The NEW Way to Run Google Ads in 2026

I've been running Google Ads for more than 10 years, so I have seen it all. I can see everything. And today Google Ads is completely different than how you had to think and manage it years ago. With that said, we here at Grow My Ads, Talk to over 100 companies a month and I still see a lot of accounts that are on old thinking and old structures. Think about it. We have a search mode that's coming to Google, right? Search is changing. Ultimately the way the ads are working are changing and some people still are not keeping up the. You have to understand the framework in order to get the performance right. So these changes that Google is making, you must be keeping up with that because you have to work within the system, not follow them exactly. But you have to understand how Google is behaving and working and work within it. So I have a complete framework I'm going to break down for you in this video to make sure you understand how to think about Google Ads in 2025 and how you should be managing, operating and optimizing your Google Ads account. 2025 to get the ultimate benefit from Google's AI in order to get you the most amount of money from your advertising dollars. Let's dive in. Okay. Before we get into the framework of how to operate Google Ads in 2025, we have to talk about the future of search, right? Currently we're in keyword based searches and I will talk more about keywords because they're different than what they were a few years ago. Right. However, the future is going to turn more into these conversational AI interactions. We have Google AI mode that is being released right now. And I believe in the future this could potentially be what you first see when you go to google.com instead of your normal search bar, you have AI mode that you're actually presented with. I don't know that. I just, I assume that's what we're going to go into. But don't, don't quote me on that. Okay? But think about how if you're using Chat CBT today or Claude, think about how you interact with it. The way you search is completely different than probably using Google Search, right? With Google Search, I'm more direct. It's very keyword focused. When I'm talking to Claude, I actually literally am talking to it. In fact, I use an app called Mac Whisperer and I, I talk into my mic. So I'm talking to AI. I'm not even, because I, I'm sick of typing to it. So I, I talk to it. I'm giving it so much detail and letting it process that detail. And I've noticed my outputs that I get back from Claude or chat GPT depending on which one I'm using that day. When I'm giving it more detail, the better output I get, the better response I get back. And it's so it's very conversational, right? Google knows this. Google understands this. Google knows this is the future of how people are going to behave with trying to get information through the Internet or through LLMs. So AI mode is being released and AI mode is going to be it's more conversational searches, less exact keyword matching. It's intent based targeting bottom of the funnel searches transactional might stay similar. This is just my own thought. I do notice if I already know that I want to buy a specific product, I'm still just kind of directly searching for that specific product now when I'm exploring or evaluating. So hey, what's the best golf driver for someone who has high ball spend? I'm exploring. I'm probably reading Reddit threads, watching YouTube videos, blog posts, whatever it may be. However, once I know through that exploration and evaluation stage the exact driver I want to buy, I'm searching, you know, callaway AI smoke driver and I'm going to who has the best deal to purchase that. So transactional bottom of the funnel type searches probably they might not change as much and I'm going to be more than likely wrong on that. Five years from now may look back and I probably won't look back at this video but five years from now this will be a funny thing to probably watch because of how wrong I am. But this is just my thinking right now. Okay. And then top of funnel searches become more conversational. This is just how I see myself behaving with my searches. Okay, I'm very conversational with top of funnel information seeking sort of searches bottom of the funnel which is commercial transactional. I'm still pretty laser targeted on my exact keyword matching when I'm searching because I know exactly what I want in that moment. Now AI mode will evolve and will change the way we're working within Google. Okay. And so the old way of running a Google Ads account no longer works today. Well, what's the old way? The old way was you're sitting there and your daily account touching. You're always. I remember back in the day I was manual bidding keywords. I used to do big changes every single day and I actually thought that was doing something. It might have been but a lot of people were doing. I mean, every day we were in there. What was yesterday's results? Okay, let's, let's move the, the bids up by like 5 cents here, down 5 cents here. And you're like dialing in your bidding at this exact bid level that no longer exists today. Right. So the old way of daily account touching won't happen. Right. This constantly making micro adjustments over optimization. And I just talked about that with manual bid changes. Messing around with adding keywords all the time because you think you have these keyword gaps and adding tons of negatives and, and messing with the settings daily. That's. That's old. Match type segmentation. Creating individual campaigns for each keyword. Match