"Our agency says spend more. We don't want to go higher, and we can't seem to gr
By Elizabeth Greene · October 11, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
"Our agency says spend more. We don't want to go higher, and we can't seem to grow anyway."
That's the version of the problem that shows up in an audit request.
Take it at face value and you'll go looking for a bid problem or a placement problem.
The number wasn't lying exactly.
Most of the spend was sitting on branded keywords, so the efficiency looked low because people who already knew the brand were searching the brand and buying.
The ads were sitting on top of demand that already existed.
Now stack the math on that.
If most of your spend is harvesting people who typed your name, your efficiency number gets better the more you defend.
And your growth number doesn't move, because none of that traffic is new.
Spending more inside that structure just buys the same customers again at a slightly higher cost.
So I start with which product.
Accounts almost never break all at once, so it's usually one or two SKUs and a couple of campaigns isolating the problem.
Then what changed, and when.
I pick the date and compare the window before to the window after. Same bids? Same budget?
Then I work out whether spend went up and sales didn't follow, or sales dropped and spend stayed flat.
The fixes for those go in opposite directions.
If it's spend, I look at whether the auction got more expensive or you just started buying a lot more traffic that doesn't convert.
Then classify the search terms.
Branded, non-branded.
Do that before you set a target.
Most audits I see skip straight to the lever.
Segment more, push top of search.
It feels productive.
But if branded traffic is inflating every number the analysis is built on, you're optimizing a measurement.
What's your branded spend sitting at right now, as a share of the total?