Google Ads autotargeting wrecked my campaign last Tuesday

I was sitting at my desk reviewing my weekly numbers and saw $200 spent with zero conversions. Turned out Google decided to show my ad for "premium dog food" on a site about snake breeding. I had to dig into the placement report to find it and add like 30 negative placements. Has anyone else had autotargeting just go completely off the rails like that?

2 comments

2 Comments

sam53012d ago

Did you catch that Google rep talking about this in that webinar last month? They were trying to explain how their AI picks placements based on "content relevance" but it sounded like they were just making it up as they went along. I mean, snake breeding and premium dog food are like miles apart in any universe. It honestly feels like their algorithm is just guessing half the time, especially after they made those changes last summer. I've started keeping a running list of all the weird places my ads have ended up, its almost funny if it wasnt costing me money.

scott.mia13d ago

Wait, was the snake breeding site at least interesting? I had Google do something similar a few months back where it decided my ad for handmade soap was a perfect match for a forum about restoring vintage tractors. I spent like an hour clicking through all these weird placement reports trying to figure out why my daily budget was gone by 10am. The autotargeting feels like it just throws ads at anything with vaguely related keywords, even if the whole site is about something completely different. I still double check my placements every morning now, its become a weird morning ritual I hate.