In the recent episode of Google’s Ads Decoded podcast, Ginny Marvin sat down with Brandon Ervin, Director of Product Management for Search Ads, to address a topic many PPC marketers have strong opinions about: campaign and ad group consolidation.
Ervin, who oversees product development across core Search and Shopping ad automation, including query matching, Smart Bidding, Dynamic Search Ads, budgeting, and AI-driven systems, made one thing clear.
Consolidation is not the end goal. Equal or better performance with less granularity is.
What Was Said
During the discussion, Ervin acknowledged that many legacy account structures were built with good reason.
“What people were doing before was quite rational,” he said.
For years, granular campaign builds gave advertisers control. Match type segmentation, tightly themed ad groups, layered bidding strategies, and regional splits all made sense in a manual or semi-automated environment.
But according to Ervin, the rise of Smart Bidding and AI has shifted that dynamic.
The big shift we’ve seen with the rise of Smart Bidding and AI, the machine in general can do much better than most humans. Consolidation is not necessarily the goal itself. This evolution we’ve gone through allows you to get equal or better performance with a lot less granularity.
In other words, the structure that once helped performance may now be limiting it.
Ervin also pushed back on the idea that consolidation means losing control.
“Control still exists,” he said. “It just looks different than it did before.”
Ginny Marvin described it as a “mindset shift.”
When Segmentation Still Makes Sense
Despite Google’s push toward leaner account structures, Ervin did not suggest collapsing everything into one campaign.
Segmentation still makes sense when it reflects how a business actually operates.
Examples he shared included:
- Distinct product lines with separate budgets and bidding goals
- Different business objectives that require their own targets or reporting
- Regional splits if that mirrors how the company runs operations
The key distinction is intent. If structure supports real budget decisions, reporting requirements, or operational differences, it belongs. If it exists only because that was the best practice five years ago, it may be creating more friction than value.
Ervin also addressed a common concern: how do you know when you’ve consolidated enough?
His benchmark was 15 conversions over a 30-day period. Those conversions do not need to come from a single campaign. Shared budgets and portfolio bidding strategies can aggregate conversion data across campaigns to meet that threshold.
If your campaign or ad group segmentation dilutes learning and slows down bidding models, it may be time to rethink your structure.
Why This Matters
For many PPC professionals, granularity has long been associated with expertise. Highly segmented accounts, tightly themed ad groups, and cautious use of broad match were once…
Source link
Disclaimer
We strive to uphold the highest ethical standards in all of our reporting and coverage. We blogs.grocliq.com want to be transparent with our readers about any potential conflicts of interest that may arise in our work. It’s possible that some of the investors we feature may have connections to other businesses, including competitors or companies we write about. However, we want to assure our readers that this will not have any impact on the integrity or impartiality of our reporting. We are committed to delivering accurate, unbiased news and information to our audience, and we will continue to uphold our ethics and principles in all of our work. Thank you for your trust and support.
Website Upgradation is going on for any glitch kindly connect at [email protected]
