For a New Zealand software company targeting the US and Canada, restructuring the Google Ads account improved conversion efficiency while reducing overall spend.
The account had become more complex than the business problem required. Phrase and Exact match keywords were separated into different campaigns, which gave more control but also split budget and conversion data across multiple places.
The test was simple: could reducing unnecessary separation give Google more useful conversion data to learn from and improve performance?
For a cleaner like-for-like comparison, we looked at the 31 days before and the 31 days after the consolidation, combining Phrase and Exact performance in the before period so we were comparing the full search activity on both sides.
What did we test?
We consolidated the activity into one Generic Search campaign so Phrase and Exact traffic could contribute to the same bidding and optimisation signals.
More control is not automatically better. Split campaigns when there is a genuine business reason to do it, such as different markets, branches, business units or objectives. Otherwise, you may just be splitting the data Google needs to perform.
When conversion data is divided across too many campaigns, each campaign has less information to learn from. For automated bidding, that can make optimisation slower and less reliable.
What happened when we simplified the campaign structure?
The consolidated campaign delivered a substantial improvement in conversion efficiency.
Conversions increased 60%.
Cost per conversion reduced by 43.5%.
Conversion rate improved by 57%.
Spend decreased by 9.6%.
Average CPC decreased by 11.3%.
Traffic remained broadly similar, so the improvement came from generating more conversions from roughly the same level of traffic, at a lower overall cost.
The account generated more conversions while spending less, from a similar level of traffic. Appreciating that with any major changes to a Google Ads structure that you get an immediate bump in conversions so took this into account within our results.
What drove the improvement?
The biggest change was less unnecessary separation.
The result was not driven by buying substantially more traffic. Click volume was broadly similar, but the consolidated campaign converted that traffic more efficiently.
By consolidating the activity, the campaign had a stronger pool of data to learn from.
That does not mean every business needs a high volume of final conversions before automated bidding can work. For lower-volume businesses, earlier-stage conversion signals can sometimes help Google understand which users are moving towards a valuable outcome.
The key is to give the platform meaningful data without adding complexity that does not serve a business need.
- Campaign structure should follow the business need. Separate campaigns are useful when there is a real reason for separate control, not simply because more granularity feels safer.
- More campaigns do not automatically mean better performance. Too much separation can fragment the signals automated bidding relies on.
- Efficiency matters more than volume alone. In this case, conversions increased 60% while spend fell 9.6% and cost per conversion dropped 43.5%.
- Lower-volume businesses can still improve the quality of their conversion signals by measuring meaningful earlier actions, rather than forcing every campaign to learn from a very small number of final conversions.
For businesses expanding into competitive offshore markets, Google Ads structure can become a growth lever.
A simpler structure will not be right for every account. But when campaigns have been split without a clear business reason, consolidation can give automated bidding more useful data and make it easier to scale efficiently.
In this test, the result was not just more conversions. The campaign generated them from a similar level of traffic while spending less overall.
What next?
If your Google Ads account has become more complex over time, it may be worth reviewing whether every campaign still has a clear business reason to exist. You can also read how we helped Lentune halve its cost of marketing acquisition for another example of simplifying the path to stronger performance.
About the Author: Chris Clarke
