Chloe Varnfield talks sneaky Google Ads settings and tanking performance

Chloe Varnfield, a digital marketing specialist at Atelier Studios with nearly eight years in PPC, joined me to share the mistakes that shaped her career — and the lessons every advertiser should take from them.

When Google sneaks settings past you

Chloe’s first story centers on Google’s account-level automated assets setting — a feature so well hidden that many advertisers don’t know it exists until a client sends a screenshot asking why their headline looks completely wrong. The setting, buried behind a three-dot menu, defaults to on, meaning Google can automatically generate and serve headlines advertisers never wrote or approved. The takeaway: always audit your account-level settings, and treat every Google update as a potential default you’ll need to turn off.

Why you should never make changes on a Friday

A client asked Chloe to narrow their campaign’s location targeting mid-call. She made the change quickly — and accidentally excluded the UK entirely while targeting only the desired regions. Campaigns stopped delivering. It took three days of head-scratching before she audited the full campaign and found the culprit. The lesson she now swears by: never make significant changes on a Friday, and when something stops working, go straight to a full audit rather than waiting for the algorithm to “fix itself.”

The time she listened to a Google rep — and tanked performance for two months

Chloe’s most costly story involves a campaign that was performing at its best in years. A Google rep recommended switching bid strategy from Maximise Conversions to Maximise Conversion Value. She made the switch — and performance collapsed. For small to medium-sized businesses that already struggle to hit the conversion volume thresholds needed for smart bidding to work effectively, changing bid strategy is a high-stakes decision that shouldn’t be made on the spot. It took two months to recover, with the pressure of a major seasonal sale looming. She fixed it — but the lesson stuck: don’t let enthusiasm or a rep’s insistence override your judgment. Sit on big decisions. Trust your gut.

The account mistakes that still happen in 2026

When auditing inherited accounts, Chloe consistently sees the same three problems: broken or absent conversion tracking (sometimes still pulling from Universal Analytics), broad match applied to brand campaigns — which makes it impossible to know whether results are genuinely driven by non-brand keywords — and accounts with zero negative keywords. These aren’t minor structural issues. They directly distort performance data and waste budget.

On honesty, client relationships, and not spiralling

Across all three of her own stories, Chloe’s client relationships survived because she communicated transparently — explaining what had gone wrong, what she was doing to fix it, and what the next step would be if that didn’t work. Her advice to anyone mid-crisis: breathe, be kind to yourself, stay calm, and remember that no one has died. The ability to fix problems under pressure is what builds expertise — and fixing something difficult often becomes your proudest professional moment.

The AI mistake too many marketers are making

On AI, Chloe is clear: using it to generate ad copy or proposals without reviewing or editing the output is lazy and obvious. AI should make you faster, not replace your judgment. Always put your own voice and review back into whatever it produces.

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