Every marketer wants to make the most of their Google ad spend. Naturally, we all want to increase conversions and also keep our advert spending low. This paradox of growing your client base whilst spending less on ads can sound impractical, impossible even.
Yet ROAS (return on ad spend) is the measure numero® uses to track the ROI for our clients’ ad spend. This performance indicator hits the middle ground – the balance between conversions and budget spend.
It is possible to balance these two.
Low ROAS is rarely about the advertising platform itself, it’s how you’re using it. In 2025 the ad landscape is significantly altered compared to a few years ago.
When we first wrote this article in 2020 the five tips were: Use negative keywords, turn off automatic audience targeting expansion, understand the importance of quality score, target audience by income level, and use Google ads extensions. Read the detail at the bottom of this article.
These are still relevant, but in 2025 others take priority.
The new top ROI 5 tips for 2025
- Hyper-target your audience (don’t waste money on the wrong people). Use custom audiences by uploading your customer’s email lists to create lookalike audiences. Exclude past customers from prospecting campaigns, use detailed interest targeting.
- Implement conversion rate optimisation (CRO) on your landing pages so more visitors take a desired action. A small increase in CRO has a massive impact on ROI. Check messages match in the ad and the landing page, simplify the page design and use only one call to action, include testimonials and trust badges.
- Nurture warm leads with retargeting ads. It’s cheaper to convert a warm lead by gently reminding prospects about your brand – pushing them down the sales funnel closer to a sale than bombarding them with the same message all the time. Segment your audience so abandoned cart customers see exactly what they left at the checkout, while website visitors see a general ad, and video viewers get a specific offer.
- Use smart bidding with in-built AI. Ensure you’re using the right strategy like Target ROAS on Google or Cost Cap in Meta ads. You need a volume of 15-30 conversions per month for the algorithm to learn. Trust the process and allow a couple of weeks for the AI learning phase.
- Audit regularly and eliminate waste from campaigns that don’t convert. Check your search term reports, plus low-performing ads and keywords, analyse placement reports on display network adverts and check none of your collateral is disapproved or throwing errors.
PPC tactics losing relevance in 2025
The advertising market is a fast-moving business and numero® knows that changes can happen fast. At the time of writing (October 2025) these things are losing relevance in advertising:
Relying on third-party cookies is the single biggest shift because of the deprecation of third-party cookies in Chrome and their already limited utility on Safari and Firefox browsers. This means you cannot build detailed audience profiles based on user browsing history across the web.
What to do instead:
- Build first-party data which you can trust (because you built it yourself). Encourage email signups, loyalty programmes and gated content so you know your customers individually and addressably.
- Improve contextual targeting – use the display network and video placements to run ads on web pages whose context aligns with your advert. If you sell golf clothes, advertise on a golf website.
- Privacy-first platforms like Pinterest and Amazon ads (where user intent is clear – they’re searching for products like yours) can be better targeted.
- Use predictive audiences built with AI such as Meta’s lookalike audiences within its platforms of Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger and Threads helps alignment with interests and other demographic indicators.
Smart bidding is no longer a set-and-forget tactic – it takes proactive management. You must be clear about your ad objectives and ensure the data you upload is of the highest quality. Remember garbage in… garbage out. Do not assume ‘black box’ bidding works all the time.
What to do instead:
- Get better at setting appropriate goals for your advertising. You need the right conversion events and the right target ROAS or CPA for both your budget and the algorithm.
- Data integrity is essential – check your conversion tracking is accurate (don’t optimise for the wrong events) and keep yourself (the human) as the data quality guardian.
Evolving PPC methods in 2025
Hyper-targeting is evolving to become more signal-based so that you respond proactively rather than spray and pray.
- This shows up mostly in your built and owned audiences. Keep high quality content for the community and deliver value to your readers. Be proactive at pruning customers who are no longer engaged and always check they’ve consented / opted in to your privacy policy.
Retargeting is becoming more privacy compliant. Focus on nurturing as the prospect is reminded of your offers rather than shouting “special offer” all the time. Try to nudge the prospect down the sales funnel with “daisy-chained” content that shows them the next step in decision making.
- Use nurture sequences that provide value such as turning on “my sizes” for clothing adverts so the customer can see your stock availability. For B2B, answer the questions the prospect has at each stage of the decision making process, anticipate their needs.
CRO and landing page optimisations are becoming ever-more important. This is a powerful lever for improving ROAS because of the outsize impact small increases in conversion percentages can have. And lastly, continuing to audit your ad creative to ensure the audience isn’t bored / fatigued or ignoring your messages brings the focus back to human design ingenuity. Hire top creative talent to keep your ads fresh.
