-
Gentle reminder Ad Strength is hot air
Posted by on May 7, 2026 at 12:08 pmTested two RSAs on Google Ads. Corporate brand trademark. Poor strength is heavily pinned so messaging flows logically. Brand > selling point> call to action type setup. Smashing it. Cheaper CPC, higher CTR, higher Conv rate, lower CPA than the excellent ad.
Similiar click volumes on both ads so fair.
Excellent one is the same copy, unpinned, with Google's recommended fluffy headlines to get text variety to score excellent.
New users and business owners , don't go mindlessly chasing high "scores" on Google Ads. Most are meaningless. The only one essential is Quality Score, which has a direct bearing on your click costs and how confident Google is to show your ad in the first place.
-
1 Reply
-
This has been a fact since the benninning.
-
I needed to see this, thank you
-
I’ve seen these results over and over again. Optimization score & ad strength are complete vanity metrics.
-
Ad Strength is merely a diagnostic tool, nothing more.
There have even been large studies showing no clear correlation between as strength and ad performance.
This is one of those: https://www.optmyzr.com/blog/google-ad-strength-study/
-
I always understood ad strength as all the outside factors of an ad. Has nothing to do with performance. It’s basically saying Google thinks you could improve it somehow, whether that’s adding more headlines, descriptions, etc. It’s not factored into Google’s decision to show the ad though. I use quality score to determine how well the ad was actually performing. You don’t have that column here, you should add it.
-
I’m more interested in what ‘potato drinker’ means.
-
Not to push the Google koolaid too much but the proper assessment would be to evaluate your campaign or ad group performance pre and post the “optimized” ad, or do a custom a/b test.
What you’re not seeing by just looking at ad stats is whether the “optimized” ad unlocked new auctions/search terms that you previously weren’t eligible for due to lower ad rank.
So the real question is does your campaign drive more conversions at your target KPI when you have a fully optimized ad.
Log in to reply.