Google Ads
PMax, Search, audits, conversion tracking, and the ongoing maths of running a Google Ads account properly. Writing for ecommerce and lead-gen advertisers who want signal, not vendor talk.
11 posts
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BUYER'S GUIDE
In-house vs agency: who should actually run your PPC?
For most businesses spending between £1,000 and £50,000 a month on Google Ads, a specialist agency beats an in-house hire, right up until you are big enough to employ a genuinely senior person and keep them busy. The decision is not really about cost. It is about whether one salaried person can give you the range of skill the platform now demands. Here is how to think it through.
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BUYER'S GUIDE
What should PPC management actually cost?
Most UK SMEs pay between £500 and £2,500 a month to have their Google Ads managed. But the number on the invoice tells you almost nothing on its own. A low fee that buys you a junior and a set-and-forget Performance Max campaign is dear at any price. A higher fee that finds and cuts the waste pays for itself. Here is how PPC pricing actually works, what each model quietly rewards, and what your money should buy.
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Google Ads
Performance Max for ecommerce: what it's actually doing with your budget
Performance Max is Google's most polarising campaign type. Half the PPC community thinks it's a breakthrough in automated advertising. The other half thinks it's a black box designed to spend your money on junk inventory. The honest position: PMax can work for ecommerce, but only if you understand what it's doing and control what you can control.
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Shopping & Feeds
Google Shopping feed optimisation: why your product titles are costing you sales
Your Google Shopping campaigns are only as good as your product feed. The single biggest lever in Shopping feed optimisation is product titles. Not images. Not pricing. Not descriptions. Titles. They determine which search queries trigger your products and whether the click-through rate justifies the cost per click.
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Google Ads
Why your Google Ads conversion data isn't what you think it is
Most Google Ads accounts are missing 30-40% of conversions because of how the modern web breaks tracking. Enhanced Conversions plugs the gap. Here's what it actually does, how to set it up, and why bidding only works when the data is right.
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Google Ads
How to audit your Google Ads for wasted spend (ecommerce checklist)
Across the active book, RTN recovers an average of £1,300 per month in wasted spend per account. That's not a rounding error. That's profit being torched because somebody set up a campaign two years ago and never looked under the bonnet again. Work through this checklist and you'll almost certainly find money you're wasting right now.
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Google Ads
Why Performance Max is burning your ecommerce budget
Performance Max is Google's golden child. It's the campaign type they recommend to almost everyone, and the one most agencies default to. For large ecommerce businesses with big budgets, PMax can work. For the majority spending £1,000 to £50,000 a month, it's often doing more harm than good.
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Shopping & Feeds
The real cost of a bad Google Shopping feed
Your Google Shopping campaigns are only as good as the data feeding them. Most businesses focus on bids, budgets, and campaign structure. If your product feed is a mess, you're building on sand. You'll pay more per click, show up for the wrong searches, and lose out to competitors who've sorted their feed properly.
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Google Ads
What a Google Ads audit actually tells you (and what most agencies miss)
Most Google Ads audits are surface-level nonsense. A few screenshots, some vague recommendations about "optimising your campaigns," and a sales pitch dressed up as insight. A proper audit isn't a tick-box exercise. It's a diagnostic.
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Google Ads
The PPC checklist for ecommerce re-platforming
Re-platforming your store is a big growth decision, and it carries a real risk: it can wipe out years of ad performance data and momentum overnight. Plenty of businesses see a nasty dip through a migration, not because the strategy was wrong but because the execution was. Here's the checklist RTN works through to protect performance through the move.
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Google Ads
AI Max: what RTN thinks about Google's biggest Search update in years
If you're running Google Search campaigns, AI Max is a name you'll hear a lot more of. Google is pushing a new layer of automation into Search, and it could be the biggest shift since Broad Match or RSAs. The question worth asking: does it improve performance, or does it just hand more control to the machine?
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