Managing low-budget Google and Microsoft Ads accounts in 2026 looks very different than it did five or ten years ago.

Many tactics that once made sense, or even general 'best practices' today, now work against small budget accounts.

They spread data too thin, slow learning, and make performance more volatile instead of more efficient.

This session focuses on which PPC tactics actively hurt low-budget accounts today, why they break down in modern auction environments, and what to replace them with.

The emphasis is on simplifying structure, protecting signal quality, and making smarter tradeoffs when data is limited.

Attendees will leave with a clearer framework for deciding what to keep, what to remove, and where small budgets actually perform best. The ideal audience for this talk is PPC practitioners and marketing managers working with smaller budgets (typically under $10k per month), in lead gen or e-commerce.

Marketing platforms are getting better at optimization every year, but they’re only as effective as the goals they’re given.

In this session, Breanne will show how optimizing toward the wrong metric can create outcomes that look great in-platform while falling short of actual business objectives.

Through real-world examples, attendees will learn how to identify misaligned success metrics, improve signal quality, and help advertising platforms optimize toward true business success.