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I tried mapping the entire paid media system for Google Ads, would love any feedback!
Posted by on March 24, 2026 at 9:59 pmI'm new to PPC and created a map of the components involved in running a paid media campaign. It's framed from the perspective of Google Ads but most of it is relevant to any ad platform.
It seems like most discussions of PPC are around hacks or tactics, but I think looking at paid media as a system can provide a clearer view of the levers available to adjust campaigns.
I included:
- First-party data
- Inputs that you control (creatives, keywords, audiences, etc.)
- External factors (competition, seasonal demand)
- How you can improve via Experimentation
- The outputs (clicks, impressions, conversions, AOV)
My goal was to understand the underlying architecture of how paid media actually works.
Would love critiques!
DM if you'd like a link to the interactive version where I show more details on each element
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1 Reply
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This is pretty spot on and I could see it helpful to share with clients
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Nice visual! So many clients forget external factors like competition and seasonal. Events like weather or geo-political, elections, etc can also impact buyer behavior or search volume.
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add offer/message-market fit and landing page conversion quality more prominently, because a lot of Google Ads performance gets blamed on platform settings when the real issue is the offer or page. Finally, I’d probably swap ROAS for revenue/profit as the real end state, since ROAS can hide a lot.
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