How to Reduce Wasted Spend in Broad Match Campaigns

Opening a Google Ads account and realizing that most of the budget has chased the wrong searches is a painful moment. In one documented real estate investor campaign, 67% of the wasted spend was traced back to broad match exclusions, adding up to more than $12,000 in lost budget. That kind of leak does not just hurt performance; it can quietly kill a strategy that would have worked if the targeting had been under control.

Broad match is not the villain of paid search. Used well, it uncovers profitable queries no keyword brainstorming session would ever find. Used carelessly, it hoovers up irrelevant clicks, makes bidding more expensive, and hides the truth behind aggregated metrics that look “okay” on the surface. The key is learning how to let broad match work for you without letting it raid your budget.

This guide walks through how wasted spend happens in broad match campaigns, how to diagnose it inside your own account, and how to restructure campaigns so that broad match becomes a disciplined testing and scaling tool instead of a bottomless pit of bad clicks. Along the way, you will see how we at North Country Consulting approach broad match, and how you can borrow that process to tighten your own results.

The Real Cost of Broad Match Waste

Before tweaking settings or pausing keywords, it helps to understand how big the problem can be. A 2025 report from WordStream found that nearly 25% of the average PPC budget is wasted due to ineffective keyword targeting. When a large share of that budget is sitting in broad match, the odds are high that a meaningful slice of your ad spend is being burned on searches that never had a chance of converting.

This kind of waste is sneaky. Performance might appear “fine” when you look only at account-level cost per lead or return on ad spend, especially if branded and high-intent campaigns are strong. Underneath that, broad match ads can be quietly racking up impressions and clicks from people far outside your target audience: job seekers, DIY researchers, or people searching for something only tangentially related to what you offer.

The financial impact compounds over time. A campaign that leaks a modest amount every day can turn into a major drag on annual performance. That is why the mindset shift is important: treat every irrelevant click as a fixable leak, not an inevitable cost of doing business. With that perspective, the next step is to understand why broad match is so prone to this problem.

One of the primary reasons broad match keywords can lead to wasted spend is their inherent flexibility. While this can be advantageous for capturing a wider audience, it often results in ads being triggered by irrelevant search queries. For instance, a broad match keyword like "running shoes" could trigger ads for searches related to "running tips" or "shoe stores near me," which may not align with your business objectives. This misalignment can dilute your campaign's effectiveness, leading to a higher cost per acquisition and ultimately, a lower return on investment.

Moreover, the lack of control over the specific queries that trigger your ads can hinder your ability to optimize campaigns effectively. Without granular insights into which searches are driving clicks, marketers may struggle to identify negative keywords to exclude. This oversight can perpetuate the cycle of waste, as funds continue to flow toward clicks that do not convert. As a result, it becomes crucial to regularly review search term reports and refine your keyword strategy to ensure that your budget is being allocated to the most relevant and profitable areas.

Why Broad Match Campaigns Leak Budget

Broad match allows Google to show your ad on searches that are “related” to your keywords, not just exact matches or close variants. In practice, that means your ad may appear for synonyms, loosely connected concepts, competitor terms, or queries where the user intent is very different from what your offer solves. The algorithm is trying to maximize clicks and conversions according to its models, but it does not feel the sting of your wasted spend the way you do.

Research from Columbia Business School highlights another challenge: broad match tools can push many advertisers to compete over the same sets of keywords, which often benefits search engines more than it benefits the advertisers themselves. When a large pool of advertisers is funneled into similar broad match territory, auction pressure rises, and low-intent clicks become more expensive than they should be.

The result is a perfect storm. Broad matching widens the net, the auction environment drives up prices on that broader pool of queries, and unless your account structure and negative keyword strategy are very deliberate, you pay increasingly high rates for traffic that does not align with your goals. Understanding this dynamic is what makes the fixes outlined in the rest of this article so powerful.

Diagnosing Waste in Your Existing Campaigns

The first step toward reducing wasted spend is a clear, honest look at where your money is going. Start with the search terms report. Filter by the campaigns or ad groups that lean heavily on broad match, then sort by cost. The queries at the top tell you where broad match is really sending your budget. Look for patterns: obvious irrelevance, intent that is too early-stage for your goals, or queries that consistently bring low-quality leads.

Industry guidance backs up this hands-on approach. WordStream and MoldStud report that regularly reviewing search term reports and adding irrelevant terms as negative keywords can cut wasted budget significantly, with effective negative keyword use reducing wasted ad spend by up to 25%. That combination of ongoing review and proactive exclusion is the foundation of any serious effort to control broad match.

As you diagnose waste, organize what you find. Group bad queries by theme: wrong locations, wrong service type, DIY intent, research-only phrases, job seekers, or people looking for free options. This gives you the raw material for negative keyword lists and campaign restructuring. It also reveals misalignments between your keywords, ads, and landing pages, which you can then tackle systematically rather than trying to fix everything at once.

Structuring Campaigns to Control Broad Match

Broad match becomes risky when it is thrown into a messy campaign structure. A cleaner setup gives you the visibility and control you need to keep waste in check. The goal is to let broad match explore within defined guardrails instead of roaming freely across your entire market.

Align Match Types With Intent

Think of match types as different tools for different jobs. Exact match is best for queries that are proven winners and bring in high-quality leads or sales. Phrase match handles the variations around those proven terms while keeping user intent relatively close. Broad match should normally live in its own space, where it can discover new opportunities under careful supervision, instead of being mixed into the same ad groups as your core exact and phrase keywords.

