Trying to reverse-engineer my PPC guy's Demand Gen setup. need some help Please!!
Hey guys, so I run a few dropshipping stores and I've been working with a PPC manager for Google Ads. In the beginning the results and support were amazing, but as soon as he got more clients the quality went to shit. Slow responses, worse performance, and on top of that he doesn't even let me access my own accounts. So I'm trying to learn how to run this myself.
Here's what I've managed to figure out about how he operates:
Every time I send him a new product or collection he asks for 5 videos or 20 images. He runs exclusively Demand Gen, always 3 to 4 campaigns per Product/Collection with budgets of $10 to $15/day each. And this is the same strategy whether the store is brand new or not, which I know sounds weird because Demand Gen isn't really meant for cold traffic, and those budgets are way below what Google recommends for the format.
I've been trying to replicate it and honestly it's been a mess.
What I tested:
First I tried Maximize Conversions and Google overspent by like 10x, almost all of it gone within the first hour after midnight. Then I switched to tCPA which fixed the overspending but the same behavior was still there, everything front-loaded right after the daily reset. I also tried stricter audiences, YouTube only placements, new audience segments. Nothing really changed.
What I think I fucked up:
I kept "Optimized Targeting" checked through all of this. I think that might be why Google just does whatever it wants in that first hour instead of respecting the audience I set. Is that actually the issue or am I missing something else?
If anyone has experience running Demand Gen at low budgets for cold traffic, especially for ecom, I'd really appreciate some insights.