign configurations there. Instead, they rely on the interface to visually confirm that every setting is correct.

Kohler added that Editor shines for franchise accounts with dozens — or hundreds — of near-identical campaigns. It’s especially useful for spotting inconsistent settings at scale.

The lesson: For precision work like location targeting or building responsive display ads, the interface offers better control and clearer visibility.

The automatically created assets problem

Kohler called out automatically created assets as a major pain point. These settings default to “on,” and turning them off means clicking through multiple layers — assets, additional assets, then selecting a reason for disabling each one.

The frustration gets worse when Google introduces new automated asset types, like dynamic business names and logos, and automatically applies them to every existing campaign by default. For Kohler’s team, which manages 500 accounts per brand, that meant reopening every account just to turn off the new features.

The lesson: Set recurring calendar reminders to review these settings every few months. Google isn’t slowing down on automation, and most of it requires opting out.

Importing campaigns from Google to Microsoft Ads

Yen warned about the risks of importing Google campaigns into Microsoft Ads without a thorough review. The import tool feels convenient, but it often introduces real problems:

• Budgets that make sense for Google’s volume can be far too high for Microsoft.
• Automated bidding strategies don’t always translate correctly.
• Imports default to recurring schedules instead of one-time transfers.
• Smaller audience sizes demand different budget assumptions.

Kohler added that Microsoft Ads’ forced inclusion in the audience network makes things worse. Unlike Google, Microsoft doesn’t offer a simple opt-out from display. Advertisers must manually exclude placements as they surface, or work directly with Microsoft support for brands with legitimate placement concerns.

The lesson: import once to get a starting point, then stop. Treat Microsoft Ads as its own platform, with its own strategy, budgets, and ongoing optimization.

The 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 spend on “Candy Crush” views — completely irrelevant for business marketing.

Yen confirmed this is a common problem, made worse by how well Google hides the settings. To exclude all apps in the interface, advertisers must manually enter mobile app category code 69500 in the app categories section. In Editor, it’s easier — you can exclude all apps in one move.

Kohler added another familiar mistake: forgetting to exclude kids’ YouTube channels. His brands have accidentally spent so much on the Ryan’ World YouTube channel that they joke about helping fund the kid’s college tuition.

The lesson: Build a blanket exclusion list that covers apps, kids’ content, and inappropriate placements, then apply it to every campaign — no exceptions.

Content exclusions and placement control

Beyond app exclusions, the group stressed the need for comprehensive content exclusions across every campaign. Their advice is to apply these exclusions at launch, then review placement reports a few weeks later to catch anything that slips through.

The lesson: Consistency. Even when exclusions are in place, Google doesn’t always honor them. That makes regular placement monitoring essential. Automation can ignore manual rules, so verification is still the only real safeguard.

Call tracking quality issues

When the conversation turned to call tracking, Yen stressed the need for consistent client communication. Many businesses lack a CRM or close alignment with their sales teams, making it hard to evaluate call quality.

The lesson: Hold monthly check-ins that focus specifically on call quality, Yen said. If calls aren’t converting, the problem may be what happens after the phone rings, not marketing.

Kohler added a technical tip for CallRail users. Separate first-time callers from repeat callers in your conversion setup. Send both into Google Ads, but mark return calls as secondary conversions. That way, automated bidding doesn’t optimize for repeat callers the same way it does for new prospects.

The promo date problem

Litner flagged ongoing frustration with scheduled headline assets appearing outside their intended dates, especially for time-sensitive promotions. Although the issue now seems resolved, he still double-checks at both the start and end of each promotional period.

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

The lesson: If you schedule a launch for a specific day, verify it manually that day. Don’t rely on automation alone.

AI Max settings and control

The conversation 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 digging into individual campaigns and ad groups.

Kohler suggested checking Google Ads Editor for workarounds. In some cases, Editor makes it easier to control settings like landing page expansion across multiple ad groups at once.

The lesson: While AI Max and Performance Max have improved, Yen noted they still demand close monitoring and manual exclusions to avoid wasted spend.

Account-level settings that haunt you

Yen called out an easy-to-miss issue: account-level auto-apply settings that don’t play nicely with AI Max and Performance Max campaigns. These controls live in three different places in the interface, which makes them easy to overlook unless you’re checking deliberately.

The lesson: Build a standard checklist of account-level settings and run through it whenever you touch a new account or launch automated campaign types.

Final wisdom

Several themes kept surfacing throughout the discussion:

• Trust issues with ad platforms are justified, so verify everything.
• Fresh eyes catch mistakes that familiarity glosses over.
• Clear client communication prevents misplaced blame when performance slips.
• Manual checks still matter, even as automation expands.
• Well-maintained exclusion lists prevent repeat problems.
• Google Ads Editor and the interface serve different roles, so use each for what it does best.

The bigger message: Mistakes happen to everyone, no matter how experienced you are. The real difference between novices and experts isn’t avoiding errors — it’s catching them fast, learning from them, and building systems so they don’t happen again.

As Kohler put it, these platforms will eventually humble everyone. The key is staying alert, questioning automation, and never launching campaigns on Fridays.

Watch: PPC mistakes I’ve made

View the full article