Started a new job. The agency they use has over 100 ad groups in some campaigns.

[sharktopuss-]

Honest question, is it working well?

[Dry_Brilliant_175]

Not absurd if it works. Imo if the ad groups are grouped by theme or product it could be ok if all the ad groups are generating sufficient traffic, conversions, and the campaign isn’t limited by budget. Mixed match types is fine also if there’s a regular search term pruning process. Google is pushing everyone towards AI max so eventually match types wont matter as much. I would first check in with who is running paid search and see their logic?

[ppcwithyrv]

Is Andromeda coming to Google?

[Desertgirl624]

There is no one size fits all structure. If they are relevant and grouped by themes it’s probably fine. Multiple match types together is fine. If a lot of them aren’t getting traffic they may not be helping anything but they also aren’t hurting anything either. They likely built them out to aim for more specific adcopy.

[suplex_giver]

That setup’s a red flag. If only a handful of ad groups are actually driving results, the rest are just noise and wasted management time. It’s not about hurting performance, it’s about efficiency and focus. I’d start by validating the conversion tracking, then present a plan to pause the dead weight and consolidate.

[TheManWith2Poobrains]

Are they using any automation software?

This could be generating the excessive number of ad groups, not humans. However, any decent software should be making test ad groups inactive if they are not generating results.

Sounds like you have a decent budget, so that permits lots of testing.

[aamirkhanppc]

See if those adgroup are generating enough impressions .. most probably not then you need to merge in order to get more traffic and reduce number of keywords

[DazPPC]

Having keywords or ad groups with low impressions isn’t inherently a problem. Pausing all the low impressions ad groups likely wouldn’t do anything at all.

You haven’t stumbled on some low hanging fruit or anything. But I suspect there are some bigger issues here. I am more concerned about the low conversion volume campaigns.

[Technical_Worry_687]

It sounds like this will be a nightmare for you to guesstimate what each one does. It’ll probably not be worth your time to try either.

Consider
1. Verifying tracking is working like you want
2. Jump on a call with the agency and ask them about the setup (assuming an optimistic pov, there might be a valid reason for it, like political internal requests from your team in the past – to me the red flag is them not reaching out to you proactively to get you up to speed since you’re the new guy and wanna show your worth)

Either way, trying to guess why they’ve done stuff is taking a lot of energy from other areas where you can prove your worth as you need to in a new job

[QuantumWolf99]

Over 100 ad groups in a single campaign is insane and suggests the agency either has no idea what they’re doing or they’re intentionally creating complexity to justify their management fees… modern Google Ads works best with consolidated structure not fragmented keyword silos from 2015.

Before calling them out publicly run a performance audit to see if despite the messy structure they’re actually delivering results… sometimes legacy accounts that grew organically over years end up bloated but still perform okay. If performance is good you have leverage to demand cleanup, if performance is bad you have justification to fire them entirely.

[AtttdaKing]

In healthcare I can easily imagine, that different medical specialities require high number of uniqe setups. When we were working for a local clinic, we also had dozens of ad groups, as the topics required totally different approach in targeting, keywords and ad creatives as well. If you are working for a big facility/company, with lots of medical fields, than I would say it’s just a moderate suprise to have 100 ad groups.

[VillageHomeF]

can an eye soar for you but I don’t think this is out of the ordinary for a company to do

[Western-Membership48]

What is their bidding strategy for the entire campaign?

[petebowen]

Your instinct not to come in hot and heavy is spot on. This sub is full of posts with people asking for help after they changed something and broke the account.

If this was my problem I’d try to figure out why this structure exists before making any changes. It could be that the person who set it up was a cretin, it could also be that there was some legit reason for it. If there is no current good reason then make the changes.

[potatodrinker]

Not an issue if they all get data. 100 adgroups and 85 having no impressions would be amateur hour. Points to old dogs not keeping up with modern changes, single keyword adgroups and those 2000s habits.

I’m one of those old dogs lol