In this short tutorial, Aaron Young—who claims 15,000 hours of Google Ads experience—explains why Google’s AI-driven Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) often underperform for small and medium businesses. The AI needs roughly 5,000 impressions within a 30‑day window to exit its learning phase, a threshold most SMB ad groups never meet, leaving the ads stuck in an endless learning loop and driving high cost‑per‑conversion (CPC). Young contrasts a responsive search ad (CPC $181 per conversion) with an expanded text ad (CPC under $50) for the same business, showing the RSA’s poor performance despite higher click‑through rates. Since Google will retire the ability to add or edit expanded text ads after July 30 2022, advertisers must improve RSAs. Young’s solution is to pin proven high‑performing headlines and descriptions—identified from historical expanded text ad data—into specific positions within the RSA. By pinning a $39‑per‑month call‑to‑action headline and a matching description, the RSA’s cost per conversion dropped from $181 to $39. He walks through the exact steps to edit an RSA, select assets, and pin them to position 1, 2, or 3. The video concludes with a call to subscribe and a free Google Ads optimization checklist offered in the description.
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Over the past couple of years, Google has started to rely a lot more on its smart campaigns and responsive search ads. They're selling it as the golden ticket for business owners in that you're just allowing Google and its AI and its bots to show your customers the best headlines and descriptions for you to get clicks, but more importantly for you to get conversions. But the problem is, is that Google's AI is actually not very good. My name is Aaron Young And I'm your 15,000 hour Google Ads master. When I say that Google's AI is not very. To explain that a little bit further, what I actually mean is in order for Google to finish its learning phase so that its AI can actually know which headlines and descriptions to show, it actually needs 5,000 impressions in a 30 day period. The problem for most small and medium businesses is that individual ad groups get nowhere near 5,000 impressions in a 30 day period. This means that your ads stay in an endless learning loop. And more importantly, Google's AI never gets enough data from you to actually end that loop so that Google knows which headlines and which descriptions to show. Thankfully, I've got a solution. After conducting hundreds of tests over multiple accounts, I've got a solution that you can implement into your campaign today. In the next three minutes I'm going to show you the problem, but more importantly, how to solve it. Let's go first I want to show you the problem. So you can see in here we have two ads. We have a responsive search ad and also an expanded text ad. And this is the date range that we're looking at. What I want you to look at really importantly here is that Google keeps showing this responsive search ad because it has a higher click through ratio. But the problem is, is that when we get to this cost per conversion, which ultimately when you're running a Google Ads campaign, the more important metric is your conversion rate and how many people are actually completing conversion action. And you can see the big difference in here. The responsive search ad has a cost per conversion of 1, 81 dol versus the expanded text ad which has a cost per conversion of under $50. And for this business, their goal is anything under $75. So we're achieving that goal really, really well with this expanded text ad. As you may be aware, come June 30, 2022, you're not going to actually have the option to either add or edit expanded text ads. So you've only got responsive search ads moving forward. And how we can actually resolve this issue with the responsive search ads because As I said, Come the first of July, 2022, you're not going to be able to edit or upload any more expanded text ads. What I have done is I made some changes into our responsive search ad and I'll just show you the extended date range and we'll move that up until yesterday. And you can see here that we've actually improved the responsive search ad, the cost per conversion from 181 all the way down to $40. And now this wasn't done with Google's responsive learning. The reason for why we know this wasn't done purely on Google's responsive search learning is because this responsive search ad is still actually in its learning phase. And the reason for that, as I described earlier in this video, is that you need around 5,000 impressions in 30 days in order for Google to be able to display a rating in the performance column. So we're still not getting that performance column because Google just doesn't have enough data to be able to rate which is the best performing headline and which is the best performing description. And what we did is we made a really simple change and we started actually pinning in some of our headlines and also some of our descriptions. The reason that we were able to make these decisions is that from our previous data in the expanded text ads, we knew that the core best performing call to action was this messaging around $39 per month and also this headline which is also around a month to month contract. So what you need to do to fix this problem with the sponsor search ads is just quickly go into your responsive search ad, click on edit and once you've clicked on edit, that will then allow you to go through and see the exact headlines that you want. And then it's just a matter of quickly, easily going in and pressing pin. Now you can make that decision as whether you want to show it in position one, position two or position three. But for us, we know that this call to action of from just $39 per month works really powerful in that third head position. And then we also did the same thing for the descriptions we went through. And we knew that this description of pointing out that we've got month to month contracts from just $39 was also the best performer. So we pinned that in and once again you just press this little pin button and then you say whether you want it to be in position one or position two. So those very small, really quick changes allowed us to give greater control to Google Ads so that we can actually make sure that our headlines are showing those call to actions which we know convert. And as I said before, since we've made those changes, we've been able to see the cost per conversion for this responsive search ad reduced from $181 all the way down to $39. So that is a really simple way that you can make a change in your responsive search ads. So that way you get the best of both worlds. You're still allowing Google to push its responsive search ads and and use some differences in the different headlines. But what you're also doing is you're locking in those core call to actions which you know from your business provide you the best results and the highest level of conversions. I know that that quick little tip will help you improve the performance of your responsive search ads. Before you go, it would be greatly appreciated if you could like and subscribe to my channel and that way you'll get notified every time I release these short to the point Google Ads teachings which are going to help your Google Ads campaigns. Also, as my way of saying thank you for staying around to the end of this video, I've got a free gift for you in the description of this video. All you need to do is in the description is to click on my free Google Ads checklist and that will take you through to a form where you can actually sign up and you will get my free Google Ads Optimization checklist. As I said at the start of this video, I've been optimizing Google Ads campaigns for over 15,000 hours and this is a checklist that I've put together to help you know what you need to optimize in your Google Ads account every day, every week, every month, and every 90 days. It's my free gift to you and I look forward to seeing you on our very next Google Ads teaching. See you then.
