Google Ads campaign structure: how many do you need?

With a daily budget of 10 to 30 euros, usually exactly one. A Search campaign with two to three ad groups per service and five to ten keywords per ad group. You manage location targeting at campaign level, not with a separate campaign per city. Eight campaigns on a small budget spread the same euros across eight learning processes, none of which ever get going.

No. A bid adjustment per location within one campaign achieves the same goal without fragmenting your budget. One city per campaign is the most common structural mistake among tradespeople: it feels tidy, but it means every campaign gets too little data to learn anything from.

For brand keywords, because anyone who types in your company name has a different buying intent, lower click costs and a higher conversion rate, and you want to be able to measure that separately. Also when a service has a clearly different customer value or its own budget that you do not want the rest to eat into. It is the exception, not the rule.

From that date, Google adjusts bidding behaviour for campaigns with the status limited by budget that also use a Smart Bidding strategy, such as Target CPA or Target ROAS. Those campaigns start bidding more consistently towards their target. If you see that notice on several campaigns, that is exactly the reason to merge them: more data in one campaign means the system learns faster.

There are situations where a separate campaign is a smart move. They really do exist, but they are the exception, not the rule. Most tradespeople who contact us think they need three or four, when in reality one is enough.

Brand keywords deserve a campaign of their own. When people search for your company name, the buying intent is different from generic searches such as painter Tilburg. The click costs are lower and the conversion rate is higher. You want to be able to measure that separately from the rest, and you do not want generic budget draining into brand campaigns, or the other way round.

Services with a very different margin can also justify a campaign of their own. If you do both small jobs and large projects, and the margin differs sharply, the CPA targets may differ too. In that case it makes sense to keep those services separate so your bidding strategy is right for each service, rather than steering on the average of all your jobs combined.

Seasonal services with a separate budget are the third case. If you clean gutters in summer and want to pause that budget completely in winter, a separate campaign is handy. You simply pause that one campaign without touching the rest. No hassle with temporarily reshuffling budgets.

For 90 per cent of tradespeople, these are exceptions. The basic rule is: start with one campaign, add a second once you have a concrete reason to. Not because it looks tidier on paper.

Most of the waste in Google Ads among tradespeople is not in the keywords or the copy. It is in the structure. These are the five mistakes we come across most often among painters, gardeners and handymen who manage their own adverts.

One city per campaign is the most common mistake. Location targeting within one campaign solves this precisely. The conversion data stays together, Smart Bidding learns from the whole, and your budget does not need to be split across multiple campaigns. Everything together works better than everything apart.

One service per campaign, when ad groups do exactly the same job. You can easily have ten ad groups in one campaign, each with its own copy and keywords. You simply see the difference in performance per service reflected in the group data. No reason for separate campaigns.

Spreading budget over five or more campaigns so that no single campaign gets enough data. If you work with 25 euros a day and six campaigns, every campaign is bidding on the basis of a handful of conversions a month. Smart Bidding then structurally runs at half power and Google does not learn anything useful.

Turning on Smart Bidding strategies without conversion data. If you are not yet measuring phone calls as a conversion, Target CPA has nothing to steer on. The system then guesses based on click behaviour, and that costs money without direction. Start with Manual CPC until you are tracking conversions and the data is there.

Splitting campaigns by match type is the fifth mistake. Some guides say: one campaign for broad match, one for exact match. For a tradesperson with a small budget, that is too early. Make sure you have data first. You can read how match types work in our article on match types for tradespeople .

From 17 August 2026, Google adjusts bidding behaviour for campaigns that have the status Limited by budget and also use a Smart Bidding strategy, such as Target CPA or Target ROAS.

What that means in practice: if your campaign shows the Limited by budget notice more often than not, and you also have a Smart Bidding strategy active, how Google bids in auctions changes. The technical details are complex, but the practical impact is concrete. Campaigns with little budget and little conversion data become even more constrained. They can become harder for you to keep visible at the moments that matter.

Those hit hardest are tradespeople with small, split campaigns. Each budget is already thin, each campaign already has too little data. From August that effect is reinforced by the new bidding logic. Anyone who consolidates their campaigns now will be in a stronger position once the change takes effect.

Alongside this change, Google is also launching a new tool: the Bid Target Adjustment Tool. It is available from 6 July 2026. It lets you adjust bid targets more easily to match your actual budget, without the system behaving erratically. Keep an eye on this tool if you use Target CPA or Target ROAS.

You can read more about recent budget changes in our article on the 2026 budget pacing change .

We take a free look and tell you in plain language what is going well and what could be better, ahead of August 2026.

For most tradespeople with a daily budget of up to 30 euros, a Search campaign is the best foundation. You split services into ad groups, and manage locations through location targeting settings. Separate campaigns only make sense for brand keywords, services with very different margins, or seasonal activities with a separate budget.

Smart Bidding needs a minimum of 30 to 50 conversions a month per campaign. If your budget is spread across several campaigns, no campaign reaches that threshold. The algorithm then learns too slowly and makes the wrong calls. Consolidate your campaigns and make sure conversions are measured through Google Ads.

No. You manage location targeting within one campaign. You can set which cities or regions you want to reach, and you can set a bid adjustment per location if you want to push harder somewhere. Separate campaigns per city spread your budget and data, which makes Smart Bidding less effective.

From 17 August 2026, Google is changing bidding behaviour for campaigns that have the status Limited by budget and also use a Smart Bidding strategy. Campaigns with little data and little budget become even more constrained. Consolidate your campaigns before that date so Smart Bidding has more data and the change has less impact.

Check whether every campaign reaches at least 30 conversions a month. Check whether campaigns show the Limited by budget notice. Check whether you have created a separate campaign for every city. If any of these apply, consolidation is probably the right move. Not sure? We take a free look through a Google Ads check.