Paid Media Optimization

The Uncomfortable Truth About Paid Advertising

Let's start with something most agencies won't tell you: paid media is easier to waste money on than almost any other marketing channel.

The platforms make it incredibly simple to launch campaigns. A few clicks, a credit card, and you're running ads. That simplicity is a feature for Google and Meta. They want your money flowing as quickly as possible. But it's also why so many businesses burn through budgets with nothing to show for it.

Before launching any paid campaign, use our Campaign Brief template to define your objectives, target audience, budget allocation, and success criteria. This planning step prevents costly mistakes.

We've managed paid media campaigns since 2000, back when it was still called Google AdWords and the interface looked like a spreadsheet from 1995. Over that time, we've managed more than $100 million in ad spend across action sports brands like Sector 9 and Nutcase, D2C companies like QuickShade, local retailers like Seaside Surf Shop, attorneys like Martin Stanley Law, fitness franchises like World Gym, and addiction treatment centers like Seasons in Malibu and Spencer Recovery.

That range has taught us something important: the fundamentals work across industries. You don't need an agency that specializes in your exact niche. You need an agency that understands how the platforms actually work and will be honest with you about whether paid media even makes sense for your situation.

Because sometimes it doesn't.

When Paid Media Doesn't Make Sense

This might be the most important section of this guide, and it's something most agencies will never tell you.

If your competitors are outspending you ten to one in a highly competitive industry, throwing $2,000 a month at Google Ads isn't going to move the needle. You'll burn through budget, get discouraged, and conclude that "paid media doesn't work." When the reality is that paid media wasn't the right channel for your situation.

We have this conversation regularly with prospects. When we audit an account or analyze a competitive landscape, sometimes the honest answer is: don't spend here. Focus on SEO and organic social instead. Build your foundation first. Or if you do want to run paid, keep it tight: just remarketing to people who already know you, where the costs are low and the returns are reliable.

Most people appreciate that honesty. We'd rather turn down a client than take their money knowing we can't deliver results. Use our Competitor Analysis template to assess your competitive position and understand what level of investment is actually required to compete in your market.

What We Find When We Inherit Accounts

When a new client comes to us with an existing Google Ads account, whether it was managed by another agency or built in-house, we see the same problems over and over.

The most common issue is too many keywords crammed into a single campaign, sometimes with only one campaign running for the entire account. This makes optimization nearly impossible. You can't tell what's working, you can't allocate budget effectively, and the algorithm doesn't have clear signals to optimize against.

Ninety-nine percent of the time, we start fresh. We build new campaigns with proper structure, set up conversion tracking correctly, and establish a clean foundation before spending a dollar on ads.

That conversion tracking piece is non-negotiable. If we can't accurately measure what's working, we're just guessing. And guessing with someone else's money isn't something we're comfortable with.

Our Honest Take on Platform AI and Automation

Google and Meta are pushing hard for advertisers to hand over control to their AI systems. Performance Max on Google, Advantage+ on Meta. These are the platforms' darlings, and they'll tell you the automation delivers better results.

Our experience has been more nuanced.

We've tested Performance Max extensively, and we haven't liked the results so far. The core issue is control. Performance Max wants to spend your money across every Google property: Search, Display, YouTube, Gmail, Maps. It doesn't give you much visibility into what's actually working. In our experience, it tends to push toward spending more rather than spending smarter.

We're not anti-automation. The platforms' smart bidding can work well when you have solid conversion data and clear goals. But we're skeptical of black-box campaign types that obscure where your money is going.

Our team has passed the Google Ads certifications, and we get on calls with Google regularly to explore new features. We stay current on every platform update. But we evaluate new features based on whether they actually improve results for clients, not based on whether Google is pushing them.

Google Ads: Where We've Spent the Most Time

Google Ads has been our primary platform since 2000. It's where we've managed the bulk of that $100 million in ad spend, and it's where we've developed our deepest expertise.

Why Google Often Comes First

Google captures intent. When someone searches for "wetsuit boots size 10" or "medical malpractice attorney Los Angeles," they're actively looking for something. That intent is incredibly valuable. You're reaching people at the moment they're ready to take action.

Compare that to Meta, where you're interrupting someone scrolling through photos of their friend's vacation. Both have their place, but for most businesses, we recommend starting with Google and adding Meta once the foundation is solid.

Shopping Campaigns: Our Bread and Butter

For e-commerce clients, Google Shopping has consistently delivered our strongest results. The case studies tell the story:

The pattern is clear. For product-based businesses with solid inventory and competitive pricing, Shopping campaigns can be transformative.

Campaign Structure Matters

We organize campaigns around tight themes. Related keywords stay together. Each ad group has a clear focus. This structure lets us see exactly what's performing and allocate budget accordingly.

Negative keywords get added continuously. Our team is actively working in accounts, not setting and forgetting. We monitor search terms, exclude irrelevant queries, and make adjustments based on real performance data.

Quality Score Still Matters

Google's Quality Score affects both your ad position and your cost per click. It comes down to three factors: expected click-through rate, ad relevance, and landing page experience.

We focus on tight alignment between keywords, ad copy, and landing pages. When someone searches for something specific, the ad should reflect that search, and the landing page should deliver on the ad's promise. This isn't complicated, but it requires attention to detail that many advertisers skip.