type or ad groups. Not just campaigns. Skag structures. Single keyword ad groups. Used to love this setup back in the day. This is dead. No longer works. Trying to laser focus audience targeting. Trying to manually control every detail. Keyword obsession. I just talked about that. But adding thousands of keywords to avoid gaps. These keyword gaps. Oh, we might be missing this search. Even though we're already bidding on kitchen remodel, we don't have this long tail search that we forgot to add. So now we're going to add that. So you're adding all these different keywords all the time. And then your mindset, you're a keyword hunter, you're a traffic buyer, you're a campaign manager. You want to control everything that's old, that's dead. The new way of going about it is strategic oversight. You're not obsessing over daily changes. And microcontrol your AI training focus. What does that mean? It means you're feeding Google high quality conversion data. So think of this analogy. Any of you AI nerds are going to be like, hey, this is why this doesn't make sense. But just roll with me on it, okay? Think. Think of Google Ads like training an LLM in 2025. Google Ads is like training an LLM. So just like Claude or ChatGPT, Google Ads AI learns from the data you feed it. So good data in equals good results out. Bad data in equals bad results out. Your Google Ads account is essentially your own custom LLM that you're training for your business. Think of it like that. If Claude or ChatGPT was built on just a bunch of bad data, we would have a bad product because every time you ask it a question, it would be completely wrong. And still today there are cases that hallucinates or gives you wrong information. And we know that the product's pretty good for what it is today, right? Well, that's because it's learned on the entirety of all knowledge within the universe, essentially. Good data in equals good results out. Bad data in equals bad results out. So today you're operating a Google Ads account like you would be training an LLM. You have to think about what data am I feeding it in order to get more of that high quality data back. So for lead generation, that means don't treat all form fills equally. That means track through to the actual sale. That means feed purchase data back to Google, train AI on high value conversions only. Now, you might not be able to start like that in the beginning and I've got lots of training on this stuff on this YouTube channel if you go through more of my videos. But you want to eventually start training it on high value conversion data only because you're going to end up then getting more back from Google on high value conversion data. Think about this example. We'll take two companies, kitchen remodel businesses, okay? Company one is standard kitchen remodels, all right? They have a form fill. They treat everyone who fills that form fill equally. So, so bad credit, good credit, no money, lots of money. And tire kickers. And those people who are like, I need my kitchen done today. Right? Okay, all of those have different values to them. But anyone who just comes in and fills the form out, hey, I'm interested in you guys, it gets treated equally, you eventually will plateau. You're just telling Google anyone who fills that form out is amazing to me and is worth a lot, right? And that you have to start there sometimes in most cases you have to at least start there and then you work your way up to optimizing around the high value stuff. But if that's all you ever do, which is a lot of companies today, you're going to plateau and then you're going to come to me like, hey, we can't scale and we just keep getting a lot of junk. And we, you know, every time we try to scale, it just gets more junk and CPAs rise and all of this. All right, now let me give you the other example. Elite kitchen remodelers, they have gone above and beyond. So over time they might have started with a form fill and treated everyone equally just to get conversion volume pumping into the account. But these are smart advertisers and they just, they over time now know the values of their conversions. Okay? So they are tracking through to the actual sale. They're feeding purchase data back to Google and they're training Google's AI and high value conversions only. So what does that mean? That means let's not feedback low credit applicants, let's feed back true sales through our CRM and offline conversion tracking. Right. So if a form came in and we ended up selling them a $20,000 kitchen remodel, I'm feeding that data back into Google to learn from. Because that learning that data that I'm giving it, the AI will feed off of that and only get better. Right, Right. And so that's how I look at a Google Ads account today is like man, how do I just keep giving it gold and then I know it's going to go find more gold but you have to be able to feed that data to it. Standard kitchen remodel company will be plateaued. The elite kitchen remodel company that's doing exactly this process will continue to scale and will continue to get more high value conversions. Because Google knows what you're looking for. Because you're giving it exactly, you're giving it the playbook, the manual of what you're looking for through that, that feedback loop back to Google for E commerce. It's a bit easier, right? You're just tracking accurate revenue, importing offline sales when necessary. Like if you do high ticket sales and that's done over a phone call and you're utilizing like server side tracking. Okay, so before right, and this is then verse now for keywords. Then keywords