Stop the waste. Start scaling smarter.
As we head deeper into 2025, one thing is becoming crystal clear: digital ad platforms are getting more expensive, more automated, and less forgiving.
At REALTOP, we’ve audited hundreds of Google Ads service and Meta ad accounts over the past year. What we’ve found? Business owners are unknowingly lighting money on fire — not because their product is bad or their strategy is weak, but because of a handful of silent killers draining their ad budgets from the inside out.
Let’s break down the top 5 culprits that could be quietly stealing your profits — and how to fix them.
Performance Max campaigns were built to simplify ad management. But here’s the truth most people don’t know:
1. PMAX Misuse Disguised as Smart Automation
PMAX doesn’t do remarketing.
Instead, when you upload an audience list (like your past website visitors), PMAX uses it as a signal to find more people like them. It doesn’t serve ads directly to those warm leads — it finds more cold leads who “look similar.” That means your best leads aren’t being followed up with — they’re being ignored. If you want real remarketing, it needs to happen outside of PMAX using Display, YouTube, or Discovery campaigns with tightly controlled targeting.
2. Broad Match Bloat
Google is aggressively pushing advertisers toward broad match keywords — and it’s costing businesses a fortune. Broad match is great if you have perfect negative keyword strategies and conversion data feeding the algorithm. But for most advertisers, it just means lower-quality clicks and rising CPCs. If you’re seeing lots of irrelevant traffic or weird search terms in your reports, broad match bloat is likely the reason. Stick with phrase or exact match unless you’ve got the data to support automation.
3. No Negative Keywords Strategy
This one’s simple: if you’re not scrubbing your search terms every week, Google will keep showing your ads for junk queries. We’ve seen ads for plumbing services show up for “plumbing school,” and lawyers show up for “free legal help.” Without a strong negative keyword strategy, you’re paying for people you can’t help. Add negatives aggressively and often. It’s not optional anymore — it’s survival.
4. Landing Pages with Zero Intent Matching
You write a killer ad promising to solve a pain point… but the page they land on? Generic. Confusing. Off-message. When there’s a disconnect between your ad and your landing page, users bounce — and you still pay for the click. Your landing page should echo the exact language of your ad, reinforce the value instantly, and make the next step effortless. Otherwise, all you’re doing is renting expensive traffic with no return.
(P.S. If you’re working on SEO, your landing page content matters there too — check out our SEO service for help aligning content and intent.)
5. Zero Follow-Up Strategy
The only thing worse than paying for a bad lead… is ignoring a great one. If you’re not calling, texting, or emailing new leads within 5 minutes, your chances of closing them drop off a cliff. Speed is everything. Automate what you can, use lead notifications, and treat every lead like it cost $100 — because it probably did.
Precision Over Performance
These aren’t rookie mistakes. We’ve seen businesses lose tens of thousands of dollars every month because of them. If 2024 was the year of automation, 2025 is the year of optimization. It’s no longer about how much you spend. It’s about how tight your system is. Audit your setup. Patch the leaks. Build a strategy you can scale confidently. Want to see what that looks like in action? Check out a recent case study where we helped a client cut wasted ad spend and double their conversion rate.
Because a $10,000/month ad budget means nothing if half of it is going to waste.
Contact REALTOP today for a consultation and discover how to grow your business online.
Nik Tsoukales, founder of REALTOP, is an experienced digital marketer with a track record of growing businesses and sales teams. He has received multiple awards for leading fast-growing companies and specializes in organic SEO, Google PPC, and Social Media. With over 89k clients acquired online, Nik’s expertise spans various industries including finance, healthcare, and real estate.
