What are the differences between a beginner, intermediate and a expert at Google ads? I’m trying to gauge my level.

[PantheistPerhaps]

What do you think? Your answer will tell you everything you need to know.

[ppcwithyrv]

Based on the logic in this question, I would say you’re at the beginner stage.

[ppcbetter_says]

It’s all subjective.

Beginners make lots of mistakes and are likely to torch thousands of dollars or more with a single mistake. They often make obvious errors when doing campaign setup or optimizations. Often has no idea what to optimize for or how to do it.

Intermediate to me would mean understands at least either or of lead gen/ecom strategy and can build a basic strategy from scratch with supervisor feedback. Intermediates create average or better campaigns with minimal supervision pretty much all the time. Still occasionally torches budget, but more like 5% of the time vs half the time or better for beginners.

Expert creates profitable campaigns most of the time and can vet clients/ideas to mostly exclude even trying to run campaigns that are 80/20 likely to be a loser. Expert can build strategy from scratch, give direction about CRO (conversion rate optimization) for landers, reliably set up more clever than average campaigns quickly, create and execute a testing plan, and manage at least pixel based conversion tracking (should probably be able to set up and QA server side/CAPI in 2026 honestly).

[haltingpoint]

**Beginner:** “Look at all these impressions and clicks!”

**Intermediate:** “This data driven attribution thing is nifty”

**Expert:** “Incrementality experiments with proper holdouts or GTFO”

**Jaded Industry Veteran:** “Your data is shit, my data is shit. How do I make promises about the value AI will bring so I can distract from the Q4 holiday Trump Slump killing our performance?”