We have been buying search ads since the first AdWords auctions. The discipline has not changed: every dollar enters as a bet with pre-registered success criteria, a kill line, and the minimum budget it needs to prove itself. Spend defends itself at every checkpoint, or it stops.
Broad match creeps wider. Auto-applied recommendations quietly reshape your account toward the platform’s revenue, not yours. The dashboard reports conversions the CRM never meets. None of this is a scandal; it is the default. The fix is an owner on your side of the table who prices every campaign against pipeline and turns things off.
Defaults change underneath you: match types widen, placements expand, and last quarter’s tight account becomes this quarter’s spray. Somebody has to notice, weekly.
Platform-reported conversions and CRM-verified pipeline are different numbers. We optimize to the second one and treat the first as weather.
B2B deals are decided by six to ten people. Campaigns tuned to one converting persona win one vote. Paid has to cover the room.
Entry criteria, a kill line, and the budget it must earn to keep running. Written before launch.
Intent capture, run by people who have watched every auction dynamic since the beginning.
Committee coverage on the channels where B2B attention actually lives.
The message does the heavy lifting; the media just delivers it.
Priced against pipeline, with holdout thinking instead of platform faith.
Real engagements, real movement against established competitors.
Bring last quarter’s spend. We will tell you what we would have stopped, and what we would double.