Not every high-effort Google Ads tactic actually pays off, and not every quick win stays small for long. A survey of 707 marketers rated ten tactics on both business impact and implementation effort, and creative testing stands out as the strongest combination of high impact and moderate effort. Negative keyword management, by contrast, requires the least effort but also delivers the lowest business impact of any tactic measured.

Essential Statistics

• Creative testing scores highest in business impact at 4.7, with a moderate effort score of 3.3, and 49% of marketers prioritizing it.
• Improving conversion tracking scores 4.3 in business impact with 3.4 in effort, prioritized by 47% of marketers.
• Incrementality testing requires the highest effort at 4.5 while scoring 3.7 in business impact, prioritized by only 12% of marketers.
• Negative keyword management scores lowest in business impact at 2.6, despite requiring relatively low effort at 2.3.
• Landing page and conversion rate optimization scores 4.0 in business impact with 3.9 in effort, prioritized by 30% of marketers.

Key Takeaways

• Creative testing combining high impact with comparatively manageable effort suggests this is the single most efficient tactic marketers can prioritize in Google Ads right now.
• Incrementality testing requiring the highest effort of any tactic while being prioritized by only 12% of marketers suggests most teams see it as valuable but not yet worth the investment.
• Negative keyword management scoring lowest in business impact despite being prioritized by over a third of marketers suggests some teams may be over-investing time in a tactic with limited upside.
• Improving conversion tracking landing among the highest-impact tactics reinforces a pattern seen elsewhere in this data: data quality consistently outranks campaign mechanics.
• This impact-versus-effort mapping suggests marketers would benefit from auditing their current tactic prioritization against actual measured payoff rather than habit or platform defaults.

Actionable Insights

• Prioritize creative testing above other tactics if you haven’t already, since it delivers the highest measured business impact relative to its effort requirement.
• Invest in improving conversion tracking as a near-term priority, since it ranks among the highest-impact tactics and directly supports the performance of every other automated feature.
• Reduce time spent on negative keyword management relative to higher-impact tactics, since this data shows it delivering the lowest business impact of any tactic measured, even though it requires low effort.
• Treat incrementality testing as a longer-term investment rather than an immediate priority, given its high effort requirement, but don’t dismiss it entirely since its business impact score is still solidly positive.
• Map your own team’s current tactic prioritization against this impact-and-effort framework to identify any tactics you may be over-investing in relative to their actual measured payoff.

‘Negative keyword management feels productive. It’s also the lowest-impact tactic on this list. Creative testing takes more thought and pays off more. That’s where the time should go.’ – Neil Patel