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account structure problems don't break performance immediately. they make everything worse gradually.

the two most common structure mistakes:

too many campaigns splitting the same budget

if you have 12 campaigns targeting similar audiences with different creative, each campaign gets a fraction of the budget. smart bidding needs a minimum conversion volume to work correctly, usually 30-50 conversions per month per campaign. if your campaigns are getting 5-10 conversions each because the budget is fragmented, none of them are in the learning zone. consolidating to 3-4 campaigns with the same total budget often improves performance within 4-6 weeks.

too many ad groups splitting the same keywords

multiple ad groups with overlapping keywords compete with each other in the auction. Google doesn't guarantee which ad group wins when they match the same query. you get inconsistent creative serving and no clean data on what's actually working for each query type.

the less common but more damaging mistake: running broad match without negative keywords.

broad match in 2026 is powerful because it uses intent signals, not just keyword matching. it is also broad. without a well-maintained negative keyword list built from actual search term data, broad match will find queries you didn't intend to pay for.

the structure fix is not complicated. it requires pulling search term data, identifying waste, building negatives, and consolidating where campaigns are below the conversion threshold.

/search-term-triage and /monday-audit in the pack surface both of these on a weekly basis: https://paidmedialab.com/pack

saku