To get to the heart of why paid search campaigns can suddenly lose momentum, we sat down with Demand Gen expert Milena Traikovich. With extensive experience in analytics and performance optimization, Milena helps businesses navigate the new landscape where user experience is paramount. She argues that performance declines are rarely about platform malfunctions but are instead a “confidence issue.” Today, we’ll explore how platforms like Google Ads judge an advertiser’s reliability, why the post-click experience now outweighs keyword mechanics, and what practical steps businesses can take to align their messaging, landing pages, and product data to rebuild trust and scale effectively.
Many advertisers see a performance decline and blame the ad platform. You suggest it’s often a “confidence issue.” Could you explain how platforms like Google Ads assess this confidence and what specific user behaviors signal that an advertiser’s landing page is a risky click?
Absolutely. The platforms see their users—the people searching—as their primary customers. Their goal is to provide a useful, reliable experience. So, when they send a user to a landing page, they’re watching closely to see if that experience delivered on the ad’s promise. A “risky click” is one where the user’s behavior screams confusion. Think about it physically: they land, they pause, they squint at the screen, they scroll up and down aimlessly without taking action. The worst signal of all is when they hit the back button and return to the search results. The platform interprets this hesitation and abandonment as a one-star review, a clear sign that the destination was not helpful. When this happens often enough, the platform loses confidence and concludes, “Sending more of our users here isn’t going to make them happy,” so it quietly pulls back on impressions and raises your costs to offset that risk.
There’s been a significant shift where keyword mechanics are less influential than the post-click experience. Beyond the keyword, what key signals do platforms evaluate at auction time, and how does a user’s on-page behavior directly impact an ad’s future cost and visibility?
It’s a crucial shift in thinking. For years, we were trained to obsess over keyword matching and bidding. That system still exists, but it’s no longer the main driver of success. Today, keywords just get you invited to the auction. The platform is now asking much deeper questions in that split second: What is this person really looking for right now? Does the ad genuinely fit that immediate need? And, most importantly, does the landing page confirm the ad’s promise without making the user work for it? That last part is where everything can fall apart. A user’s on-page behavior becomes a direct feedback loop. If they engage and convert, it sends a powerful signal of relevance. But if they bounce, that tells the platform the experience was a mismatch. That negative signal is logged, and it directly influences future auctions, resulting in fewer impressions and higher CPCs because the system has learned that your page doesn’t reliably solve the user’s problem.
In the past, a “basically fine” landing page was often sufficient, but now platforms treat them as continuous feedback loops. Can you describe how platforms interpret user hesitation, like pausing or aimless scrolling, and what are the most immediate, practical steps to improve landing page clarity?
The era of the “set it and forget it” landing page is completely over. It used to be like getting a certificate of occupancy for a building—once it passed inspection, you were done. Now, that page is under constant surveillance, acting as a real-time feedback mechanism for Smart Bidding. User hesitation is interpreted as a sign of friction and confusion. A pause isn’t just a pause; it’s the platform seeing a user ask, “Am I in the right place?” Aimless scrolling means, “I can’t find what the ad promised me.” The most immediate step to fix this is to ruthlessly attack your message clarity. Start with the headline. If your top search term is “sweater for large dog,” your landing page headline better be something like “Sweaters for Large Dogs,” not a generic “Explore Our New Collection.” From there, simplify everything. Remove confusing navigation, make the call-to-action obvious, and structure the content in digestible chunks so a user can scan and confirm they’ve found the solution in seconds.
For e-commerce businesses, the product feed acts as a critical trust signal. What are the most common data mismatches you see between feeds and websites, and how do these inaccuracies directly translate into higher costs and reduced ad eligibility in shopping campaigns?
For e-commerce, the product feed isn’t just a spreadsheet; it’s your reputation. It’s a statement of fact you’re making to the platform, and if that statement is false, trust is immediately broken. The most common and damaging mismatches are price and availability. Nothing erodes confidence faster than a user clicking an ad for a $50 product only to find it’s $65 on the site, or clicking to buy a specific size that the feed said was in stock, only to see it’s sold out. We also see vague attributes, like missing colors or materials, and poorly structured titles that don’t match how people actually search. These aren’t just minor compliance issues; they are fundamental trust breaches. The platform penalizes this by limiting your ad’s eligibility in auctions, lowering its rank when it does show, and increasing your costs, because it can’t confidently vouch for the experience it’s sending its users to.
Unstable inventory can quickly halt a campaign’s momentum. Could you walk us through how inconsistent stock levels affect Smart Bidding optimization, and explain why performance doesn’t immediately recover once a product is back in stock?
Inventory used to be a problem for the warehouse, but now it’s a core marketing variable that can derail your entire strategy. When a popular product that’s driving conversions suddenly goes out of stock, the optimization process for Smart Bidding just stops cold. The algorithm was learning and building momentum based on successful purchase signals, and then that data flow is cut off. The real challenge is that when the product comes back in stock, the system doesn’t just flip a switch and resume where it left off. It’s hesitant. It waits to see if the supply is actually stable this time before it starts confidently spending your budget to scale again. If that product sells out a second time, the algorithm never regains its footing. This creates a frustrating cycle of stop-and-start performance, where you’re constantly trying to climb back up a hill because the platform can’t trust that your inventory can support sustained demand.
If successful conversions are like a five-star review for Google, what are the first three things an advertiser should fix to earn that trust? Please provide a step-by-step approach for aligning ad messaging with the landing page experience to achieve this.
Earning that “five-star review” is all about creating a seamless, reassuring journey for the user. The first three things to fix are message clarity, structural friction, and intent alignment. First, start with message clarity by rewriting your landing page headlines and opening sentences. They must instantly confirm the promise made in the ad and echo the language of the search query. If the ad says “50% Off Running Shoes,” that exact offer should be the first thing they see. Second, reduce structural friction by simplifying navigation and making the next step painfully obvious. Remove any distracting pop-ups or unnecessary form fields that could cause hesitation. Third, build for specific intent. Stop using one-size-fits-all landing pages. Review your search term reports and create dedicated pages that speak directly to how people are finding you, answering their implied questions before they even have to ask.
Do you have any advice for marketers who are struggling to scale their campaigns in this new environment?
My advice is to stop focusing so heavily on scaling your ad spend and start focusing on scaling your trust signals first. Before you pour more money into a campaign, you need to ensure the foundation is solid. That means making sure your product feed data perfectly matches your website, without exception. It means ensuring your inventory is stable and can actually support the demand you want to create. And most importantly, it means ensuring your landing pages are crystal clear and deliver exactly what your ads promise. Once you have those elements of alignment in place—strong messaging, a frictionless user experience, and accurate data—your campaigns will naturally start performing more smoothly. The system will reward your reliability with better visibility and lower costs. True, sustainable scale isn’t about outbidding your competitors; it’s about earning the platform’s confidence that you provide a five-star experience every single time.