By segmenting in this way, you gain clear insight into how broad match is really performing. You can cap its budgets, watch the search terms it generates, and promote winning queries from broad into your exact or phrase campaigns. That promotion process keeps your most valuable traffic in tightly controlled campaigns while still making use of broad match as a discovery engine.

Smart Keyword Grouping

How you group keywords inside ad groups has a direct impact on performance. A study on keyword grouping in sponsored search advertising published in 2022 found that optimal keyword grouping strategies can lead to higher profits. That research reinforces what many practitioners see in real accounts: when keywords with similar intent and semantics are grouped together, it becomes easier to write relevant ads, analyze performance, and manage bids.

For broad match specifically, that means building ad groups around clear themes, not dumping miscellaneous keywords into a single bucket. Group by product or service line, by intent (research vs. buy-now), or by audience segment. With tighter groups, your ad copy and landing pages can speak directly to the underlying intent, which improves relevance and reduces the odds that Google will stretch your broad match terms into areas you do not want to pay for.

Ad Copy and Landing Pages That Filter Clicks

Account structure and match types are only part of the story; messaging matters just as much. Clear, specific ad copy acts like a filter. If your ad plainly states who your offer is for, what it costs in broad terms, or what is required from the user, people who are not a fit are less likely to click. That alone can dramatically cut down on useless traffic from broad match.

Your landing pages should continue that filtering job. When pages mirror the promises in your ads and speak directly to the searcher’s intent, unqualified visitors are more likely to self-select out quickly, while qualified ones find it easier to convert. Over time, that feedback loop teaches the algorithms which queries truly work for you, making broad match more efficient.

How We at North Country Consulting Approach Broad Match

At North Country Consulting, we treat broad match as something that must be designed, not just enabled. When we take over an account, we start by mapping current broad match spend to clear business outcomes: which queries are actually responsible for leads or revenue, and which are silently eating budget. That analysis shapes everything that follows, from restructuring campaigns to rewriting ads.

We build broad match campaigns as controlled experiments. That usually means creating dedicated “explorer” ad groups or campaigns where broad match is allowed to run under tight budgets, strict negative keyword lists, and carefully chosen audiences or bid strategies. As we see which search terms and themes perform well, we promote them into more focused match types and campaigns, while aggressively excluding the losers.

Because we live inside accounts every day, we know how quickly broad match can drift without regular attention. Our process hinges on consistent search term mining, systematic negative keyword maintenance, and ongoing alignment between keywords, ads, and landing pages. That is one of the reasons clients trust us as their primary Google Ads partner: we do not just flip on broad match and hope for the best; we manage it with the same rigor we apply to budget planning and conversion tracking.

Advanced Tactics and a Lean Broad Match Checklist

Once the basics are in place-clean structure, clear intent grouping, regular search term reviews-you can layer in more advanced tactics. These approaches help broad match work smarter, using both human judgment and data-driven tools to guide where the algorithm can and cannot go.

Build and Maintain Robust Negative Keyword Lists

Negative keywords are the steering wheel for broad match. Instead of thinking of them as a one-time setup task, treat them as living assets. Create thematic lists for common problem areas such as career and job-hunting terms, educational and “how to” queries, free or cheap variants that do not match your business model, or searches tied to locations you cannot serve. Apply these lists across your account so that every broad match campaign benefits from the same layer of protection.

Then, maintain those lists over time. After each search term review, add new irrelevant patterns to the appropriate negative list rather than only blocking single queries. That might mean excluding an entire type of intent or a recurring phrase that consistently brings poor-quality traffic. This habit gradually constrains broad match to the parts of the search universe that actually work for your business, without having to touch every keyword individually.

Leverage Automation Without Losing Control

Automation is not going away, and used carefully, it can actually help reduce broad match waste. The BroadGen framework, introduced in May 2025, recommends efficient and effective broad match keyphrases by mining historical search query data and is explicitly designed to reduce wasted spend. The core idea is powerful: use what has already happened in your account to guide which broad patterns are worth targeting, instead of guessing.

Even if you never implement BroadGen itself, you can adopt the same mindset. Look at your own historical search terms to find multi-word phrases that have consistently brought high-quality traffic and conversions. Then, build broad match keywords that reflect those proven patterns while layering on strong negatives and clear ad messaging. You are not leaving broad match up to chance; you are using data to decide where it is allowed to explore.

A Practical Checklist You Can Use Right Away

At this point, the path to a leaner broad match setup becomes straightforward. Start with a focused audit of your search term reports, paying close attention to the highest-spend, lowest-value queries. Restructure campaigns so that broad match lives in clearly defined ad groups with specific themes and budgets. Use exact and phrase match terms to protect your best-performing queries, and rely on broad match primarily for discovery. Build and maintain negative keyword lists that reflect the patterns of waste you uncover, and let your ad copy and landing pages do the work of pre-qualifying the right clickers.

Finally, commit to regular check-ins. Broad match performance changes as your market evolves, competitors adjust their strategies, and Google updates its systems. A lightweight but consistent review rhythm-combined with the structural discipline outlined above-turns broad match from a budget liability into a sustainable growth channel. And if you want a partner to handle that work with the care it deserves, we at North Country Consulting are ready to help design and manage a broad match strategy that respects every dollar you put into your campaigns.

Ready to transform your Google Ads broad match campaigns into a well-oiled machine that maximizes every dollar? At North Country Consulting, our expertise is deeply rooted in the world of Google Ads, with a founder who not only has extensive experience from within Google but has also led revenue teams at renowned companies like Stripe and Apollo.io. We specialize in crafting strategies that turn broad match into a powerful tool for growth, tailored specifically for ecommerce and leadgen businesses. Don't let another dollar go to waste. Book a free consultation with us today and start optimizing your campaigns for success.