Insights · Field note · Growth and AI visibility
Governing Google Ads against evidence, not habit
Most accounts are run the way they were set up years ago, by people who have since left. Governance means every setting has a reason and a record.
Governing an advertising account means treating it the way an auditor treats a control environment: every campaign, setting, exclusion and budget has an owner, a reason and evidence of its effect. The audit establishes a baseline and removes spend that produces nothing a buyer would recognize as an inquiry. Governance then keeps the account clean: search terms reviewed on a schedule, negatives maintained with reasoning, bids and budgets managed to cost per qualified inquiry, and a monthly note recording what changed and why.
In detail
What the evidence shows.
What habit looks like
Campaigns nobody can explain. Broad match expanding to job seekers and students. Automated bidding optimizing for conversions that are button clicks. Budgets set by last year’s budget. Negative keyword lists last touched by an agency that is gone. Conversion counts that bear no relation to the inquiries the business received. In our audits (first-hand: David Selakovic) these are the norm, not the exception.
The audit
Structure, targeting, search terms against actual inquiry intent, bids and automation, conversion validity reconciled against real inquiries, landing pages. Waste is identified with its cost. Changes are made and their effect measured. The result is a baseline: this is what the account was doing, this is what it does now, this is what governance will be measured against.
The governance cadence
Search terms reviewed and negatives added on a schedule, because automation re-expands continuously. Budgets and bids reviewed monthly against cost per qualified inquiry. Conversion tracking monitored for breakage. A monthly note that records exclusions, changes and reasoning, so the account has a history anyone can read. A quarterly review in front of the budget owner.
What governance is not
It is not optimization theater: daily tweaks that produce activity reports and no change in inquiries. It is not growth for its own sake. The measure is inquiries at the lowest spend that holds them, and the mandate includes reducing spend. See account audit and waste removal and the quarterly review framework.
By David Selakovic · Published 2026-10-16 · Revised 2026-10-16 · Reviewed every 180 days