Google Ads Management Services, Run by the Person You Hire
The person who audits your account is the person who runs it. John Williams has managed more than $350M in
Google Ads spend across agency work at Brainlabs, OuterBox, and Seer Interactive. That's the operator you get,
on a flat fee.
Weekly hands-on management of Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and Demand Gen, done by John rather than a
junior buyer.
Tracking comes first. Bids and budgets don't get touched until the primary conversion actions are verified
as real business outcomes.
Structure follows spend and data volume. Small accounts get consolidated so Smart Bidding has data to learn
from; larger accounts keep brand, non-brand, and high-value categories separate so budgets stay under
control.
You pay a flat monthly fee, never a percentage of spend, and the free 30-day audit comes before any
commitment.
Every change goes into a change log you can read, and every write made through Buddy passes a
preview-and-confirm step.
Who this service is for
This is for businesses where Google Ads is a real line item and the results matter to someone's job. In practice
that tends to mean:
Lead-gen businesses (home services, legal, insurance, B2B) where the conversion that matters,
a qualified lead or a signed contract, happens after the click and often offline.
Ecommerce brands running Shopping and Performance Max off a Merchant Center feed, where the
bidding problem is margin, not just revenue.
In-house teams who already have someone in the account but want a senior operator to own
strategy, structure, and measurement.
Companies leaving an agency after finding out their "senior strategist" handed the work to
someone they've never met.
It's not a fit if you want a set-and-forget Smart campaign, or if your site can't record a conversion
yet. If tracking is the blocker, start with
a conversion tracking audit, which is cheaper and
moves the numbers faster than any bid change.
What's included
These are concrete deliverables, not a list of "activities."
Week-one measurement check. A written list of every conversion action, whether it is Primary
or Secondary, what it actually fires on, and whether it should be used for bidding. Google's own docs say that
only Primary actions in a goal used for bidding feed the "Conversions" column that Smart Bidding optimizes
against (see
About primary and secondary conversion actions). Getting this wrong is the most common reason we find for "Smart Bidding doesn't work."
Account structure map. A one-page diagram of campaigns, budgets, and bid strategies, plus the
reason behind each split. Brand and non-brand get their own budgets. Categories with very different margins
get isolated. Anything else gets consolidated.
Search term and negative keyword program. We review search terms weekly and maintain shared
negative lists. Google caps you at 20 shared negative lists per account and 5,000 keywords per list (see
Google Ads account limits), so the lists are designed rather than dumped.
Responsive search ad system. Each RSA can hold up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions (About responsive search ads). We write to that limit, pin only what has to appear (legal copy, the offer), and test against written
hypotheses rather than chasing Ad Strength.
Bid strategy plan. One strategy per campaign, tied to how much conversion data the campaign
has and what the business actually counts as success. Details on the
bidding strategy page.
Performance Max and AI Max decisions, written down. Whether to run them, how they relate to
your Search campaigns, and which controls go on. See
Performance Max management.
Reporting you'll actually read. A Looker Studio dashboard, a short written weekly note (what
changed, why, what's next), and a monthly review tied to revenue or pipeline, not impressions.
Change log. Every meaningful change is recorded with its date and the reasoning, so a future
hire, or a future agency, can pick up the account cleanly.
How John runs a Google Ads account
Free audit before any money changes hands
Connect the account to Buddy and you get a scored audit back. John then
reads it against your business: margins, sales cycle, what a lead is worth. Out of that comes the scope and
a flat quote. The Google Ads audit page explains what
gets checked.
Lock down conversion data
Before any bid change, every Primary conversion has to be a real outcome: purchase, qualified form, booked
call. Page views and button clicks get demoted to Secondary. Where the sale happens offline, we plan
enhanced conversions for leads or an offline import (see
server-side tracking). If historical data was
polluted by a tracking break, Google's
data exclusions
keep Smart Bidding from learning from the bad days.
Restructure only where it pays
John's position, from his article on
account structure: consolidation helps small and mid-size accounts by giving the algorithm more data, while large accounts
still need brand and non-brand separated and high-value categories isolated for budget control. We
restructure in phases. Each phase runs as a Google Ads experiment when it can, so you see the effect instead
of taking it on faith.
Set bidding to match the data
Google is renaming its strategies. Since June 2026, "Maximize conversions with a Target CPA" shows up simply
as "Target CPA," and the same goes for Target ROAS (About Smart Bidding). The behavior is the same. What matters is matching the strategy to how much data you have and what you
value. Enhanced CPC is gone: Google retired it for Search and Display the week of March 31, 2025, and any
campaign that wasn't migrated now runs as Manual CPC (About Enhanced CPC). We still find those campaigns in audits. One more 2026 change matters for anyone on a target: since
August 17, 2026, budget-limited Target CPA and Target ROAS campaigns deliver closer to the stated target
instead of beating it, so a campaign with a $10 target that had been averaging $5 drifts toward $10 unless
the target is updated (Changes to target based bid strategies). We reset targets to what the business actually wants.
