Early this year, I asked my team to recommend what we should stop, start, and continue doing in 2025 to improve our collaboration.
As a leader, it was a valuable exercise that highlighted to me what we can do to improve different aspects of our working life.
This exercise also got me thinking about how to apply the same framework to Google Ads – and use it to define what we should stop, stop, and continue doing to optimize our clients’ Google Ads programs this year.
Rethinking optimization: Why Google Ads strategies must evolve
Techniques once seen as “best practices” no longer work.
As Google Ads has evolved, so has the complexity of optimization.
That’s why I can’t name a single best strategy. PPC success will vary depending on many factors.
That said, the most important “strategy,” if we can call it that, is a mindset shift.
It’s not about narrowly following any particular sure-fire approach.
It’s about thinking, testing, and analyzing every method you try.
Remember this as you read through my start, stop, and continue recommendations below.
There are no strictly good or bad strategies.
And a “bad” strategy right now might become a good strategy in the future.
With that important caveat, let me walk you through my start, stop, and continue recommendations for different Google Ads optimization strategies in 2025.
Keyword strategies
Stop
Stop trying to squeeze more from your search campaigns by actively bidding on every variation of keywords that has converted.
Bidding on keyword variations is a traditional optimization strategy I’ve always trained my team on.
We prided ourselves on the ability to spot emerging trends related to our keywords and bid on them.
But it isn’t what it used to be – and it can cause more harm than good, especially if no follow-up analysis is done.
We stepped away from this strategy quite some time ago. But every once in a while, we get pulled back in.
This happened recently with a client account. We identified a handful of trending keyword phrases that stood out and added them to the account.
The results?
An increase of $5 more per lead (with fewer total leads) and a decrease in conversion rate from 1.28% to 1.10%.
We reverted this change.
Start
Start narrowing and streamlining your keyword lists.
Try using broad match of your top converting keywords instead of adding endless variations.
Continue
Continue to question and test – there’s no single right or wrong strategy.
Mastering keyword strategy is a learning curve. There’s no universal approach, and it varies across accounts.
Dig deeper: PPC keyword research: What you need to know
Performance Max strategies
Stop
Stop giving up on Performance Max at the first sign of spam leads.
B2Bs often see an initial spike in spam when launching PMax, and we’ve abandoned our share of campaigns over the years.
But not every PMax campaign will be a home run – some will work, and others won’t.
For example, we can see the performance of different PMax asset groups for this B2B client:
Because this client can pull their Salesforce data into their Google Ads account, we can see the actual value of the business closed.