were destination. You're literally, you were trying to match exact searches. Now keywords are navigational signals showing Google your intent. This is the future, this is pretty much now. We're in a combination of both here and I'm going to walk you through that framework. But this is where we're headed. Like continuing to head to navigational signals, intent based, not exact searches and that's evident with how keyword match types behave today. I have a full video on that that will be in the description below. If you want to go deeper into keyword match type behavior then versus now control. You controlled the machine. I was doing penny bid adjustments to my 1000 different keywords and we were using bidding software and going crazy with all that and controlling every little thing thing in the account. That's done. You now are training the machine just like I talked about with the data. Your job now is your you're over here, you're a strategic overseer, you are a guider and what you're doing is training the machine. So consolidated structures today, fewer campaigns, more volume. This is what you want. Not bunch of fragmented segmented campaign control, every little individual keyword. Those days are done. You want first party data integration like offline conversions, customer matching mindset today versus previous. You're an AI trainer, you're a conversion optimizer, you're a strategic overseer. You guide everything. You don't control everything. Okay, that's the big difference between old versus now. All right, what does that look like in the framework? Well, you start with quality data collection. This sets up the foundation with proper tracking and high quality conversions. You go through learning periods, right, where you're focusing on ramping conversion volume up. Ideally you're getting to 30 plus a month. You start dialing in smart bidding. Okay, so you transition from traffic based bidding, which would be manual or max clicks, and you're moving into smart bidding. You get into broad match expansion. That's broad match keyword expansion. So keywords now are becoming more intent signals with the smart bidding. Broad match plus smart bidding work hand in hand, very well. Not always, but in a high volume accounts absolutely kills. And then you have continuous expansion, scaling and moving up the funnel. This is what this looks like. All right, so if I go from phase one, so this would be like if you're just starting, you have quality data control or collection. So enhanced conversions, offline tracking, customer match first party data being pushed back in. You're training, this is the machine learning training ground. Then you're moving into phase two, conversion volume ramp up period. This is where you're trying to get 30 plus conversions a month. This is where AI pattern learning is taking place. Google starting to learn what a converter looks like to you because you're pushing that high quality data to it. You're resisting daily changes. You are an overseer, right? You're not this microcontroller on everything anymore. And it's quality over quantity. All right, Then we start dialing in our smart bidding. And now you might be on target CPA or target ROAS bidding. You've got a bit optimizations taking place, performance is starting to stabilize and you're trusting the process. Okay, so you got all this conversion volume from high quality conversion data points because you set the foundation up correctly. Now you've moved into some smart bidding. Now you're starting to get that dialed in and you're getting some stabilization within your campaign or campaigns. Then when you're at that stage, you can move into broad match expansion. And this is where you're now tapping into intent. You're not just tapping into exact keywords or phrase match keywords. You're now layering in Broad Match. So Broad match plus smart bidding really explodes that intent targeting. The way Broad match utilizes all, all the AI targeting that Google has. Keywords are now signals. When you're using Broad Match, AI audience discovery's taking place and you still have precision targeting. Okay, Then you scale with intelligence. So this means you're continuing to scale your campaigns, add different campaign types, and now you're moving up the funnel. But this is what this framework looks like if a lot of people just kind of are still screwing up. Phase one, they're like, hey, we had this account, we set it up and it's like on 30 second phone calls as a conversion, it's like, okay, we've kind of have to work backwards a little bit. I'm not saying you sledgehammer the account, but you've got to work backwards a little bit because a, you don't have convert, you have conversion volume from low quality data. So you have to start working on increasing the quality of your conversion data for all of this stuff down here to work the way you want. And that's where a lot of companies still kind of screw up today. So what does the new keyword strategy look like? And by the way, I just did a video recently on keywords where I talk about how many do you need in a Google Ads account? Less is more, actually. So if you want to go check that out, that video will be in the description below. But the old way of doing it was trying to add as many keywords as possible to fill in what you thought were keyword gaps. Right. The new way is fewer consolidated keywords per ad group. Okay, old way with skag structure. New way is broad match plus exact plus smart bidding. Caveat here is when the campaign's ready, I don't start with broad match and I still start with exact and phrase match. I'll