Run a weekly operating rhythm
Monday: search terms, negatives, budget pacing. Midweek: ad and asset tests, landing page checks. Friday:
the written note. Big strategic changes are grouped and timed so campaigns aren't kept in a constant
learning phase. John's
Smart Bidding article
describes accounts where well-meant weekly edits did exactly that.
Review the month against the business
The monthly review asks one question: did paid search make the business more money, net of spend? If the
answer requires CRM data, we wire it in. If a recommendation in the Google Ads Recommendations tab serves
Google more than you, we dismiss it and write down why.
Common mistakes John fixes
Micro-conversions set as Primary
If "clicked phone number" or "viewed pricing page" is Primary, Smart Bidding goes looking for people who click
phone numbers. Your CPA looks great and revenue doesn't move. The fix takes five minutes, and it changes what
the algorithm is chasing.
Campaigns quietly reverted to Manual CPC
Accounts that relied on Enhanced CPC and were never migrated are now on plain Manual CPC. Nobody decided that.
It happened by default. We move them to a deliberate strategy.
Broad match without the data to support it
Google recommends pairing broad match with Smart Bidding. John agrees for high-volume accounts with clean
conversion data. In low-volume accounts it spends on loosely related queries, which is why his
take on Google's best practices
recommends building data with exact and phrase match first, then testing broad.
Rewriting good ads to raise Ad Strength
Ad Strength points you in a direction. It doesn't measure performance. We keep ads that win on conversion rate,
even when the label says "Poor."
Chasing a 100% optimization score
The Recommendations tab mixes real fixes (broken tracking) with suggestions that mostly raise spend. Accepting
every one of them isn't a strategy.
PMax quietly taking credit for brand demand
One of the anonymized audits on our case studies page found Performance Max
claiming conversions that were really branded searches. Brand exclusions and honest reporting fixed it.
The monthly account health check
Beyond the weekly rhythm, John runs the same ten checks on every managed account once a month. Each one is tied
to a documented platform rule or published research, so you can verify the reasoning yourself.
Check
What we look for
Primary conversions
Every Primary action is a purchase, qualified lead, or booked call. Only Primary actions in goals used for
bidding feed the Conversions column.
Bid strategy per campaign
No campaign on Manual CPC by accident, and every target reviewed against the August 2026 bidding change.
Learning status
Campaigns still in "Learning" after a change. Google describes a standard 7–14 day learning phase, and its
learning period guide adds that calibration typically takes 1–2 conversion cycles (learning period).
Search terms and negatives
New irrelevant queries added to shared lists, and lists checked against the 20-list and 5,000-keyword
limits before they fill up.
Match types
Broad match only where conversion volume supports it, with search terms reviewed for drift. Google's
keyword matching
documentation explains how far each type reaches.
Brand vs. non-brand
Brand reported separately. In eBay's field experiment, most clicks from brand-keyword ads were replaced by
organic clicks when the ads stopped (Blake, Nosko & Tadelis, NBER), so brand results are never used to flatter the account.
Performance Max overlap
Brand exclusions on, and core non-brand Search not budget-limited, so PMax doesn't take exact-match
traffic.
Auto-applied recommendations
Which recommendation types Google can apply on its own (auto-apply). Anything that raises budgets or broadens match types stays off unless we chose it.
Ads and assets
RSAs using most of their 15 headline slots, pins limited to required copy, and sitelinks current.
Revenue vs. reported conversions
Google-reported conversions compared with CRM or store data for the month, with any gap explained.
When a question can't be settled from the account, such as whether a campaign is incremental at all, we design a
test instead of arguing. Google's own researchers documented the geo-experiment method we use for that (Vaver & Koehler, Google Research).
Pricing and engagement
Managed Google Ads at Ahmeego is a flat monthly fee, not a percentage of your ad spend. The
pricing page spells out the model: no percentage-of-spend fees anywhere, no long
contracts, and a custom quote that comes out of a free 30-day audit. The quote is written, it lists exactly what
is in scope, and it doesn't rise automatically when your budget does.
If you'd rather run the account yourself, the same agent we use internally is available to you:
Buddy is free to try, and Buddy Pro is $9.99/month on the
pricing page. Plenty of in-house teams use Buddy day to day and bring John in only for
quarterly strategy or a restructure.
Platforms we work in
The working stack for a managed Google Ads account. Every link below goes to the vendor's official product page.
John Williams does. Ahmeego is a three-person senior team (John, Kristy Morgan, and Sandeep Muley) and the
person who scopes the work is the person doing it. There is no junior buyer behind an account manager.
How much does Google Ads management cost?
It's a flat monthly fee quoted after the free 30-day audit. Per our pricing page,
nothing is billed as a percentage of ad spend and there are no long contracts. If you want to run the account
yourself, Buddy Pro is $9.99/month.
Do you need access to our Google Ads account and Analytics?
