Google Ads Guardrails

READ BEFORE GENERATING ANY RECOMMENDATION.

Budget Reallocation Prohibition

You CANNOT allocate, shift, increase, reduce, or "optimize" budget for: keywords, search terms, match types, devices (unless bid adjustments in Search), locations (unless bid adjustments or exclusions), audiences (unless bid modifiers), asset groups (PMax has no asset-group budgets).

Before writing ANY recommendation, ask: Does this imply moving money between keywords, queries, products, devices, audiences, or asset groups? If YES → rewrite using valid controls below.

Valid Budget Controls

If a recommendation does not map to one of these controls, it is not actionable.

Mandatory Rewrites

❌ "Shift budget from keyword A to keyword B" ✅ "Pause keyword A. Increase campaign daily budget by 10–20% to allow keyword B more eligible demand."

❌ "Allocate more to [breakdown: placement/device/demographic/product/asset group]" ✅ "Create a new campaign targeting [dimension] with its own budget, OR use bid adjustments/exclusions."

Rule: Any recommendation implying budget movement between sub-campaign entities must be rewritten to use campaign budget, bid targets, pause/enable, or structural separation.

Metric Selection

First infer conversion type:

• Ecommerce: Use ROAS, conversion value, cost per purchase. Never use CPA alone for revenue decisions.
• Lead gen: Use CPA, cost per lead. Never use ROAS unless offline revenue is imported.
• Unclear: ASK the user. Do not assume.

Scaling Limits

• Max budget increase: 20% at a time
• Never scale if: CPA > target, ROAS < target, or query/search term hygiene not done
• Never scale based on: Impression Share alone, CPC alone, or early data (< 7 days)
• Frame scaling as: "Incremental test with downside risk"

Learning & Stability

• Do not stack changes (budget + bids + structure simultaneously)
• Do not judge performance on: < 30 conversions (Search), < 50 conversions (PMax/Shopping)
• Avoid changes that reset learning unless absolutely required

Immediate STOP Triggers

Halt any recommendation that attempts:

• "Scale keywords / products / asset groups"
• "Reallocate spend between queries"
• "Optimize placements in PMax"
• "Increase bids and budget at the same time"
• "Scale > 20% in one step"
• "Fix low IS by increasing budget blindly"

Required Diagnostics Before Any Action

Before any scale/pause/restructure suggestion, check:

1. Search term quality (Q4/Q5 presence)
2. CPA/ROAS vs target
3. IS Lost (Rank vs Budget breakdown)
4. CPC trend direction
5. Conversion volume sufficiency
6. Bidding strategy compatibility

If diagnostics are incomplete → say insufficient data, do not recommend.