Case Study: The Leaking Google Ads Account

Before the Case: The Missed Signals

Looking back, the leak had been signalling for years. Four signals foretell the same story in any account — and cross-border, each is easier to miss.

No report had ever been requested

In three years, not one written monthly report existed; the knowledge lived in phone calls. Unwritten knowledge cannot be audited. A client who does not demand a report buys, without noticing, the absence of oversight.

No single number was tracked

Nobody knew the cost per enquiry; the feeling of “the phone rings” had replaced the measure. Regular tracking of even that one number would have exposed the leak years earlier — in any language.

The invoice was never questioned

With spending steady month to month, nobody descended into the line items. But a stable total says nothing about a healthy distribution: waste hides comfortably inside a flat invoice — doubly so in a foreign currency the owner mentally rounds.

The “someone’s watching” assumption

Someone external did look at the account occasionally; but scope, hours and responsibility had never been written. Everyone assumed someone else was watching. Unwritten responsibility is nobody’s responsibility.

The Audit Photograph: Four Leaks

The audit showed roughly a third of the budget escaping through four holes. None was exotic; all were neglect.

Leak 1: Intent-free searches

In the search terms report, a serious slice of the budget flowed to Turkish queries meaning “free”, “salary”, “how to”, “job vacancy”. The negative keyword list had barely been fed in three years. It was the most expensive finding — and the easiest to close. It was also the leak the owner could never have seen: the terms were invisible to anyone not reading Turkish.

Leak 2: The display network left open

A setting surviving from setup day kept part of the search campaigns running on the display network too. Impressions on irrelevant sites to irrelevant eyes: click rate at the floor, conversions near zero. Nobody had opened it on purpose; nobody had closed it.

Leak 3: Out-of-area impressions

The business served two cities; the ads showed in seven. Geographies left over from an expansion trial had been forgotten after the trial ended. Every lira spent on a city the service could not reach was, by definition, waste.

Leak 4: A single, tired ad text

The same ad copy had not changed in over a year. The click rate had slowly eroded, and with it the click price had climbed. A testing culture had never existed: there was no second ad racing, so no winner could ever be chosen.

The Repair Plan: Order and Reasoning

The findings went on the table; the plan spread across four weeks. The order was not random: stop the bleeding first, improve second.

Tracking was repaired first

The account’s conversion counting double-counted some enquiries and missed others entirely. Until the measurement was honest, every improvement would happen in the dark. Week one therefore went to the tracking more than the panel.

The bleeding stopped in one week

Negative list, display network, geography: three moves ended most of the defined waste within the first week. None of these moves requires genius; they require maintenance. The difference was three years without it.

The structure was simplified

The scattered fourteen-campaign build was reduced to a readable six. The goal was not aesthetics: seeing where the budget flows and piling it onto the winners. The logic followed the account structure guide — and gave the foreign owner, for the first time, a panel they could navigate themselves.

A testing culture was built

Every ad group received a second, racing Turkish text; a monthly winner-stays routine went on the calendar. The first month’s winners beat the old copy by a clear margin. The tired text had been costing more than anyone assumed.

Three Months Later: What the Numbers Said

At the end of month three, the same photograph was taken again. The budget was not raised; the comparison ran on identical spend.

The waste share fell to a five percent band

Irrelevant spend in the search terms report retreated from a third to around five percent. Not zero — zero is not the target. A small discovery share was left deliberately, so new Turkish keywords could still be found.

Cost per enquiry fell about forty percent

Freed from the waste, the same budget flowed to the winning keywords; enquiries multiplied to 1.7 times on identical spend. The client’s three-year question was answered with a number for the first time: whether it is worth the money is now visible — in a one-page English report.

The report shrank to three lines

A monthly reporting routine was built: spend, enquiries, cost per enquiry; beneath it, the month’s actions and next month’s plan, in English. The client’s comment was worth recording: “For the first time, I read the report and understand it.”

The gain was tied to a routine

The real success is not the third-month number; it is the routine: weekly term scans, monthly tests, quarterly reviews. Every unmaintained account drifts back to the same holes; the routine is what blocks the drift. Its shape sits in the management guide.

Lessons to Take from This Case

The case is specific; the pattern is general. Carry these four lessons to your own Turkish account.

Looking alive is not being alive

This account “worked” for three years: the phone rang, the invoice was paid. The leak never showed because nobody looked. Trust the report, not the appearance — and if no report exists, that is the first problem. Distance and language make the appearance even more convincing.

The leaks are ordinary — which is why they are everywhere

None of the four findings is rare: an unfed negative list, an open network, forgotten geography, tired copy. The ordinariness is good news: both the diagnosis and the repair are known work.

Photograph first, repair second

Repair without an audit is surgery in the dark. The two-week photograph put the four-week repair in the right order. The order was critical: any move made before the tracking was honest would have been a move with unmeasurable effect.

Ask your own account the same question

If “we don’t know if it’s worth the money” sounds familiar, the answer lives in an audit, not a guess. Have your own photograph taken; let a number make the repair decision. Our audit and management structure sits openly on the Google Ads page.

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