PPC can be one of the most powerful tools for driving traffic and conversions – but only if campaigns are set up and managed correctly. With platforms like Google and Microsoft Ads evolving rapidly, it’s easy to fall into common pitfalls that can drain budget, reduce efficiency, and limit performance. From automated settings that take control out of your hands to neglected ad copy and poor conversion tracking, these mistakes can make or break a campaign. In this blog, we highlight 10 of the most common PPC mistakes and, more importantly, how to avoid them to ensure your campaigns are running at peak performance. Our PPC experts have our top 10 mistakes to look out for

1. Automated assets

Whether you’re new to the world of PPC or manage a high-volume of accounts and campaigns working for an agency, automated assets could be killing your results without you even knowing.

This feature claims to boost ad performance and improve traffic. However, depending on your current setup or strategy, these could be having the opposite effects.

By default, when you create a new account the Account-level automated assets will all be switched on, which is a big no go. The reason being is that for the likes of Dynamic sitelinks, callouts and structured snippets you’re allowing Google or Microsoft to dynamically pull information and text directly from your landing page into your ad copy. This might not sound like a terrible thing, but you ultimately lose control of your ad copy. As a result, this likely won’t be suitable to regulated industries or if you have strict copy guidelines from your client. It can also result in traffic being driven to landing pages on your website that you don’t want, which aren’t optimised for leads / sales.

Not all automated assets are bad, and some can help time save. However, we need to be wary of the control we are giving to Google or Microsoft if you choose to use them. Test to see which ones work or don’t work for you.

2. Auto-apply recommendations

Similarly to automated assets, Auto-apply recommendations can be an overlooked setting from within the Google and Microsoft Ads interface which causes headaches for PPC specialists.

If opted in to certain recommendations you’re allowing Google or Microsoft to change things such as your bidding strategy, keywords and their match types along with network distribution settings. Causing serious harm to campaign performance and your strategies currently in place.

It’s imperative that you don’t overlook this setting when conducting routine audits, or if you are setting up a campaign for the first time. Allowing you to implement your own strategy with your campaigns, based on yours on your clients’ objectives.

3. Conversion tracking

Having accurate and aligned conversion tracking is one of the most important elements that PPC specialists need to consider.

Regardless of your setup approach, you need to be sending the correct data. Soft conversions, unless part of your objective, could be skewing not only your campaign performance but also your bid strategies. It’s key to understand which conversion actions you want Google or Microsoft to optimise and report on based on your objectives.

Beyond standard online conversions, incorporating offline conversions and first-party data can provide even more highly relevant insights to fuel your campaigns. Uploading offline conversion data—such as in-store purchases, phone call leads, or CRM data – allows platforms to optimise towards actual revenue-driving actions rather than just clicks or form fills. First-party data, collected directly from customer interactions, also plays a critical role in improving audience targeting and personalisation.

To ensure tracking accuracy and minimise issues, maintaining a close relationship with your Tech/Web team or clients is essential. A well-structured conversion setup not only improves campaign performance but also helps inform better strategic decisions.

4. Not challenging the status quo where necessary

Despite the likes of Google and Microsoft having PPC specialists’ best interest in-mind for most of the time, you sometimes need to look at the bigger picture. Recently lots of emphasis is placed on the utilisation of the likes of Smart Bidding, Broad Match and a host of other recommendations. Usually, to encourage increased ad spend.

However, you fundamentally know what is best for your / your client’s business and how to achieve their objectives. Therefore, you should look to test strategies or techniques that work for you and your campaigns. Whether this is using bid strategies such as Target Impression Share for your Brand campaigns, instead of Smart Bidding. Or increasing campaigns efficiency through Exact match keywords.

5. Not keeping up with new features & betas

The PPC landscape is constantly evolving, with 2025 bringing many changes. Google has recently introduced negative keywords for Performance Max, more granular channel control over Demand Gen and announced a new AI-powered match type, Search Max.

Not only should you be keeping up to date with these new features and learning how they will impact your campaigns, but since Google likes to test these while in Beta its possible for you to get early-access. You can apply to get whitelisted for these new features before they become widely available by requesting access from your Google Reps. Showing added value to your clients and giving you the upper hand against competitors.

It’s therefore crucial for you to stay ahead of the curve and begin testing any new PPC features ASAP to stay ahead of the competition.

 6. What match types to use

Google has recently updated how its match types work and with more updates expected to come in 2025 it’s crucial that specialists stay up to date. The three match types essentially have seen a slight redefine to help with broader queries to improve capturing new search intent. But don’t be alarmed. Potentially look to utilise more Exact Match now if you notice traffic quality to drop. But fundamentally you need to understand which match types are suitable for your campaign setup and strategy.

It’s also crucial, following the recent push towards Broad Match utilisation, that you constantly monitor your Search terms report if you decide to use this match type. Paired with Smart Bidding these can produce results. But you must monitor these and add negative keywords to help with traffic quality. Otherwise, you could be wasting thousands.

7. Not refreshing ad copy

This can be another area which PPC specialists can easily overlook. If you’re not already frequently running tests with your ad copy, then you could be losing out on performance and CTR.

This should fall within your optimisation schedule for your accounts as this is an integral part of how your campaigns will ultimately perform.  Fortunately, Google and Microsoft Ads can help identity any low performing ad copy and assets you should consider replacing through the asset insight report. For Search this will allow you to see which headlines or descriptions are being served the least. For Performance Max and other campaigns however they’ll be given a ‘Performance’ score for those applicable and with enough data. Granting you additional insight into which ones aren’t performing and need to be replaced.

You should also consider running seasonal copy audits if you’ve recently ran any promotions or events. Double-checking those Black Friday deals and incentives are now definitely paused.

 8. Not using third-party budget management tools

PPC budget management tools can be a game changer to help boost campaign performance and improve workload efficiency. Programmes, such as Shape, help to aid with scaling and optimising your campaign’s budgets with the use of automation.

If you work with a high-volume of accounts, or for an agency, this takes a lot of the heavy lifting away from budget management. Allowing you to focus your time on things that matter the most. Once you integrate the tool with your PPC accounts you are then able to utilise an array of automation features so suit your goals.

Shape for example offers its own ‘CruiseControl’ feature which monitors campaign spends, your budget and ideal daily spend to automatically adjust daily budgets to achieve the ideal daily spend. It can also be setup to automatically change the status of any campaign once a target budget is achieved or pause / enable campaigns at the start of a new cycle.

 9. Not having clear objectives & goals

This is a common mistake that gets overlooked, especially if you manage a high-volume of accounts. It’s easy to just narrow your focus towards simply trying to drive the most sales or leads. But there are usually broader business goals at play.

Some want to focus on trying to increase new customers, whereas others might want to drive a certain return on their paid PPC campaigns. When yours and your client’s longer-term goals aren’t clear, this leads to poor results.

Don’t be afraid to as the question, what does this / your business want to achieve?

 10. Not utilising scripts

Many PPC’ers can be put off by scripts due to them involving code or because they struggle when implementing. Leading them to over-look them when it comes to optimisation and scaling their campaigns.

Due to the control that Google still likes to have over certain campaign types, such as Performance Max, it can be challenging to report on and gain insight from these campaigns. Although things have got better recently, it’s still difficult to optimise the likes of Performance Max, based on what channel or network Google is currently driving towards.

This is where scripts can be a real game changer. There are loads of free scripts available online, usually with an accompanying installation tutorial, which essentially give you additional layers of insights and reporting that Google currently doesn’t offer. For example, with Performance Max there are scripts which can tell you which network is driving the most amount of spend and traffic. Allowing you to optimise off the back of this following the script’s enhanced visibility.