Half observation, half rant. What I'm seeing in client accounts right now: Performance Max behaviour, Smart-bidding traps, attribution arguments worth having.
From late September 2026, Google removes campaign-level language targeting for Search and changes how it works for Performance Max. Here's what changes and what to check.
On 17 August 2026, Google changes how budget-limited campaigns on Target CPA or ROAS bid. Here is what changes, who it affects, and the options you have.
First-purchase value treats a one-time buyer and a £400-LTV customer as identical. Predicted LTV bidding fixes that — here's how to build a model Smart Bidding can actually use without falling into the over-engineering trap.
LTV:CAC is the metric founders quote on investor calls. CAC payback period is the one they should actually run the business on — especially in the first three years. Why it matters more than the ratio, and how to compute it properly.
Most feed tools only do Shopping. BlueWinston builds keyword search ads from your product feed too. An honest review after running it on real catalogues.
Client reporting is where agencies quietly lose margin. Here's an honest review of AgencyAnalytics after using it for live client dashboards, warts and all.
Things to Do is the highest-intent travel surface on Google, and most operators either ignore it or misread how it works. Here's the full setup and optimisation playbook.
I used to lose a full day a month exporting CSVs for client reports. Here's an honest review of Windsor.ai, the data connector that finally ended that ritual.
Most accounts sit below a 100% optimisation score, and the one-click "apply all" button can hand your budget to changes you never actually chose.
How much should you spend on marketing at $500k vs $5M vs $50M in revenue? The percentage-of-revenue framework I use when advising founders, with the caveats that make it meaningful for your specific situation.
Windsor.ai's MCP expanded write actions across Google Ads, Facebook, Bing, and TikTok this week. Here's what actually changed, why it matters, and how performance marketers should approach the new capabilities.
You scale from £5k/mo to £20k and revenue grows linearly. Push to £100k and growth almost stops. The plateau is a structural feature of scaling one channel into a finite demand pool — here's how to recognise it and break through.
Customer Match is the unglamorous, unsexy capability that quietly outperforms most other audience strategies. The accounts taking it seriously are pulling ahead. The ones still relying on Google's automatic audiences are slowly falling behind.
The real definition of LTV:CAC every founder should know. Why 3:1 is the floor, not the goal, how to calculate it honestly on gross profit; and when to ignore the ratio entirely.
Six PMax campaigns, three accounts, controls in place. What audience signals actually do, when they matter, and when they're noise — plus the playbook for using them on a new vs. mature account.
The brand vs performance debate is overcooked. The real question isn't which to spend on — it's how much to spend on each, and when. The right ratio changes dramatically with business stage. Here's the framework.
How to set up Performance Max for lead gen properly. Offline conversions, GCLID capture, downstream stage tracking, and a real B2B SaaS account showing 58% lower cost per opportunity.
If you serve EU/EEA users without Consent Mode v2, you're losing 20-40% of reported conversions and Google's modelled-conversion fallback can't help you. The complete implementation guide for performance marketers.
How to measure true incremental value of branded search ads, set up PMax brand exclusions properly, and right-size brand campaign budget based on causality, not reported ROAS.
A complete BigQuery and Looker Studio workflow for n-gram analysis of Google Ads search terms. Surface patterns that the raw search term report hides. With SQL examples and a real account use case.
How conversion lag silently breaks Smart Bidding in Google Ads. Learn how to measure your lag, fix the attribution window, and stop making budget decisions on incomplete data.
Demand Gen vs Performance Max compared with real account data from a 90-day side-by-side test. When to use each, when to use both, and how to structure them to avoid cannibalisation.
Real account data on how Google's AI Overviews have changed Search ad CTR, CPA, and ROAS. Where it hurts, where it doesn't, and the paid search strategy that's working post-AI Overviews.
How to build a profit-based bidding setup in Google Ads. Build a margin feed, switch Target ROAS from revenue to profit, and watch Smart Bidding redistribute spend toward what actually makes money.
A step-by-step guide to setting up server-side GTM for Google Ads. Covers Enhanced Conversions, first-party cookies, GCP setup, and a real account use case showing 19% more reported conversions.
How to use Performance Max Search Categories and account-level negative keywords together to systematically cut PMax junk traffic. With BigQuery automation and a real account use case.
An honest 90-day review of AI Max for Google Ads Search campaigns. Real account data, where it works, where it breaks, and the account profiles that should never enable it.
An honest comparison of GA4 alternatives — Plausible, Matomo, Mixpanel, Adobe, and more — and why GA4 still wins for performance marketers running Google Ads.
A step-by-step guide to connecting Cliniko to GA4 using GTM. Tracks bookings, cancellations, service name, appointment date, and value, with code examples and webhook setup.
A step-by-step guide to connecting Google Ads to Claude using MCP. Covers Developer Tokens, OAuth, refresh tokens, Claude Desktop config, and real prompts to use day one.
The Google Ads location setting most advertisers ignore is quietly burning their budget. Here's the difference between Presence and Presence or Interest.
Target ROAS isn't broken — your conversion stream is. Here's why Smart Bidding optimises against the values you send Google, not your actual business outcomes.
