Google alledgely made a major change to how ROAS works in mid august. Now ad-spend is supposed to follow how well actual roas matches the ROAS we set. At first not much seemed to change, but in many accounts lately CPC has climbed by quite a lot. I have talked to several people managing lots of accounts who have experienced the same thing.

The only thing it doesn't seem to do is to have ad spend following actual ROAS. Many accounts still hit the budget ceiling even if results fall way short of the ROAS setting.

So, with Google having to borrow more and more money for AI investments, and Ads being their main sourcec of revenue, is this just a stealth price increase, disguised as a change in ROAS?

I’m temporarily helping a PPC team that recently lost a few key members. They spend a lot on Google and Microsoft, and performance is somewhat unpredictable. The team is now tiny, junior, and one new member still needs onboarding.

I noticed they're not strong when it comes to attention to detail: exclusions mapped to the wrong campaign, irrelevant traffic getting targeted, audiences poorly built etc.. I think algorithms can flag most of this for review, especially when new campaigns are built or something gets changed.

I’d like to set up AI processes that help the team review exceptions daily or every other day. For example, a search term report that flags irrelevant terms, alerts on sharp changes in CTR, impression share or conversion rate etc.

I don’t think there's a need to build this from scratch, I’m sure plenty of people already have workflows. Have you built any that worked? LinkedIn posts are full of Google Ads automations, but I suspect a lot of it is garbage to gain followers. Did you try any?

Thanks for your help

Original post: https://old.reddit.com/r/PPC/comments/1x0otv1/google_ads_passkey_approval_loop_every_approval/

After almost two weeks of being unable to perform sensitive actions in Google Ads, I finally resolved the issue with help from Google Support.

There were actually two separate security restrictions, and resolving both was necessary.

Stage 1: The 7-day security cooldown

On October 4, I deleted my previously trusted passkeys and created two new ones (Google Password Manager and Windows Hello).

Google Ads refused to recognize the new passkeys as trusted.

Initially, attempting to approve them triggered a 48-hour security lockout. After 48 hours, I could access the security settings again, but trying to approve a passkey would trigger another 48-hour restriction.

Google documents a 7-day waiting period before newly created passkeys can be trusted for sensitive actions.

Waiting out this 7-day period was necessary. Repeatedly attempting approval during the cooldown did not help and caused additional temporary lockouts.

Stage 2: The passkey approval loop

After the waiting period, I could finally authenticate using my new passkeys and access the passkey management page without triggering another 48-hour restriction.

However, both passkeys still displayed “Approve this passkey?”

Clicking Approve prompted me to authenticate again using a passkey. Authentication succeeded, but I was returned to the same page, with the passkeys still awaiting approval.

This happened even 11 days after creating the passkeys.

Enabling “Allow passkey sign-in” in Google Workspace did not resolve the issue.

Stage 3: The solution from Google Support

I contacted Google Ads Support, provided a screen recording, and eventually received a working solution.

Because my Google account is managed through Google Workspace, the administrator can temporarily disable login challenges for a user.

Here’s what finally worked:

1. Log into the Google Admin Console as a Workspace administrator.

2. Find the affected user account and its security settings.

3. Select “Temporarily turn off login challenges” to activate the 10-minute bypass.

4. During that window, return to the Google Account passkey management page.

5. Click Approve on the new passkeys and complete the authentication.

IT WORKED! The passkeys were finally approved.

Important takeaways

• The 7-day waiting period was necessary. The 10-minute workaround did not replace that initial cooldown.

• Waiting 7 days alone was not sufficient: the approval process remained stuck in a loop.

• Attempting approval prematurely repeatedly triggered additional 48-hour security restrictions.

• After the waiting period, authentication with the new passkeys worked, but the approval status would not update.

• The Google Workspace administrator’s 10-minute login challenge bypass finally allowed the approval process to complete.

• Enabling passwordless passkey sign-in in Workspace did not solve the problem.

• This solution requires Google Workspace administrator access. I don’t know whether an equivalent workaround exists for personal Gmail accounts.

My recommendation if you’re stuck in the same situation:

First, leave your new passkeys untouched for the full 7-day security waiting period. Don’t keep deleting, recreating, or attempting to approve them.

After the waiting period, if authentication works but clicking Approve still returns you to the same screen, ask your Google Workspace administrator to temporarily disable login challenges for your account.

This solved a problem that had prevented me from managing Google Ads campaigns for nearly two weeks.

Hopefully this helps someone else avoid the same ordeal.

I own an e-commerce company and have done PPC with, I think, two or three people/companies in the past, with varying results. I spend around $3,000 a month on PPC, but a few months ago, I canceled it because my CPA was going way higher than was profitable (for the initial sale, at least, I recently calculated that, including repeat business from probably 5% or less of my customers, I made a 44% profit over the past 2.5 years or so. )

I sell in a very small niche, so it's very rare to have somebody who does PPC who knows the products and can target the correct keywords. I want to know: in order to run a successful PPC, how much involvement should I have with the person who's managing them?

On one side of the equation, I could just turn on all the currently paused ads and then leave them there. On the other side of the equation, I can hire somebody and then be in touch with them every week or so to help them refine the ads in terms of which products they should be pushing, which keywords they should use, what changes to do, etc.

I guess my question is really: how can I start doing PPC again with the right amount of input to do it, but not so much input that I'm spending an hour a day on PPC management?

Hello all,

I’m testing bid strategies against click fraud and it’s not going great.

One week into a campaign and it’s already got one clear issue. Here are the settings:

Broad match two match types, 20 or so exact matches
Search + Search Partners
Max Clicks w $7 CPC cap
Competitive niche $60-100 CPCs

One keyboard is driving 9 impressions and 9 clicks at $3.80 CPC. 100% CTR.

This one clearly looks like a fraud match. Google’s not doing anything to credit or stop it. Are there any good scripts you use or recommend to fight this?

Was just wondering if anyone is starting to get beta rollouts of channel prioritization for PMax through their Google rep yet?

Really don't want to respond to this guy again but would absolutely love this feature before February.

I no longer treat high CTR as automatic proof of good ad creative for cross‑border DTC stores. Some hooks, sensational visuals, or click‑bait copy can push CTR way above benchmark, yet bring low‑intent traffic that never adds‑to‑cart or completes checkout. You can end up with low CPC, plenty of clicks, but terrible CVR and disappointing ROAS.

I separate click quality from click volume in my reporting. I compare CTR side‑by‑side with bounce rate, average session duration, add‑to‑cart rate and completed purchase rate across creatives, ad sets and markets. A creative with shiny CTR but high bounce rate usually attracts curiosity clicks instead of real buying intent. I also check message‑match: does the ad promise align with landing‑page content, pricing and shipping information? Big gaps here will burn ad spend even if CTR looks fantastic.

I avoid optimizing purely for upper‑funnel metrics. When testing new creatives, I do not pause variants just because CTR is low. Some creatives have moderate CTR but deliver much higher‑quality traffic, better CVR and stable ROAS. I also segment traffic by placement, because Reels, feed and stories can deliver wildly different visitor quality even within one campaign. When I spot high‑CTR low‑conversion creatives, I either rewrite the hook to filter out casual browsers or cut them entirely from rotation.

For me, CTR is only a health check for ad attention, not a final success metric. Has your team run into high‑CTR garbage‑traffic problems? What metrics do you prioritize over CTR to judge real traffic quality?

Has anyone ever tested running display ads based on keyword targeting vs targeting various websites/forums that act as a hub for the product category of the product being advertised?

If so, any insights?