Case #052: The match type that drained a week

Case #052: The match type that drained a week

A loans campaign, $2,800 budget, Google Search. I built it twice on purpose: one ad group on exact match, one on broad match with smart bidding, same offer, same daily cap.

Exact match, week one: $980 spent, 41 conversions, $23.90 each, $1,640 revenue. Tight, predictable, boring.

Broad match, week one: $1,820 spent, 58 conversions, $31.38 each, $1,920 revenue. Google promised broad would "find new converting queries." It found them — buried in a search-terms report full of "loan calculator," "loan forgiveness," and one beauty I'll never forget, "loan from family member how to ask."

I pulled the search-terms export on day 6. Broad had spent $610 on queries with zero intent to take a paid offer. I added 47 negatives. The next week broad's cost per conversion fell to $24.10 — basically matching exact, but only after a human paid tuition to teach the machine.

The honest read: broad match isn't worse, it's unfinished. Exact match works on day one with no babysitting. Broad works on day fourteen if you're disciplined enough to mine the search terms every 48 hours.

The lesson: broad match is a junior buyer who's great once trained — don't hand it your budget and a vacation at the same time.