I'll change the way you think about Google Ads...
Don't be GOLD FISH, read it through!!!
A friend called me recently in a total panic. He'd just spent $3,000 on Google Ads and got absolutely nothing back. Zero leads. Zero sales. Just gone. And of course, his conclusion was "Google Ads is dead."
I hear this a lot. And honestly, I get why people believe it. But let's actually talk about what's true here, because there's a real difference between "Google Ads doesn't work" and "MY Google Ads didn't work", and almost everyone mixes those two up.
Here's the honest part first: Google Ads has genuinely gotten harder. More competition, higher costs per click, way more automation, less manual control than it used to have. If you're running it the same way you did 5 years ago, you will lose money. That part is real, not made up.
But here's what actually happened when I looked into his account, and it's the same pattern I see over and over:
→ No conversion tracking set up at all. Google was spending completely blind, no idea what was actually working.
→ Broad match keywords on a tiny budget, so ads were showing to people with barely any relevant intent.
→ Generic ad copy, the kind that could describe literally any business in any industry.
→ Zero negative keywords, zero ad extensions.
→ The campaign ran for 6 weeks and nobody had looked at the search terms report once.
None of that is Google's fault. That's a setup problem, and setup problems are fixable.
Here's the thing that really gets me: most people who say "Google Ads doesn't work" tested one bad setup, once, for a few weeks, and quit. That's like going to the gym twice, not seeing abs, and telling everyone fitness is a scam. Nobody thinks that way about fitness, everyone accepts it takes skill and consistency. Google Ads is exactly the same. It's a skill. It can be learned. It just LOOKS deceptively simple from the outside, and that's exactly what traps people.
And honestly, some of what Google's automated over the years is genuinely good, smart bidding can process signals no human could ever track manually. The automation isn't the problem. The problem is people hand control over to the algorithm before giving it anything useful to actually learn from. Like hiring a great chef and handing them an empty fridge.
Here's what we actually did to fix my friend's account, none of it cost extra:
✓ Set up proper conversion tracking for the first time
✓ Went through the search terms report and built a real negative keyword list
✓ Rewrote the ad copy to speak to an actual specific problem, not generic fluff
✓ Tightened match types
✓ Added sitelinks, callouts, a location extension
Same budget. Same platform. Within 6 weeks, more leads than the previous 6 months combined.
The platform didn't change. The approach did.
Here's the real takeaway: if you tried Google Ads once and it flopped, don't write off the platform, write off the version of yourself that ran it that first time. You know more now. Most competitors are still stuck obsessing over match types and bid tweaks while ignoring whether their offer or landing page is even any good. If you're willing to actually understand this at a strategic level instead of just clicking buttons, you're already ahead of most people running ads right now.
Follow along, more real breakdowns like this coming. 👀
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Okay so I worked on this project on another platform.
The client had some movies he produced a long time ago the first one was 2004 and the other 2006
So he said he needed me to make it famous on YouTube as the movie didn't get the recognition it needed and the message wasn't felt
And I accepted the job And was able to achieve all this under 3 month and get the channel monetized
And the client paid me only 750$ what do you think?
Not just that he just ghost's me now and doesn't follow up anymore cause I asked to be paid monthly on 1k$ a month for maintenance ,engagement and SEO optimization
We actually still have another movie to launch cause I only launched one.
Normally the plan was to launch the first movie and then the second later
Did I do wrong asking for a standard pay a month?
Do you think I pursued him?
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The BEST Way To Scale Google Ads in 2026
Okay, this is one of my favorite Google Ads strategies because it's basically hands-off scaling, you set it up once, and your budget grows automatically as long as your results actually stay good. Let me walk you through it.
Inside your Google Ads account, at the campaign level, there's an option to create an Automated Rule.
Here's the setup for scaling UP:
First, name your rule (something simple like "Budget Increase 3%"). Select which campaign(s) it applies to. Then set your condition, this is the important part. Pick a metric that reflects actual performance: cost per conversion if you run leads, return on ad spend if you're eCommerce. Let's say you know from your numbers that anything under £30 cost per lead is genuinely profitable for your business. You set the rule: "if cost per conversion is less than £30, increase budget."
For the actual increase, go with a percentage, not a fixed amount. Why? Because a flat £2-3/day bump becomes meaningless once your budget scales up, a percentage keeps increasing proportionally as you grow. 3% is a solid, conservative default. You can go more aggressive if you're trying to capitalize on something time-sensitive, like a seasonal sale or a promo that's crushing it right now.
One setting people get wrong constantly: the data timeframe Google uses to evaluate your condition. Don't leave it on "all time." If your campaign performed great for two months and then conditions changed recently (seasonality, fatigue, competition), an "all time" average will mask that and keep scaling even when current performance has actually dropped. Set it to the last 7 days instead, so the rule reacts to what's happening NOW, not historical performance. If you're getting tons of conversions daily, you can shorten this window even further. If you're only getting one conversion a day, you might need it slightly longer for the data to mean anything.
Also worth doing: set an upper spending cap so you don't wake up in a few months having scaled way past your actual budget comfort zone.
Now here's the part that makes this strategy really powerful, the reverse rule.
Create a second automated rule that DECREASES your budget when performance drops. Same logic, opposite direction: if cost per conversion goes above, say, £40, decrease budget by 3%. This way you're automatically spending more when things are working and pulling back when they're not, without having to babysit the account daily.
Leave a buffer zone in the middle (like £30-40 in this example) where nothing changes. That gives your account some breathing room instead of constantly adjusting on every small fluctuation.
The real value here: your budget starts responding to actual, current performance automatically. You're not manually checking in every few days trying to decide whether to scale, the system does it for you, based on rules built around your actual numbers.
And you're never locked in, you can always override manually. Big news event nobody's paying attention to your ads because of? Pull the budget down yourself. Seasonal sale about to pop off? Bump that increment up temporarily.
This is genuinely one of the lowest-effort, highest-leverage setups you can put in a Google Ads account.
Follow along, more scaling strategies like this coming. 👀
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This is genuinely underused Google Ads move; targeting your competitor's customers directly. Let me walk you through it.
Inside your Google Ads account, there's a setting most people never touch: Tools → Audience Manager → Custom Segments. From there you create a custom audience, and instead of the usual interests/behaviors targeting, you go to "people who browse types of websites" and this is the key part, you plug in your competitor's website(s).
So say you're a premium brand and your competitors are more budget/mass-market. You can build a custom audience of people who've been browsing your competitor's site, and put your ads in front of them instead. You're essentially saying "hey, before you buy from them, check us out."
It's not a perfect science, it's not exactly the same as remarketing straight to their customer list, but it does guarantee a chunk of the people seeing your ad have shown interest in exactly what you sell, from a business you're actively trying to beat.
And if you want to take it further (this is the part that actually moves the needle), you get aggressive with your ad copy and creative. Directly call out the competitor. "Better than [competitor]." "Same quality, better price." "We include what they charge extra for." When you write copy like this, Google's smart enough to pick up on it and specifically show your ad to people who are already customers of, or considering that competitor. It knows exactly who to target based on what your ad is actually saying.
Now, how aggressive you want to get is up to you and depends on your industry, your relationship with competitors, and honestly your risk tolerance. But if you're comfortable with it, this works especially well inside Performance Max campaigns.
Bottom line: if your product or service genuinely is better than the competition, this is one of the most direct ways to say so, and get Google to put that message in front of exactly the people who need to hear it.
Small setup, potentially big payoff. Worth testing if you've got a genuine edge over a specific competitor.
Follow for more, this isn't the last strategy breakdown coming your way. 👀
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