Two weeks ago, I was in Boston for my talk at SMX Advanced.
(The slides are available here: https://nilsrooijmans.com/AI-Agents-to-Boost-PPC-Productivity-Boston-2026.pdf)
One of the members in the audience asked me an unrelated but interesting question:
“What settings do you immediately change when taking over an account?”
Here’s what I responded with:
- Disable auto-applied recommendations. Having Google add Broad match keywords and Display Expansion for you is a very efficient way to advertise to everyone except your customers.
- Turn off Search partners and set location targeting to “Presence” instead of “Presence or interest” (unless fraudulent clicks are part of your growth strategy).
What settings do you immediately change?
– Nils
PS: My strategy with respect to search partners is somewhat more complicated. I enable them for mature campaigns and then use a script to monitor the performance of Search partners versus the Google network. See here: https://nilsrooijmans.com/google-ads-script-search-partner-alerts/
PPS: Are you in Amsterdam this Thursday? Join us for the SEA Borrel at Café Kobalt. Beer, wine, PPC nerds, and thanks to Swydo, no wallet required. Non-Dutch PPC pros are very welcome too. Sign up here: https://luma.com/5fmizpk7