Find underperforming Google Ads campaigns that need budget cuts
Analyze 4 weeks of campaign performance against category and funnel-stage benchmarks to surface budget reduction opportunities
Underperforming campaigns might be quietly draining 40% of your Google Ads budget below acceptable ROAS thresholds
This template identifies Google Ads conversion and retargeting campaigns consistently underperforming against your ROAS benchmarks across categories and funnel stages. It analyzes 12 weeks of historical data but focuses on the last 4 complete weeks to catch recent performance degradation, then calculates exactly how much budget is trapped in campaigns that need immediate optimization or reduction.
Why this matters
Campaigns that worked six months ago slowly decay as audiences fatigue, competitors adjust, and market conditions shift—but they keep spending at full capacity. A campaign 30% below your category benchmark consuming $5K daily would be costing you $1,500 in inefficient spend every single day. This template catches these budget drains before they compound, providing specific reduction percentages and optimization actions for each underperformer.
How to customize
Adjust the 4-week analysis window based on your sales cycle length—B2B might need 6-8 weeks. Set different ROAS thresholds by funnel stage since prospecting naturally converts lower than retargeting. Add impression share and click share metrics to distinguish between competitive pressure and creative fatigue. Include quality score and ad strength indicators to prioritize optimization potential. Configure minimum spend thresholds to focus on campaigns with material budget impact.
Identify underperforming google retargeting and prospecting campaigns that you recommend reducing budget on based on ROAS or investigating for optimization.
Follow these steps:
1. Pull "Google" platform performance for the last 12 weeks filter on the funnel stage for for 2. "Retargeting" and "Prospecting" campaigns
2. Split out the Google platform data by channel and funnel stage.
3. Per channel pull data and set benchmarks by country
4. Pull Google conversions by category to set a benchmark.
5. Pull Google conversions by funnel stage to set a benchmark
6. Identify campaigns that are underperforming significantly compared to benchmarks in terms of roas.
7. Output a summarized message with findings, summarized bullets to support it and a one sentence line to wrap it up. 9 In the message state what percentage of budget this budget represents and is relevant benchmarks.
8. Note:
* Dont recommend to shift budget to retargeting or brand, they have their own media plan.
* We run both prospecting and retargeting campaigns, we know prospecting campaigns will perform less, but we need them to funnel into the retargeting campaigns.
* List out all the campaigns with the recommended action and optimization value (pause, investigate, or scale)
* Be factual, not dramatic
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