Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out! That's a really interesting, and very common, piece of advice you've received from the Google rep. It's a question that gets to the very heart of how to manage Google Ads effectively: who's in control, you or the algorithm?
I'm happy to give you some of my thoughts on this, based on years of running these campaigns. The short version is, I'd be incredibly weary of following that advice. It sounds good in theory, but in practice, it often leads to higher spend for less control. Let's get into why that is and what a more robust structure looks like.
TLDR;
- Don't trust the rep: The advice to combine broad and phrase match keywords often benefits Google's revenue more than your performance by increasing your spend on less relevant traffic.
- Control is everything: Separating match types into distinct ad groups (or even campaigns) gives you precise control over budget, bidding, and ad copy, which is essential for proper optimisation.
- Structure by intent: A tiered campaign structure (e.g., one campaign for Exact, one for Phrase, one for Broad) allows you to manage different levels of user intent effectively and allocate budget to what's proven to work.
- Broad match is for discovery, not performance: Use broad match sparingly, with a low budget, to find new, high-performing keywords. Once found, add them as phrase/exact matches in their respective campaigns and exclude them from the broad campaign.
- This letter includes an interactive calculator to help you understand the real financial impact of your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) in relation to your Lifetime Value (LTV).
We'll need to look at who that advice really serves...
First, let's be brutally honest about the relationship between an advertiser and a Google rep. While many reps are helpful and have good intentions, their ultimate employer is Google. Google's business model is based on you spending more money. The recommendation to "allow the broad keywords to learn against the phrase match keywords" is a very polished way of saying "give our algorithm more freedom to spend your budget on a wider net of searches."
The core issue here is a conflict of interest. Your goal is to get the most qualified leads or sales for the lowest possible cost. Google's goal is to maximise ad revenue. These two goals are not always aligned. Broad match, by its very nature, gives Google the most leeway to match your ads to queries that are, at best, tangentially related to your keywords. When you combine them, the algorithm will almost always favour the broader, higher-volume (and often lower-quality) option because it's the easiest way to generate clicks and spend your daily budget.
The rep's suggestion to "consider separating by match types" *after* it's clear broad is performing better is a bit of a trap. By the time you have that data, how much budget have you wasted on irrelevant searches? How skewed is your data? It’s a reactive approach, and in paid advertising, being proactive is what saves you money. I remember one campaign we took over for a medical job matching platform. When we started, their Cost Per User Acquisition on Google Ads was around £100. They were mixing match types and letting the algorithm spend freely. By implementing a more controlled structure, separating out the match types, and focusing budget on what worked, we were able to reduce that CPA all the way down to £7. That's the kind of impact that proactive, structured management has over a reactive approach.
Think of it this way: your keywords aren't just words; they are declarations of user intent. Someone searching for an exact phrase has a different, usually much higher, level of intent than someone searching for a broad, related topic. Lumping them together is like trying to have one conversation with two completely different people at the same time. It just doesn't work effectively.
I'd say you need to structure for control, not for 'learning'
The fundamental principle of good account management is control. You want to be able to pull levers and see a direct result. When you mix match types, you're handing most of those levers over to Google's black box algorithm. Here’s what you lose:
- Budget Control: Let's say you have £100 a day. In a combined ad group, Google might decide to spend £95 on broad match queries and £5 on phrase match, even if phrase match has a much higher conversion rate. By separating them, you can say, "I want to spend £70 on my high-performing Phrase match ad group, and I'll risk £30 on my exploratory Broad match ad group." You are in the driver's seat.
- Bidding Control: A click from a specific, high-intent phrase match keyword is almost always more valuable than a click from a vague broad match query. You should be willing to bid more for that higher quality click. In a combined ad group, you're stuck with one bid (or letting a smart bidding strategy guess). When they are seperate, you can set a higher bid for phrase match and a much lower bid for broad match, aligning your spend with the actual value of the traffic.
- Ad Copy Control: The ad that resonates with someone making a very specific search will be different from one that catches the eye of a casual browser. With separate ad groups, you can write tightly themed ad copy. For your phrase match keywords, the headline can mirror the search query much more closely, which is known to improve click-through rates (CTR) and Quality Score. In the broad match ad group, you can use more general, benefit-driven copy. Trying to write one-size-fits-all copy for a combined group just means your ads are never as relevant as they could be.
- Data Clarity: This is a big one. When everything is jumbled together, figuring out what's *really* working is a chore. You have to constantly segment your search term reports by keyword and match type. With a clean, separated structure, you can see at a glance: "My Phrase Match campaign has a 10% conversion rate and a £20 CPA, while my Broad Match campaign has a 1% conversion rate and a £200 CPA." The decision of where to allocate more budget becomes blindingly obvious. Clean data leads to better and faster decisions.
The idea that the algorithm "learns" better is, in my experience, a myth designed to encourage less hands-on management and more trust in automation. The algorithm learns from conversion data. It doesn't care if that conversion came from Campaign A or Campaign B. It just needs clear signals. A well-structured account with conversion tracking set up properly provides much clearer signals than a messy one.
You probably should use the 'Intent Tier' structure...
