Smart campaigns are the campaign types that advertisers new to Google Ads typically start with. This is because when you sign up to Google Ads Google will take you through their campaign creation process which sets you up with your very first, shiny new campaign. This campaign is a smart campaign.

To the untrained eye, it seems great! Super easy to set up. And wow! You’re getting clicks and traffic to your website! Yay!

However, this isn’t always a great solution. In most cases, the setup process leaves your campaigns with gaps, and to the average advertiser optimisation strategies are hard, not suitable for you or even impossible. A Smart campaign gives you little control over a lot of campaign elements, and reporting is very limited.

We recently ran an audit on a client’s Smart Campaigns and here are some of the issues we found:

- The conversion actions were skewing the actual results of the campaign. Lots of conversions were tracked, however most of these conversion actions were irrelevant to the client. Google automatically sets up conversion actions. This account was tracking people looking for directions to their premises, clicks to call and Google form submissions. 66% of the conversions were people looking for directions (they don’t have a physical office).

- Search terms are irrelevant and too broad and therefore site traffic was high, but bounce rates were also extremely high.

We recommend moving to Expert mode with a full Search Campaign. This gives you full control over all aspects of the campaign including which ads will show for which keywords, singling out search terms and assessing website engagement across specific keywords. You’ll have access to the full scope of reporting available, giving you the data you need to make informed decisions on campaign performance and optimisation.

Smart Campaigns can be great to get started with Google Ads if you have some basic knowledge of campaign management or if you want to do a very short test of the platform. We don’t recommend it for most advertisers. If you have any questions or would like us to have a quick glance over your Google Ads campaigns, please do reach out!