Leak 1: branded terms on autopilot
A third of spend was defending branded search the account would have won organically. The campaign looked great — 8x ROAS — because it was harvesting demand that already existed. Pulling bids on the safe branded terms freed budget with almost no loss in conversions.
Leak 2: broad match with no negatives
Broad match keywords were matching to hundreds of irrelevant queries. Without a disciplined negative list, the account paid for clicks on searches it could never convert. This single fix recovered roughly 12% of spend.
Leak 3: budgets stuck to last year
Campaign budgets had been set months earlier and never moved. Money sat in campaigns that had decayed while the genuine winners hit their cap by noon every day. The spend was technically efficient and completely misallocated.
Leak 4: one ad, never tested
Each ad group ran a single tired creative. No rotation, no testing, no learning. Fresh, continuously-tested copy lifted click-through enough to lower effective CPCs across the board.
The fix
None of these leaks were exotic. They were the predictable result of an account no one had time to watch hourly. AlgoBoost closed all four in the first week — the same week it would have taken an agency to schedule the kickoff call.