-
Google Ads Mid-Life Crisis Help
Posted by on February 19, 2026 at 4:03 amI’m seriously hitting a wall with modern Google Ads and I need a reality check from people in the trenches (I'm in the trenches)
I came up in the “manual” era: building Shopping structures in spreadsheets, slicing by product groups, match types, cross-ad group negatives, clean query sculpting, and actually knowing why a click happened.
Now I feel like everything is supposed to “work together,” but no one can explain the system in a way that’s consistent. It’s like every answer is a vibe.Here’s what’s breaking my brain:
If I’m running PMax for Shopping, how is that supposed to coexist with Search? Do you treat PMax like broad match Search with a feed attached? If so… then what is Search supposed to be?Do you still run broad match in Search with active Pmax?
Or do you keep Search tighter (phrase/exact) so it can “own” the high-intent queries while PMax does discovery?Does phrase/exact actually keep any priority anymore, or does PMax just eat whatever it wants?
How are people structuring PMax without it becoming either a mess or too fragmented to learn? Do you split by Product categories? Margin tiers? One consolidated beast + asset groups? Different Creatives? Where’s the “sweet spot” between breakouts and consolidation? Does anyone really know? I actually feel like I structure Pmax campaigns well but everyone says different best practices.
Where does Demand Gen fit?
It feels like it’s doing a lot of what PMax does (minus the feed) with different audience controls.How do you avoid overlapping strategies and cannibalizing yourself?Who actually owns Demand Gen internally? How do you prevent the classic problem where two teams are basically running the same play in different campaign types?Where does AI Max fit in?
Google can’t clearly explain it, but everyone’s acting like it’s mandatory.
Is it actually incremental, or is it another layer of “trust the machine” with a new name? Does it replace broad match keywords for you?And why is everyone obsessed with tROAS?
Maybe I’m crazy, but tROAS feels like one of the worst strategies if you care about efficient growth (it seems to chase revenue signals and sacrifice control/volume in weird ways).
Yet it’s treated like the default “smart” answer. I just took brand campaign off tROAS and CPC dropped for $1.20 to $0.20, same results. You uncap the budget and blindly adjust it based on a feeling you have?I’m not trying to be dramatic, but I genuinely feel like I’m talking in circles with myself, clients, and Google reps. There’s no shared framework. It’s just “launch it, let it learn, and hope the black box behaves.” "Let the AI do its thing"
For the folks who feel grounded in 2026 Google Ads: what’s your actual mental model for how Search + PMax + Demand Gen are supposed to work together? And what structure choices have you found that consistently don’t turn into chaos? Just looking for any reassurance my brain has just finally melted.
-
1 Reply
-
I hate change too
-
>Where does AI Max fit in? Google can’t clearly explain it, but everyone’s acting like it’s mandatory. Is it actually incremental, or is it another layer of “trust the machine” with a new name? Does it replace broad match keywords for you?
AI Max is just search with broad match, DSA, automatically created assets and a few other tricks rolled into a brandable name. If you’re not seeing performance from those features or ready to use those individual features for a variety of reasons like conversion tracking, brand compliance, legal risks it’s not mandatory.
I’ve got about 30% of clients running it.
>And why is everyone obsessed with tROAS? Maybe I’m crazy, but tROAS feels like one of the worst strategies if you care about efficient growth (it seems to chase revenue signals and sacrifice control/volume in weird ways). Yet it’s treated like the default “smart” answer. I just took brand campaign off tROAS and CPC dropped for $1.20 to $0.20, same results. You uncap the budget and blindly adjust it based on a feeling you have?
Don’t use tROAS/max Conv/MCV for brand bidding or if you do, wrap it in a portfolio bid so you can still have control over the CPC limit.
Otherwise for prospecting it’s better because Google in 2026 is a data and algo play and feeding it more detailed signals that “a conversion occurred” lets Google figure out the appropriate bidding for customers.
>Where does Demand Gen fit?
Search – bottom of funnel -> PMax above that but if you’re bidding towards performance it often ends up being 90%+ search traffic -> Demand Gen above that. Demand Gen is basically PMax without Search and tends to go heavy on YouTube. It’s a more mid funnel play to compete with Meta. Thus why they launched those comparable platform CPA/Conv columns to mirror what FB attribution looks like.
>And what structure choices have you found that consistently don’t turn into chaos?
More consolidation unless you’re in a vertical that doesn’t play well with smart bidding e.g. low conversion volume or super niche. I’ve been doing a bunch of in depth analysis on the overlap of PMax and Search (including AI Max) and for one of my more advanced customers we’re getting close to testing a PMax only strategy (turning off non-branded Search). That’s based on my findings it does a better job finding incremental new customers and queries vs AI Max (or search).
Protecting your conversion integrity is more important than ever. Garbage in, garbage out. For lead gen, only firing on qualified customers or passing back values in mandatory these days.
>Does phrase/exact actually keep any priority anymore, or does PMax just eat whatever it wants?
Exact used to take priority. Mid last year Google changed it so whatever has the best ad rank will show (PMax or search – regardless of match type)
>Do you still run broad match in Search with active Pmax? Or do you keep Search tighter (phrase/exact) so it can “own” the high-intent queries while PMax does discovery?
Test and see but the lines are getting fairly blurry here in my opinion.
Hopefully that answered your questions. I only do lead gen so can’t help on the eCom/shopping/feed side sorry.
Log in to reply.