Broad match Google Ads campaigns can waste spend when ads match irrelevant searches instead of buyer-intent queries.
- Audit broad-match campaigns, review search terms, add negatives, and tighten match types before scaling paid search spend.
Source record
@joshuamaraney
2026-02-16Broad match Google Ads campaigns can waste spend when ads match irrelevant searches instead of buyer-intent queries.
Source Text
iLast week in South Africa, a story went quite viral on TikTok. The video is made by a lady who owns a company called flowers on Kensington. In the video, she shares a story about how one of her clients searched the word flowers on Kensington into Google.
She clicked on a ad thinking it was flowers on Kensington, but as you can see from the screenshot, it was actually an ad by. Net Florist. Apparently, this lady's client bought flowers on.
Net Florist thinking it was flowers on Kensington. And obviously the business owner is quite upset. One or two other people started commenting on this video with videos of their own.
All three of these videos, they threw wild accusations at Net Florist, saying that Netflorist are openly bidding on companies names. They knew what they were doing. And I think a lot of these accusations are unfair.
Now, just to let you know, I don't work for. Net florist. I never have, but I think I know what happened over here.
In Google Ads, there's something called dynamic keyword insertion. Basically, what Google will sometimes do is that they will put the keyword that a person is typing into Google in a person's headline. Now another thing, what sometimes happens is that if you're bidding on something called broad match or P max, what happens is that you don't even have full control of the words that you're bidding on.
I personally don't like this approach, but some Companies use it. Now, I think what happened in this specific case is that Netflorist have huge marketing budgets on Google Ads and they're probably running P Max or Broad Match or something along the lines like that. What happened was is that a person typed in this company name into Google and then what happened is that Google inserted this company name in the headline.
Again, it's calle
at a person typed in this company name into Google and then what happened is that Google inserted this company name in the headline. Again, it's called dynamic keyword insertion. I'm almost 100% sure Net Florist didn't do this on purpose.
I doubt they would. I know the guys from. Net Florist.
They're good guys. Also a small florist like this, I doubt that Net Florist would actually be bidding on their name. It really serves no purpose.
That's my 2 cents worth. Let me know your thoughts.
Source Intelligence
iQuestions this source answers
iWhat is this source mainly about?
Broad match Google Ads campaigns can waste spend when ads match irrelevant searches instead of buyer-intent queries.
What should an operator take from it?
Audit broad-match campaigns, review search terms, add negatives, and tighten match types before scaling paid search spend.
Which topics does it connect to?
This source is connected to Broad match Google Ads risk.
What public evidence supports the record?
Now another thing, what sometimes happens is that if you're bidding on something called broad match or P max, what happens is that you don't even have full control of the words that you're bidding on.