Contact

Tools · Ad platforms

Google Ads

Campaigns set up around how you sell, judged on real sales.

Google Ads is Google's ad platform for Search, YouTube, Shopping, Maps and the rest of Google's network. Donut Analytics builds and runs search campaigns, Performance Max, Shopping and Demand Gen on YouTube, and keeps the Merchant Center feed behind them healthy. We set each account's conversions to match how the business sells, then judge the campaigns on real sales, not only on Google's own report.

Let’s Chat All tools

How we use it

How we use Google Ads

  • Conversions that match how you sell

    We choose what each account bids on. An online store bids on purchases with real order values. A business that sells in person can bid on directions and store visits.

  • A look inside Performance Max

    Performance Max runs Shopping, search and other placements from one budget. If Shopping is earning more but search is taking the money, we split Shopping into its own campaign so each one is bid and funded on its own results.

  • Account basics first

    When we take over an account, we stop over-funding brand terms, cut irrelevant searches with negative keywords, build out sitelink, price and promotion extensions, and rewrite the ads around what makes the brand different.

  • Feeds that stay approved

    Shopping and Performance Max depend on the Merchant Center feed. When products or ads get disapproved in waves, we look past the ad copy to the feed and the site, and fix the cause with your developers.

  • YouTube that bids for store visits

    For businesses that sell in stores, Demand Gen campaigns on YouTube can bid for store visits, so Google looks for the people most likely to walk in. We use the visit count to steer bidding and judge the campaigns on sales.

  • Budget by location and by day

    For businesses with many locations, budgets can be set by location and paced every day against the monthly or flight budget.

In practice

From Google Ads accounts we run

Real work, kept anonymous.

  1. 01

    Shopping pulled out of Performance Max

    For a brand that sells online, Shopping inside Performance Max was returning more than search, but search was taking most of the budget. We launched a dedicated Shopping campaign on Maximize Conversion Value, made AI Max an explicit setting on search, and paused the Performance Max campaign that was falling behind.

  2. 02

    Disapprovals traced to the site

    For the same brand, waves of ad and product disapprovals turned out to be the site's bot protection blocking Google's crawlers. One rule that lets verified bots through, set with the client's developers, fixed it.

  3. 03

    Customer lists hashed before upload

    For a client preparing Customer Match lists, we built a single web page that hashes the list on the client's own computer, offline, so raw emails and phone numbers never leave it.

What it can’t tell you

What Google Ads can't tell you

  • Whether a store visit became a sale

    A store visit in Google Ads is Google's own estimate, modeled from a sample of people who share their location. It's useful for steering bids. It isn't a door count, and it can't say who bought.

  • What the other channels did

    Google Ads credits conversions to Google's ads. It can't see what social, TV or a billboard did for the same sale, or which sales would have happened without any ads.

  • The last few weeks, in full

    Some conversions, like store visits, keep arriving for weeks after the ad ran, so recent days always look weaker than they'll end up. We estimate recent days from each campaign's own history before anyone reads them as a drop.

FAQ

Questions about Google Ads

Should I turn on AI Max for my Search campaigns?
Only with conversion tracking you trust. AI Max adds broader search term matching, ad text customization and final URL expansion to a Search campaign, and Google recommends pairing it with conversion- or value-based bidding. Where we've turned it on, we made it an explicit setting and kept reviewing the search terms it brought in.
Should I run Performance Max or Search?
Often both. Search catches people already looking for what you sell, and Performance Max reaches across Google's channels from one budget. Donut Analytics checks where the next dollar earns more and moves money when the evidence says so.
Why don't Google Ads conversions match Google Analytics?
They count differently. Google Ads gives its own ads credit, with its own settings. Google Analytics shares credit across every channel that brought people to your site. Neither sees a sale in a store, so for store-first businesses we measure advertising against total sales with a media mix model.
Do you auto-apply Google's recommendations?
No. Donut Analytics doesn't switch on auto-applied recommendations to raise an Optimization Score. We review Google's suggestions and make the ones the evidence supports, with a person signing off.
Is it safe to upload our customer list for Customer Match?
Lists are hashed before they're uploaded, so Google matches scrambled values, not raw emails and phone numbers. We can give you a one-page tool that does the hashing on your own computer, offline, so the raw list never leaves it.
Do you run Microsoft Ads too?
Yes, where it fits. For one client we manage Microsoft Advertising alongside Google Ads and Meta, paced against one budget and reported in one dashboard.

Pairs with

Guides: Using YouTube ads to drive store visitsIncrementality vs. attribution: what's the difference? FAQ

All tools

Get more from Google Ads.

Tell us what you’re working on. We’ll build a measurement-first plan for your brand. Email hello@donutanalytics.com or call (407) 394-9720.

Let’s Chat See our results