Is Google Ads a Black Hole of Money?
You've heard it, or you've said it yourself. Money goes in, nothing comes out, and nobody can tell you why. Google Ads gets blamed for this more than almost any other tool we manage.
After twenty years of running these accounts, here's the real answer.
Yes, it can absolutely be a black hole for your money. But not for the reason most people assume.
Yes, If Nobody Set It Up Properly
Here's what's actually happening under the hood in most accounts that “don't work.”
When you set up a Google Ads account on your own, Google will suggest conversion tracking for you. It sounds helpful. It is not. The default is almost always tracking visits to your contact page, which tells you nothing. Someone landing on your contact page and closing the tab is not a conversion. Not even close.
A real conversion is something that actually moves your business forward:
A phone call
A lead form submission
A purchase
A quote request
Setting that up properly usually means going past the native Google Ads interface entirely and into Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager, which lets you track the actions that matter instead of the ones Google assumes matter. Skip that step and every decision after it gets built on a number that was never real. You look at that contact page count, decide the campaign is working or isn't, then adjust budget, keywords, and targeting based on it. Those decisions might be reasonable on their own but the number driving them was never a conversion to begin with, so every budget and keyword decision from that point on is based on a number that meant nothing.
The Advice You're Getting Is Part of the Problem
Set up a new Google Ads account and it won't be long before a Google representative calls, offers to help, and wants to “optimize” your campaign for you.
In twenty years of running these accounts, we have found these calls have exactly one piece of advice, no matter the business, the industry, or the season: spend more money.
We had one advise us to increase spend and turn ads back on for a boat rental client, in January, in the Okanagan. There was snow on the ground and ski season was in full effect. Their reasoning was that bookings were low because the ads weren't running. They didn't know it was winter, didn't understand the concept of being a seasonal business, and couldn’t even point us out on a map. They just wanted us to turn the ads back on and spend more money.
These reps mean well, but unfortunately this isn’t a a one-off story, it's the pattern. They don't know your market, your season, or your customer, and their incentive is your ad spend going up, not your results improving. Following their advice without question is one of the more expensive habits a business owner can pick up.
The AI Tools Aren't Helping Either
Google has leaned hard into AI driven ad setup over the last few years, and the pitch sounds good. Faster setup, smarter targeting, less manual work.
Here's the part that doesn't get mentioned. Those tools default to the biggest spend, the broadest reach, and the least focus, every single time. Performance Max wants your ad in front of as many people as possible, not the right people. AI targeting will happily expand your audience until your budget is spread across people who were never going to buy from you in the first place.
If you have a huge budget, then casting a massive audience net can work. If you're trying to run a focused campaign on a smaller budget with a specific goal, the AI tools may actively be working against that, not toward it.
Precision Is What Actually Fixes This
There are plenty of reasons why an Ad Campaign may fail. The most common we see are spending in the wrong places, on the wrong people, and for the wrong searches. Precision is the fix, and it comes down to a few specific things:
Location targeting that matches where your actual customers are, not where the population happens to be biggest
Keyword match types chosen for your specific industry, not left on broad match by default
Negative keywords in place so you're not paying for searches that look related but were never going to convert
We've seen local, location-specific businesses set their targeting to all of Canada, assuming a bigger audience is a better one, only to have the entire monthly budget spent showing ads to people in Ontario while their own city, where the actual customers are, got nothing. That account was never set up properly with the business's actual goals in mind, and the wasted spend was the predictable result.
The Bottom Line
Google Ads is not a black hole. In fact, it can be a very helpful and profitable part of your marketing plan, when done correctly. However, an account set up with default conversion tracking, advice from someone who's never heard of your industry, and an AI tool set loose on your budget, is absolutely a black hole.
Whether you're already running ads and want a second set of eyes on the account, thinking about starting and want to know if it's the right move, or you're just tired of managing it yourself, that's exactly what we do.
Check out our Google Ads Management package or reach out with your questions. Your time is better spent running your business. Ours is better spent bringing you more of it.
