Ad Strength Hole-in-the-Ship Diagnostic
Use Google's brand vs non-brand ad-strength report to find the one fix that lifts the whole account
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
A diagnostic routine for Google Ads that visualizes brand vs non-brand performance across expected CTR, landing-page experience and ad relevance to locate the 'hole in the ship' — the single weakest lever. Fixing ad relevance raises ad strength, which raises quality score, which can add roughly 12% more impressions; and pausing a single poor, expensive ad can lift account-level performance because quality score operates at the account level, not just per keyword.
Origin
Timothy Davis's own reporting approach built on exports readily available inside every Google Ads account, plus Google's own recommendation engine.
Core principles
- 01The data to find the weakest lever is already exported inside every account — the failure is not acting on it
- 02Ad relevance, expected CTR and landing-page experience each show where to intervene by color/threshold
- 03Quality score is account-level, so one poor high-CPC ad can drag the whole account down
- 04A high quality score sitting next to a high CPC is a red flag worth a deep dive
How to run it
- 1
Visualize brand vs non-brand ad strength
Export and chart expected click-through rate, landing-page experience and ad relevance, split by brand vs non-brand ad copy, to see where each sits versus average.
- 2
Find the weakest lever (the hole)
Read the colors: if expected CTR and landing-page experience are strongly above average but ad relevance is only 35% above average, the clear direction is to go into the account and make the ad copy more relevant.
Pro tip Improving from below-average to above-average on a lever can yield roughly a 12% increase in impressions via a higher quality score.
- 3
Hunt anomalies like high quality score with high CPC
Flag contradictions — e.g. a quality score of 9 paired with an $8 CPC — as a signal to investigate, since a higher quality score should generally pull CPC down.
- 4
Pause the single poor, expensive ad
Identify a lone 'poor' ad carrying a high CPC and pause/remove it; because quality score is account-level, removing one bad ad can dramatically improve overall performance.
Pro tip Google itself tells you the fix — add unique headlines, unpin assets, include more keywords in descriptions/headlines — so act on those recommendations.
Watch out Sometimes a 'poor' ad simply can't be lifted to average — but far more often people just haven't done the improvement work.
In the wild
Using real exported client reports, Davis showed non-brand ads mostly 'excellent' and well-funded, while the brand side had a single 'poor' ad running a ~$7 CPC. He noted that simply pausing that one ad would meaningfully lift account performance.
→ A one-click pause identified as a dramatic performance improvement lever.
Common mistakes
Ignoring the recommendations Google already gives you
The platform surfaces exactly what to change to lift ad strength, but most operators never take the action, leaving quality-score-driven impression gains on the table.
Is it for you?
Best for
Google Ads managers auditing an existing account to find the highest-leverage fix fast
Not ideal for
Brand-new accounts with too little data for ad-strength and quality-score signals to be meaningful
From the transcript
“the clear Direction you have from the data that's available to you is jump into the account and make it more relevant uh that will…”
“so just turning this one off and removing it from the account this one ad could dramatically improve your performance”
“I'm a firm believer in that there's a an account level uh quality score not just necessarily a keyword or an ad quality score”
From the episode
The ultimate guide to performance marketing
Timothy Davis (Shopify)