Any digital ad campaign aims to increase traffic and drive conversions. However, effective campaign management can’t be a “set it and forget it” exercise. To be effective, marketing managers must actively manage an ad campaign to maximize ad performance and ROI.

There are any number of errors you can make when managing an ad campaign. We have identified the five most common ad campaign mistakes, with some advice on how to avoid them.

1. Failing to monitor daily ad performance.

Ad performance will change over time. Monitoring your ads daily gives you a baseline for ad performance to determine how your ads are doing and where you may be wasting your ad budget. According to a survey by WordStream, 49% of advertisers check their ad campaigns less than once a week, while only 10% check them daily.

Ad performance should be monitored daily and making minor tweaks to your end goal on a daily basis can make a big impact on future goals. Adjust your daily budget and target CPA/ROAS daily and check and adjust target audience and keywords at least once a week. You can track performance using tools such as Google Ads and Meta Ads Manager or use a multi-platform automation tool to monitor performance and make adjustments for you.

2. Setting target CPA/ROAS and forgetting about them

Another common mistake is setting a target CPA or ROAS and never revisiting those targets. Just as you must regularly adjust your ad campaigns, you should change your campaign targets.

While setting a target CPA/ROAS can help you achieve your ad goals, failing to adjust your targets regularly can prevent you from maximizing your ad performance. For example, if you set your target CPA at $1000 with a monthly budget of $10,000. If you monitor it regularly, you might find that you could spend the same monthly budget with a lower target CPA like $800.

Revisit your CPA and ROAS targets regularly. If your lost impression share isn’t too low, adjust your targets to get more conversions with the same budget. You can always use a third-party tool to monitor CPA and automatically adjust as needed.

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3. Ignoring negative keywords

You can bet more bang for your ad buck by adding negative keywords to your ad campaigns and suspending the audiences/publishers that are not performing. Failing to add negative keywords and to suspend audiences can waste ad spend and result in poor ad performance.

A common error many marketers make is assuming that Google or Meta smart bidding will do the work for you. You still need to check regularly to identify underperforming keywords and audiences. Add underperforming keywords to your negative keyword list to minimize irrelevant searches. Tools are available to help you identify these underperformers and remove them from the campaign.

4. Limiting ads to Google and Meta

Google and Facebook remain the most popular ad platforms, but they aren’t the only game in town.

When you look at market share for search, Google is the clear leader with 93.37% market share, followed by Bing with 2.81%. Most advertisers focus on Google since it has the most traffic. That also means Google has the most competition for keywords. Many advertisers may choose not to use Microsoft Advertising since it’s just one more platform to manage. However, some keywords may deliver better results on Bing, so spreading the ad budget across Microsoft Advertising and Google might improve the overall return on pay-per-click.

For most advertisers, the real issue is the time and resources required to manage multiple ad platforms. Using advertising automation tools makes it easier to manage different ad platforms without adding to your workload

5. Basing budget allocation solely on ad platform performance

You are missing the big picture if you are allocating your ad spending based solely on ad platforms. Ad platform performance data does provide valuable insight, but there are other factors to consider. It takes multiple ad views across different platforms to get buyers’ attention and get a conversion. Since consumers see multiple ad placements across different platforms, such as Google Search ads and display ads on Meta, each ad platform wants to claim credit for every conversion.

Try using different measurement tools to determine the best way to allocate your ad budget. Multi-Touch Attribution (MTA) measures the effectiveness of various touchpoints in the customer journey to show which ones have the most significant impact. Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) lets you simulate advertising impact and optimize tactics. Incrementality Testing measures the true incremental contribution of each campaign media channel to conversions and revenue.

These are just five of the most common mistakes marketing managers make when managing ad campaigns. Monitoring ad performance regularly is the best way to avoid these and other blunders. Keep an eye on critical metrics, like keyword performance, and look beyond the obvious to uncover other platforms and tools that can improve ad campaign results. It’s easy to get mired in the minutiae when managing an ad campaign, so it pays to work smarter rather than harder by using third-party ad management tools.

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