Yes. We need standard access to Google Ads and at least read access to Google Analytics and Google Tag
Manager, because most performance problems start in measurement. You keep ownership of every account and
asset.
Will you move us to Performance Max or AI Max?
Only if it fits. John's view is that Performance Max complements keyword Search rather than replacing it. AI
Max for Search turns on broad-style search term matching, text customization, and Final URL expansion
together, so we decide on each setting separately instead of flipping the whole thing on.
How fast will we see results?
Measurement fixes show up in reporting right away. Bid strategy changes need a learning period, and Google's
own documentation describes a standard 7–14 day learning phase for Smart Bidding. Restructures are judged over
at least a full conversion cycle, not a single week.
Do you also run Microsoft Ads?
Yes. See Microsoft Ads management. We rebuild
for Microsoft's audience and LinkedIn profile targeting rather than blindly syncing Google imports.
What happens if we leave?
You keep everything: the account, the change log, the dashboards, and the documentation. We hand off cleanly.
That's the reason the change log exists.
Talk to John about your Google Ads account
Tell John what the account spends, what a conversion is worth to you, and what's frustrating you about it now.
You'll get a written reply, not a pitch deck.
John, Kristy, or Sandeep will reply.One of the three of us will respond personally within 1 business day. No SDR queue.
Message received.
One of us will reply directly within one business day. While you wait, run a free
Buddy audit on your account.
Top 25 references
The primary sources, standards, research, and tools we rely on for this work. Every link was checked on
2026-10-11. We aren't affiliated with these publishers unless noted.
Official documentation
About Smart Bidding— Google Ads Help Defines the four Smart Bidding strategies and documents the June 2026 relabeling of tCPA and tROAS.
About your Google Ads account limits— Google Ads Help The hard limits that shape structure, including 20 shared negative lists and 5,000 keywords per list.
About responsive search ads— Google Ads Help RSA mechanics: up to 15 headlines and 4 descriptions, pinning behavior, and Ad Strength.
About Enhanced CPC (ECPC)— Google Ads Help Confirms ECPC ended for Search and Display the week of March 31, 2025, leaving unmigrated campaigns on
Manual CPC.
About data exclusions— Google Ads Help How to stop Smart Bidding from learning from days when tracking broke, and why backfilling is
discouraged.
How AI Max for Search campaigns works— Google Ads Help What AI Max turns on (search term matching, text customization, final URL expansion) and which controls
remain.
About keyword matching options— Google Ads Help Current definitions of broad, phrase, and exact match, and how they interact with Smart Bidding.
Introduction to the Google Ads API— Google for Developers The programmatic interface behind every serious audit and reporting tool, including the open-source Google
Ads API Agent.
EU user consent policy— Google Google's binding policy for advertisers with EEA, UK, and Swiss users, and the reason consent mode
signals are required there.
Measuring Ad Effectiveness Using Geo Experiments— Google Research (Vaver & Koehler) The method behind matched-market tests, used to measure incremental conversions when platform-reported
numbers can't be trusted.
Google Ads Benchmarks for Your Industry— WordStream by LocaliQ Annually refreshed CTR, CPC, conversion rate, and cost-per-lead benchmarks by industry, useful as a sanity
check rather than a target.
Search Engine Market Share Worldwide— Statcounter Global Stats Monthly search engine share data, the baseline for deciding how much budget Google versus Bing
deserves.
Leading tools
Google Ads Editor— Google Google's free desktop app for offline bulk edits, used for large restructures and reviewing changes
before they post.
Google Ads Scripts: product overview— Google for Developers JavaScript automation inside Google Ads for alerts, budget pacing checks, and custom reports.
Google Ads Transparency Center— Google Shows every ad an advertiser is running on Google, which makes competitor message checks quick.
Optmyzr— Optmyzr A widely used PPC management platform for Google and Microsoft Ads rule-based automation, audits, and
alerts.
Expert guides
What is PPC – Pay-Per-Click marketing?— Search Engine Land Search Engine Land's maintained primer on how paid search auctions, platforms, and campaign planning
fit together.
A Complete PPC Marketing Guide— Search Engine Journal A multi-chapter guide from Search Engine Journal covering account structure, keyword research, bidding, and
reporting.
Communities & courses
r/PPC— Reddit The largest practitioner forum for paid search, useful for spotting platform bugs and rollout issues before
they're documented.
Skillshop: Google Ads certifications— Google Google's free training and certification portal for Search, Shopping, measurement, and AI-powered
campaigns.
AI disclosure: This page was drafted with AI assistance and edited by a human. Platform rules and
limits are cited to official documentation as checked on 2026-10-11; Google, Microsoft, and Meta change these
often, so confirm against the linked source before acting. Brand names mentioned in John's background are past
engagements listed on the about page; no current endorsement is implied.
Start with a free Google Ads audit.
Connect your account, let Buddy score it, and decide whether the gaps are worth paying someone to close. No
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