In the online advertising sphere, effective management of advertising campaigns through Google Ads is a fundamental pillar of success. Although the platform provides tremendous targeting and setup options, advertisers often face challenges in the form of limitations that can hinder their efforts to achieve optimal performance. In this article, we’ll explore the limitations of Google Ads accounts in more detail.
Account Limits
Among the primary Google Ads account limitations are those touching the admin account itself. The maximum number of accounts that each Google Ads admin account can be associated with is limited to 85,000. This number includes active, inactive, and cancelled accounts. The actual number of active accounts that a manager account can contain varies depending on the total monthly spend in each account.
Let’s take a look at the most common limits you may encounter in online advertising.
Campaign and ad group limits
Campaigns within an account
Google Ads allows 10,000 either active or paused campaigns in a single account. This number can have a significant impact on account structure and managing multiple campaigns with different objectives.- Ad Groups
Similar to the number of campaigns, the number of ad groups in a campaign in a single account is limited to 20,000. Local and in-app campaigns themselves are already limited to 100 ad groups (per campaign). - Advertising group targeting items
Each ad group can have a maximum of 20,000 targeting items (such as keywords, interest targets, placements, etc…). - Smart Shopping Campaigns
Google Ads offers smart shopping campaigns that use machine learning for optimization. However, their limited number (100) in one account can affect its usage.
Ad limitations
- Image ads
Google Ads allows 300 image ads that you can have in a single ad group. This can affect your ability to use visuals in ad campaigns and test different creative approaches. - Text/non-image ads
A Google Ads account allows 50 active text ads within a single ad group. - Responsive ads per account
Responsive ads adapt to different devices and user environments. However, Google caps their quantity per ad group at a numerical limit of 3. That’s how many they allow in search. - Listing Groups
In the case of expanded text ads, you are allowed to have up to 1,000 groups of records in a single ad group.
Restrictions on targeting
- Ad group targeting items
Google Ads allows 5 million targeting items (such as keywords, interests, placements or audience lists) within a single ad group. - Campaign targeting items
Similar to ad groups, the number of different targeting items is limited. At the campaign level, Google Ads allows a million of them. - Geographic targets
Google Ads also allows you to set geographic targets for your campaigns. So you can focus on specific regions, cities or states. However, you can add 10,500 geo-targets to a single campaign, including 500 nearby locations. - Shared budgets
Shared budgets in Google Ads allow you to manage multiple campaigns in a single way, with Google Ads limiting them to a maximum of 11,000.
Exclusion keyword restrictions
- Shared exclusion keyword lists
Google Ads allows you to create exclusion keyword lists that can be shared between multiple campaigns. However, the maximum number stops at 20. That’s the maximum number you can have in a single account. - Number of keywords per exclusion keyword list
You can have a maximum of 5,000 specific keywords within your exclusion keyword lists. This number can affect your ability to define exactly which keywords you want to exclude. - Number of disqualifying keywords per campaign
Within Google Ads, you can define 10,000 custom exclusion keywords that you don’t want to show for a specific campaign.
Conclusion
For a Google Ads account holder, all the above mentioned limitations lead to the need to carefully plan, monitor, and adjust ad campaigns. It’s important to understand them and know how to work with them for your own success.
