Writing / Topics

Google Ads

What to spend, where the budget actually goes, and how to check the account yourself rather than take a report on trust.

Guide

What smart bidding is, and the three ways it goes wrong

Smart bidding is Google Ads setting your bids automatically toward whatever your conversion actions count. It is genuinely good on clean data, and it fails in three predictable ways: fed fake conversions, starved of data, or judged too soon after a fix.

2 min

Guide

What remarketing is, and why untagged days never come back

Plain definitions of remarketing and audience decay, and the reason a broken tracking tag is an urgent problem rather than a cosmetic one: every untagged day shrinks an audience you can never rebuild.

2 min

Guide

What Google Ads management costs in South Africa in 2026

Nobody in this market publishes prices, which is exactly why this page exists. My actual rates, the three pricing models and their trade-offs, the minimum media budget where paying for management makes sense, and when you should not hire anyone at all.

3 min

Guide

How to take over a Google Ads account without breaking it

A fixed-order checklist for inheriting a Google Ads account: secure ownership, snapshot everything, audit measurement before campaigns, then change slowly. Includes the checks I run on every takeover.

3 min

Guide

Why your Google Ads budget is going to random apps and websites

Search campaigns quietly opt into the Display Network through default checkboxes, and automated bidding spends there because the clicks are cheap. Here is how to see the leak in your own account and shut it off in ten minutes.

3 min