Forget what you knew about PPC
The rules have changed, are changing and will continue to change. Winning the ROAS game in 2025 is about building an evolving system that converts the audience you can reach.
These are the top 5 tips we recommended in 2020. They are still relevant and form the bedrock of a well-designed PPC strategy.
Negative keywords
Negative keywords are search phrases you could add to your ad campaign to filter out irrelevant traffic. When you create a list of negative keywords, Google will no longer trigger your ad when users search for these terms, which ensures your ad shows up only for highly relevant, targeted searches.
By doing this you can reduce wasted ad spend on irrelevant clicks and traffic that won’t ever convert. Negative keywords are also a great way to boost the CTR (click-through rate) of your ads, which will improve your ROI.
Be sure to update your negative keyword list proactively by keeping track of keywords that bring irrelevant traffic. Some negative keywords you can begin to include in your list include:
- Jobs (unless your ads are for recruitment)
- Free
- Closeout
- Tips/Tricks/Hacks (unless you are advertising a video or a blog post)
- Wholesalers
Turn Off Automatic Audience Targeting Expansion
It’s important to pay attention to some automatic features Google enables when setting up an Ads display campaign.
When you set up a Google display campaign targeting a predefined audience, Google offers you the option (chosen by default) to automatically expand the reach beyond the list provided to them.
Although this strategy can prove successful, this default feature won’t offer any value unless you are using a huge audience list.
If you are setting up new campaigns or working from smaller lists and allow Google to expand its reach by default you will likely spend 2x or 3x more without boosting your revenue.
Understand the Importance of Quality Score
The ROI of your PPC campaign can depend, to a great deal, on your quality score.
Why?
If you offer a low-quality experience, Google doesn’t want to display your ads. By raising your cost per click, they are essentially asking you to do either pause your ads (as they don’t make any financial sense) or improve your user experience.
Here are the aspects that Google looks at to determine your quality score:
- Click-through rate – If your ads show up for the keywords you bid for, and only a few people click, it looks like your ads are irrelevant.
- The relevance of a keyword to its ad group
- The performance of your landing page – Google relies on analytics to assess how users respond to your landing page. If they find your landing pages don’t convert most of the traffic from their ads, you are likely to receive a poor score.
- The relevance of your ad text to users’ searches – If people are not clicking on your ads, Google has a reason to believe that your ads are not relevant. Or perhaps they click and bounce off of your page because there’s a mismatch between what you offered and what they saw on the page.
Google will consider these aspects to rate your ads on a scale of 1 to 10 where 10 is best and 1 is a catastrophe.
Even after you’ve updated your user experience, your quality score won’t improve overnight. Google is judging by your past poor performance. For an updated score, they must be sure you have really improved the user experience.
If you find your campaign is performing poorly, it’s best to resolve this situation the soonest.
So how does quality score relate to ROI for your Google Ads?
If your quality score is 7 or greater, you will get a discount compared to others. This discount can reduce your cost by as much as 50%. Your ads would get better placement.
On the other hand, if your score is 6, the cost will rise slightly. If the score is 2 or 1, getting a good ROI on your Google Ads is next to impossible. You may end up paying as high as 400% more compared to those who have a decent quality score.
Target Audience by Income Level
When setting up your PPC ads, the first question you should be asking yourself is – who can afford my products/services?
When you know who to target, half your battle is won already.
So how does income filtering helps improve your Google Ads ROI?
When you take the time to identify who is buying, the effects will trickle down not only to your ROI. When your sales team spends less time providing quotations (be it in person or over the phone), it reduces your overheads as well as the strain on your human resources.
Likewise, when your sales team spends most of their time on quality leads (instead of chasing bad leads), they will be able to make the most of their time and you can divert your sales budget to better, more experienced salespersons, which will again translate to better lead-closure rate.
Use Google Ads Extensions
You can supercharge your ROI by using Google Ads extensions to your advantage. With extensions, your ads will show with added features that make them more ap0ealing to your audience. Some of the best extensions include:
- Location – This extension shows your address to your audience.
- Calls – Add a call button so viewers can click on it to reach you instantly.
- Reviews – Displays customer reviews to establish social proof.
- Callouts – Show pop-up notifications for promotional offers.
- Site links – Add a link to your landing page.
Conclusion
Google Ads is an excellent tool that every business should leverage to boost sales and revenue. However, sometimes, making the most of your Google Ads campaign might not be straightforward. These five techniques can help you see a better ROI on your Google Ads campaign.
Schedule a free consultation with our PPC specialists to see how we can reduce wasted ad spend and improve your ROI in no time.