Bid to the Right Outcome, Not Just a Click

Smart Bidding only works as well as the goal you give it. If you tell Google to optimize for a shallow metric, you get shallow results. If you tell it to optimize for real business outcomes, performance improves across the funnel.

For ecommerce, that means bidding to profit and new customer profit, not just revenue or ROAS. Revenue alone can hide low-margin or discount-driven sales. Profit-based signals push the algorithm toward orders that actually grow the business, not just the top line.

For lead generation, the goal should be as far down the funnel as possible. Optimizing to form fills is better than optimizing to clicks, but optimizing to qualified leads is better than optimizing to form fills. When available, bidding to closed deals or revenue-qualified leads gives the algorithm the clearest signal of what success really looks like.

The closer your bidding metric is to real business value, the smarter Smart Bidding becomes.

This approach:

• Reduces wasted spend on low-quality conversions
• Prioritizes high-intent users
• Aligns ad performance with actual revenue impact
• Improves long-term efficiency, not just short-term metrics

Smart Bidding isn't about automation for the sake of automation. It's about feeding the system the right signals so it can optimize toward what actually matters.

Meta Ads: Growing but Different

We run Meta campaigns for clients, particularly D2C brands where we're seeing solid results, but our experience and spend volume is heavier on Google.

The fundamental difference is intent. Google captures people actively searching. Meta requires you to create demand and interrupt the scroll. That's not inherently worse, but it requires different creative and a different strategy.

For most clients, we position Meta as a complement to Google rather than a replacement. Remarketing on Meta works well. Showing ads to people who've already visited your site keeps costs low and conversion rates high. For broader prospecting, Meta can work for visually compelling products and brands with strong creative assets.

Healthcare Advertising: A Specialty Within Our Practice

Addiction treatment centers face unique challenges with paid advertising. Both Google and Meta require LegitScript certification before they'll approve ads for rehab facilities. This creates a barrier that keeps many advertisers out, which is actually good for legitimate treatment centers willing to go through the process.

We've managed campaigns for rehab clients including Seasons in Malibu and Spencer Recovery. We can help navigate the LegitScript certification process, which requires facilities to provide substantial documentation. The certification itself isn't difficult if the facility is legitimate, but it does require time and a fee from LegitScript.

Currently, our rehab clients are California-based, though we can work with treatment centers in other states.

The Clients Who Succeed with Paid Media

After 25 years, patterns emerge. The clients who get the best results from paid media share certain characteristics.

• They're established businesses already doing reasonably well. They're not putting all their hopes on paid advertising to save a struggling company. They have product-market fit, a functional website, and a business that works. Paid media amplifies what's already there.
• They can afford to spend and test. The 90-day timeline we set isn't arbitrary. We need three months of data to really understand what's working, optimize effectively, and determine whether scaling makes sense. Clients who expect results in week two are going to be disappointed.
• They have realistic expectations about competition. If you're a local personal injury attorney trying to compete with firms spending $50,000 a month on Google Ads, your $3,000 budget isn't going to win that fight. We'll tell you that upfront and suggest alternatives: maybe remarketing only, or focusing on SEO and building your organic presence first.

Setting Expectations: The 90-Day Reality

When a new client comes on board, we're clear about timelines.

That's not us buying time. It's the reality of how paid media optimization works. We need data to make informed decisions. The algorithms need data to optimize. Patterns emerge over weeks and months, not days.

During those 90 days, we're actively working: building campaigns, adding negative keywords, testing ad variations, monitoring search terms, adjusting bids. It's not a set-and-forget situation. But meaningful conclusions about what's working and what to scale require sufficient data, and that takes time.

The budget matters too. If you're spending $1,000 a month, it takes longer to accumulate statistically significant data than if you're spending $20,000. We'll be honest about what's realistic given your budget and competitive landscape.

Remarketing: The One Tactic Almost Everyone Should Run

Regardless of whether a client is running broader paid campaigns, we almost always recommend remarketing.

The logic is simple. Someone visited your website. They already know you exist. Showing them an ad as they browse elsewhere keeps you top of mind and brings them back when they're ready to convert.

The costs are typically much lower than prospecting campaigns because you're targeting a warm audience. The conversion rates are typically much higher for the same reason.

What We Actually Do: Ongoing Management

Paid media isn't a set-it-and-forget-it channel. Our team is actively working in client accounts on an ongoing basis.

That means:

• Regularly reviewing search term reports and adding negative keywords to eliminate wasted spend
• Monitoring performance by campaign, ad group, and keyword to shift budget toward what's working
• Testing new ad variations and retiring underperformers

We stay current on platform changes. Google rolls out updates constantly, and what worked last year might not work today. When relevant, we get on calls with Google to explore new features and understand what's coming. But we evaluate everything through the lens of client results, not platform hype.

Tracking and Attribution: The Foundation

None of this works without accurate tracking.

Before we launch any campaign, conversion tracking needs to be set up correctly. We need to know what actions matter: purchases, form submissions, phone calls. And we need to track them reliably.

This has gotten more complicated with privacy changes. iOS updates, cookie restrictions, and evolving regulations mean the data isn't as clean as it used to be. We implement server-side tracking where possible, use enhanced conversions with Google Tag Manager, and cross-reference platform data with Google Analytics.

Perfect attribution isn't possible anymore. But directional accuracy is essential. If we can't measure results, we can't optimize, and we're just guessing.

Download our KPI Dashboard template to track key paid media metrics like ROAS, CPA, conversion rates, and quality score across all your campaigns.