talk about that here in a second. But once I'm dialed in, then I layer in broad Match. You're going to have themed ad groups, keep keywords highly themed, focused on a tent, let AI then find related searches because it's now based on tent intent. So the old way, again, your mentality was you're like this keyword hunter. You're adding all everything. I gotta add every long tail variation of every search inexact in a phrase and all these different match types. And then you end up with thousands of keywords. So you add a thousand, you're adding thousands of keywords to avoid gaps. You have skag structure, you have every match type for every keyword. You're trying to control every search query. What happens is now, today all of this structure, which by the way, I used to be a huge fan of today it segments data that the smart bidding needs. So it actually hinders you. It limits AI to syntax matching only. You don't want that. The new way, again, AI trainer mentality is intent signal strategies. Okay, so you've got three themed ad groups. You have emergency plumbing ad group, toilet repair ad group, general plumbing ad group. We're utilizing a lot of broad and exact now that is when the campaign is dialed in. Don't start there. If you're brand new, you're not adding broad and just let throwing in smart bidding. Some people will argue me, argue with me in the comments below, whatever. If that works for you, good. Doesn't work for me 80% of the time and I probably have more clients than most people watching. So I still will start a brand new account phrase an exact match. Then as I work my way up through the framework I just showed you through those phases when I'm dialing in my smart bidding, that is when I layer in broad match, but I don't layer it in right away. I have a full video on when and when not to use broad match keywords. If you want to go further down that rabbit hole, that video will be in the description below. But new way, fewer consolidated keywords per ad group. Broad match plus exact match plus smart bidding is the crazy combination. It's the rocket ship combination of your account. Keywords are intent signals to. Google's AI uses all your. So it uses all signals, right? Landing pages, location, previous searches. It's semantic matching, which is meaning versus syntax, which is words, which is how it used to be. So old way was syntax, new way is semantic. That's how you have to think, right? Meaning versus exact words. And it aggregates data for smart bidding to optimize on. That's why consolidation and more volume equals better outcome for you because that is how Google's AI likes to learn from or it makes it easier for it to learn from. So the evolution is less is more themed ad groups using all available signals by tapping into broad match with smart bidding. Okay, so let me show you. I'm going to hop in real quick. I'm going to show you a real example. All right. I found a random kitchen and bath remodeler in Miami. I don't know them, but shout out to Miami kitchen and bath remodeling. I put their website into the keyword planner. Okay, so I'm just Showing you how, how you should think about this if you're starting. Listen, if I'm starting out, I'm not adding 693 keywords that Google basically has on my website right through this keyword planner tool. Okay. And I'm probably not going to start with home renovations. My budget's limited. I only have so much to work with. So if I were them or if I'm consulting with them, I would say, what do you guys do more of right now? What's more valuable to you? What has the best, you know, cac to ltv. Is it kitchens or bathrooms? Well, Austin, it's actually kitchen renovations. All right, we're going to start with kitchen renovations and I'm going to start with seed keywords for my kitchen renovations. So that means I'm not going to go after home renovations or anything that's broader in nature where they could be talking about different things. I'm talking about kitchen renovation specific terms. And if I'm in Miami, that means I'm probably targeting kitchen renovation companies near me, kitchen renovation companies, Miami kitchen renovation kitchen contractors near me, kitchen contractors, Miami. I'm going after high intent searches of people who like, I need a kitchen renovation done. I'm looking for a company in Miami. Okay? I'm starting there. I'm starting with Phrase and exact match. I'm not adding broad. Then I'm working my way through the framework. I may in the beginning just to get conversion volume ramped up. Be, hey, we have form fills and we're going to have phone calls. We're going to just ramp up volume to get some momentum going. I'm using phrase and exact match. Remember, I'm probably using traffic based or click based bid strategies to start with max click or manual cpc. But on the back end I have, I'm prepared to start a. I've got enhanced conversion set up already. So my tracking is really good. I've got offline tracking prepared. So, so as quotes come through my form fill, I've got a process now where we're going to start giving Google back the high value stuff because I'm going to train it. But I know I'm in this data collection, machine learning, training, ground phase. And so I'm just ramping up that volume of conversions as I obviously get into phase two. But I'm starting to feedback loop high quality data right then as I'm getting that conversion volume ramped up. Now I'm moving into smart bidding and I'm still more than likely on phrase and exact match of My kitchen remodeling terms, then the specific high intent ones. Right. Then as I get smart bidding