The right structure is the key to success in Google Ads. This applies to the entire account as well as to individual campaigns. The challenge here is that the Google Ads landscape is changing very quickly.

So in this post, I’ll explain to you in quick and easy terms how to structure your campaigns in 2023 and how many ad groups you should use.

That was the general short answer. In this post, I’ll show you how to find the right subdivision for your campaign and what to look out for. Here’s an overview:

Why is a good campaign structure important?

First, let’s take a look at why it’s really worth your while to think about the right campaign structure. Generally speaking, there are 2 important reasons for this:

1. Simplifying campaign optimization: Creating a campaign is easy. The real challenge is to optimize the performance of a campaign. Google Ads gives you a lot of data to analyze.
   
   A good campaign structure makes it easy for you to discover the potential for improvement. For example, when to pause poorly performing ad groups or keywords.
   
2. Cheaper clicks through higher ad relevance: Google attaches great importance to the fact that the ads they show to users are really relevant to their search query. In fact, their whole business is based on this. For this reason, Google rewards high ad relevance:
   
   If your ad and the landing page match the search query, the ad rank increases. This increases the probability that Google will prefer your ad and display it for a lower CPC (cost per click).

Hence, a good campaign structure not only makes your life easier but also ensures more favorable clicks and ultimately cheaper conversions.

But what is a good campaign structure in Google Ads? To clarify this, here is a brief overview of the basics of the elements in Google Ads:

What is a campaign?

A Google Ads campaign consists of one or more ad groups. On the campaign level, you set the most important high-level settings:

• Budget

• Geographical targeting

• Campaign type (Search, Display, Shopping etc.)

In the Google Ads structure, the campaign is the parent category, which is further subdivided using the ad groups.

Campaign example

For the company Fashion 123, which runs an online store for clothing, it is recommended to create a campaign for each super category: Shoes, Pants, Shirts, etc.

What is an ad group?

Ad groups serve as a further subdivision of a campaign. They contain keywords, ads and other targeting options.

That is, an Ad Group consists of the defined keywords and up to 3 active search ads (applies to Responsive Search Ads).

It doesn’t always have to be 3 ads. In another post, I already explained how many Ads per Ad group you should use.

Example of ad groups

To further subdivide the campaign for shoes, the Fashion 123 company uses ad groups that categorize the shoes sold.

For example, there is one ad group each for running shoes, sneakers, high heels, etc.

How do you properly structure a campaign?

In the example above I have already shown one way how you can structure your campaigns in ad groups. The goal is always to divide the advertised product group or service into meaningful clusters.

This way, you can ensure that you can always show highly relevant ads to your target audience. That increases the chance of a click or a conversion.

This is how you can proceed

Since the ultimate goal is to create a suitable ad for each relevant search query, the subdivision into ad groups is based on the grouping of possible search queries.

To do this, you can proceed as follows:

1. Create a list of all relevant search queries for your campaign topic. A very helpful tool for this is the Google Keyword Planner.
2. Arrange the search queries into thematically matching clusters, such as “shoes online store”, “buy shoes”, and “running shoes”.
3. Create an ad group for each cluster with matching ads that address the exact topic in the texts.

Keywords are interpreted more broadly

Google’s algorithms are now extremely good at understanding the semantic meaning of a search query. Therefore, it is no longer necessary to store different keyword variations in your ad groups.

This can be seen in this overview from Google:

Here you can see that even keywords in Exact Match now trigger ads for semantically relevant search queries, even if they don’t contain the same word(s).

Phrase Match and Broad Match are also being even more broadly interpreted.

As a result, you don’t have to cluster your ad groups as precisely. As long as there is the same intention behind different search queries, they will be treated the same.

How many ad groups per campaign are optimal?

The number of ad groups in a campaign corresponds to the number of different keyword clusters that can be formed from the campaign theme. Depending on how large this topic is, the optimal number of ad groups varies.

Since Google often interprets search queries very broadly, 3 to a maximum of 10 ad groups are usually sufficient.

With more ad groups, the probability is high that the topics overlap and you can reduce the number. Here it is worth having a look at the search term report.

Google is getting “smarter” – campaigns are getting leaner

Through a better understanding of search intent and more and more automation, Google takes some of the work off your hands. You no longer have to worry about the different spellings and synonyms of your target keywords. Google does that for you.

The right structure remains the key to success. In most cases, the ideal number of ad groups is between 3 and 10.

I hope I could help you with this post. I wish you success in structuring your campaigns!

Work smart, not hard – Clicks in Mind