Aaron Young explains why Google Ads profitability drops when you increase budget. The three mistakes: scaling too fast with smart bidding, fragmenting your account structure so algorithms learn slower, and only targeting high-intent keywords instead of broader reach. Gradual increases, simpler campaigns, and expanding to YouTube and Display Network work better.
My Google Ads campaigns were working and then we scaled, we added more budget and we completely lost all of our margins. It's said in different ways, but this is a really, really common question that we get amongst our members at Define Digital Academy. And there's really 3 things that we find people go wrong when it comes to scaling their Google Ads campaigns. The number one is that you scaled the wrong way. And the most common effect of this is that you increased your budgets way too aggressively in the wrong way. You can do it aggressively, but you need to do it in the right way. And the The simple common thing is you just put your budget from $100 a day all the way up to $300 or $500 a day all in one go. What you need to remember that with Google Ads, we do know that it's built on data and it's built on data points. I want you to think about it like this. If you had 2 campaigns, exactly the same campaigns in every single way, the only difference was that one's running on $100 a day, another one's running on $500 a day. Those campaigns operate really, really different when it comes to the algorithm, especially if you're using something like smart bidding. That's the first problem. The second problem that brands face or businesses face when they want to scale their Google Ads is they've got the wrong account structure. Especially now in 2026, we're finding a more condensed keyword structure or more condensed campaign structure is allowing you to actually scale faster. And the reason for that is because when you've got more conversion data sitting inside of your campaigns, you can move through those learning cycles quicker so you can add more aggressive budget increases. And then number 3, and this is a bigger one, is that you are only targeting bottom of the funnel also high-intent keyword searches. When it gets to Google Ads at scale, now for some brands or some niches, this is different. So for some brands, if you're a local service business, you might cap out at say $5,000 or $10,000. Whereas if you're targeting a larger market like America, you may not tap out until $150,000, $200,000. But at some point, you are going to have to start reaching out to the other platforms. And that's why I love Google, because you don't only have the search network, you can also reach out to things like YouTube, the Gmail or even into the Display Network. So they're the key things. If you are finding issues with scaling, you do need to remember that you need to do it the right way, needs to be the right structure, and then you also need to think beyond just those bottom of the funnel searches.