So, what's the alternative? Instead of combining, I strongly advocate for separating. For most of our clients, we use a variation of what you might call an "Intent Tier" or "Alpha/Beta" structure. It's designed to maximise control and systematically discover new opportunities.
Here’s how it works at a high level:
- The 'Performance' Campaign (High Intent): This is where your money-makers live. It contains ad groups with only Phrase Match and Exact Match keywords. These are the queries you know convert well or have a very high probability of converting. You allocate the majority of your budget here (say, 80%) and bid aggressively because you know the traffic is high quality.
- The 'Discovery' Campaign (Low Intent): This campaign is your research tool. It contains ad groups with only Broad Match keywords (or more specifically, Broad Match Modified, though that's changed a bit). You give this campaign a much smaller portion of your budget (the remaining 20%). Its sole purpose is to mine for new, profitable search queries that you hadn't thought of.
The magic happens in how these two campaigns interact. You will regularly review the Search Terms Report in your 'Discovery' (Broad Match) campaign. When you find a search term that is getting conversions and looks promising, you do two things:
- You add that exact search term as a Phrase or Exact match keyword to your 'Performance' Campaign.
- You add that same search term as a negative keyword to your 'Discovery' Campaign.
This creates a one-way street. The 'Discovery' campaign finds new opportunities, and once validated, they are moved into the 'Performance' campaign to be properly scaled. The negative keyword ensures you don't end up bidding against yourself across the two campaigns. This systematic process gives you the exploratory benefit of broad match without sacrificing the control and efficiency of phrase and exact match.
1. Add it as a keyword in the Performance campaign.
2. Add it as a Negative Keyword in the Discovery campaign.
You'll need to understand the true cost of bad traffic
This isn't just a theoretical debate about account structure; it has a very real impact on your bottom line. Every pound wasted on a click from someone who was never going to buy from you drives up your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). A high CAC can cripple a business, even if it looks like you're getting lots of 'traffic'.
The real question isn't "how low can my cost-per-click be?" but "how high a CAC can I afford to acquire a valuable customer?" To answer that, you need to know your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Once you know what a customer is worth, you can make intelligent decisions about how much you're willing to pay to get one.
Let's run through a quick calculation. Say your average customer pays you £200 per month, your gross margin is 70%, and you lose about 5% of your customers each month (your churn rate).
LTV = (Average Monthly Revenue * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate
LTV = (£200 * 0.70) / 0.05 = £140 / 0.05 = £2,800
In this scenario, each customer is worth £2,800 to you. A healthy business often aims for an LTV to CAC ratio of at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £933 (£2,800 / 3) to acquire a single customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 20 leads, you can afford to pay up to £46.65 per lead.
Suddenly, a £30 lead from a highly-targeted phrase match keyword looks like a bargain. But a £10 lead from a vague broad match query that never converts is a complete waste. A messy, combined ad group structure makes it incredibly difficult to distinguish between the two, leading you to optimise for cheap clicks rather than profitable customers. Use the calculator below to get a feel for your own numbers.
This is the main advice I have for you:
To wrap this up, while the Google rep's advice might seem like a shortcut to letting automation do the work, it's often a shortcut to wasting your budget. Real, sustainable success in Google Ads comes from a deliberate, controlled, and test-driven approach. It requires more work up front, but it pays off massively in the long run.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below in a table. This is the approach we take with our clients, and it's built to prioritise your profitability, not Google's revenue.
| Recommendation | Reasoning | Actionable Step |
|---|---|---|
| Reject Combined Match Types | It cedes control of budget, bidding, and messaging to Google, often resulting in wasted spend on irrelevant traffic. It's a structure that favors Google's revenue goals over your performance goals. | Immediately pause any ad groups where you have mixed Broad and Phrase/Exact match keywords together. |
| Adopt the 'Intent Tier' Structure | This separates high-intent (Phrase/Exact) keywords from low-intent discovery (Broad) keywords, giving you full control over your budget and strategy. | Create at least two separate campaigns: one for "Performance" (Phrase/Exact) and one for "Discovery" (Broad). Allocate ~80% of your budget to Performance. |
| Implement a Keyword 'Harvesting' Process | Systematically finds new, high-performing keywords with Broad match and promotes them to your controlled Performance campaigns for scaling. | Weekly, review the Search Terms Report in your Discovery campaign. Add converting terms to your Performance campaign and as negative keywords to your Discovery campaign. |
| Focus on CAC relative to LTV | Shifts your focus from chasing cheap clicks to acquiring profitable customers. This is the core metric that determines sustainable growth. | Use the LTV formula or calculator to determine what a customer is worth, and therefore what you can afford to pay for a lead or a sale. Optimise towards that number. |
Navigating the advice from platforms themselves can be a real challenge. They're building powerful tools, but they also have a vested interest in how you use them. Sometimes, having an expert on your side who is focused solely on your results can make all the difference, helping you implement structures like this and ensuring your ad spend is working as hard as it possibly can for your business.
If you'd like to chat through your specific account and how this kind of strategy could be applied, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can review things together. It might give you some extra clarity on the best path forward.
Hope this helps!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