dialed in. What does dialed in mean? It means I have performance stabilization, so I have consistency of conversion volume. And I'm starting to hit a CPA goal for a kitchen remodeler and at the goal that I have set for it. Okay. So it's not all this craziness. I feel confident, I feel like I have consistency and I've dialed in my bidding to a point where I feel pretty good about my target CPA again to how to do all that and get in the weeds. I've got all training on that. So go watch videos on this channel or go join my school group called PPC Copilot where I, I do ongoing trainings and Q&As and everything. So, so there'll be a link to that group in the description below if you're interested in that. But that is when now. Kitchen remodel phrase and exact. I'm on smart bidding now. I want to start expanding further. And over the last three months I've been feedback looping my sales leads to sales. So it's got sales data that's coming in. Right. And so I've got all of this data flowing back into Google high value data. I'm ready to layer in some broad match now. I've got my broad match that I start layering in and that's just, you know, kitchen remodeling companies. Miami. Right. I'm going to layer in some of those broad match terms that are converting highly as exact match. To me, I still use broad and exact. A lot of people, you know will say you only need broad match. But I have my, my, my own thoughts on that. But I'm pretty much once you start adding in broad, you're phasing out phrase match keywords. But, but broad match is that rocket booster. That's why I use the little rocket ship emoji there. Broad match plus smart bidding is the rocket ship to your account. And broad match is now tapping into that intent targeting Broad match is learned. And you're, and you're doing this with Google learning from really high quality data. Right. That is how you run a Google Ads account today in 2025. It's this, it's not, it's not hard. It just takes a lot of work. Right. Whereas before many, many years ago, throw up a generic form fill and some phone calls and you're manually bidding exact match and phrase match keywords and you, you could control a little everything and yeah, life was good today it's a bit different and you're working with the finickiness of Google's AI. But this right now, these phases is how I see the success of many accounts today in 2025. So your future or your new role is a strategic overseer, right? So what you need to focus on now is strategic goal setting in your account. AI training that we just talked about. Creative optimization, business intelligent conversion rate optimization. What you need to stop doing is daily bid adjustments and daily in the account trying to get your dirty fat fingers in there all every single day. Stop doing that. So many people are doing that. Stop doing that. You are an overseer. Okay? Yes, you still need to make changes. Yes, you still need to optimize. But don't get in there. Every single day, every single, every time you're making those changes, you're, you're causing these learning phases to take place. So stop doing that. You're no longer doing that. You're no longer constantly adding thousands of keywords to your account. You're no longer micromanaging keyword match types, especially when you get into the laser later phases that I went through you. You're no longer over segmenting campaign structures and skag ad groups and all of that that is done. And you're no longer obsessing over search term reports like you used to in the past today pro tips to end this patience. AI needs time to learn volume. You want. The more volume you get the better. But quality volume, okay, quality over quantity. Even though you do want volume. So it's finding that sweet spot within that Giving first party data back to Google your customer data is your competitive advantage today in 2025. Think themes, not terms. Group by intent, not individual keywords. Stop over optimizing. Resist the daily optimization urges that you have. You are a strategic overseer today. You are a guider. You now know how to think and the frameworks to work on within your Google Ads account in 2025. To work within the system of how Google Ads is behaving and works today versus how it works years ago. If you want more training, more direct access to me, then I have a group called PPC Copilot. Go check that out. The link to that group will be in the description below. I have course material in their ongoing trainings, weekly Q&As, lots of great stuff, awesome community of other expert Google Ads and PPC experts in there as well. So go check that out if you want more access and more training from me. Or maybe you're a company you're running ads. And like Austin, actually we still are. It looks like we're still running under this old thought process and old frameworks. Then have my company grow my ads do a free audit for you. That's if you qualify. But the link to go get that audit will be in the description below. My team will get in, look at the account, give you practical advice on how to improve your account, and if you're doing good already, we're going to tell you all the good things you're doing too. So we don't just beat you up on it, but we do give you recommendations that are practical. So whether you want to hire us or not, you're going to get something that will actually be valuable and practical to you and your company to better your Google Ads account. So again, if you want that, go get the free audit link to that will be in the description below. And if you don't want any of that, that's cool too. See you on the next.