Overlap Audit Workbook

Find the Invisible Tax Your Campaigns Are Paying Each Other

---

91.45%.

That's the percentage of Google Ads accounts running both Performance Max and Search that have keyword overlap between the two campaign types. Optmyzr analyzed 503 accounts and found this pattern in nearly every one.

But the overlap itself isn't the expensive part. Here's what is:

Search converts better than Performance Max 84.18% of the time on overlapping terms. Yet Performance Max gets more impressions 61% of the time despite inferior conversion rates.

Your best-converting campaign type is being starved of impressions by your worst-converting one. On the same keywords. In the same account. And you're paying for both.

We call this the orchestration tax - the hidden cost of running multiple campaign types without coordination. Across 20+ brands and 8+ years of managed spend, we've measured this tax at 15-25% of total monthly budget.

At $10K/month, that's $1,500-$2,500 in waste. At $50K/month, that's $7,500-$12,500. At $100K/month, that's $15,000-$25,000.

Not from bad campaigns. Not from weak creative. From your own campaigns competing against each other.

This workbook walks you through a complete overlap audit in under 2 hours. You'll find the overlap, measure the cost, and fix the highest-impact issues.

---

Before You Start

What you need:

• Google Ads account access with campaign-level reporting
• A spreadsheet application (Google Sheets or Excel)
• 90-120 minutes

What campaigns this applies to: This audit works for any account running 2 or more of the following campaign types simultaneously:

• Search campaigns
• Shopping campaigns (Standard)
• Performance Max campaigns
• Demand Gen campaigns

If you're running only one campaign type, you don't have an overlap problem. You might have other problems, but not this one.

---

Step 1: Search Term Cross-Reference (30 minutes)

This is the core of the audit. You're looking for queries that appear in multiple campaign types.

Pull the Reports

For Search campaigns:

1. Go to Google Ads > Campaigns > select your Search campaign(s)
2. Click Keywords > Search Terms
3. Set date range to last 30 days
4. Export to CSV

For Shopping campaigns:

1. Go to Google Ads > Campaigns > select your Shopping campaign(s)
2. Click Keywords > Search Terms
3. Set date range to last 30 days (same range as Search)
4. Export to CSV

For Performance Max:

1. Go to Google Ads > Campaigns > select your PMax campaign(s)
2. Click Insights > Search Terms (note: PMax search term data is limited)
3. Set date range to last 30 days
4. Export to CSV

For Demand Gen (if applicable):

1. Go to Google Ads > Campaigns > select your Demand Gen campaign(s)
2. Check if search term data is available (Demand Gen reporting varies)
3. Export if available

Build the Cross-Reference

Open a new spreadsheet. Create these columns:

Combine all exported queries into Column A (remove duplicates within the same campaign type first). Then mark which campaign types serve on each query.

Calculate Your Overlap Rate

Formula: Overlap Rate = (Queries appearing in 2+ campaign types) / (Total unique queries) x 100

**Your overlap rate: _______% **

How to read it:

For context, the average across those 503 accounts Optmyzr studied was 91.45%. If your number is under 50%, you're already ahead of most accounts.

---

Step 2: Conversion Efficiency Comparison (15 minutes)

Finding overlap is step one. Step two is measuring the damage. Some overlap is harmless - both campaign types perform equally well. The expensive overlap is where one campaign type clearly outperforms but the other is stealing its impressions.

Build the Efficiency Table

For your top 50 overlapping queries (by impression volume), pull these metrics from each campaign type:

How to determine the winner: The campaign type with the higher conversion rate AND lower cost per acquisition wins that query. If one has a higher CVR but the other has a lower CPA, use ROAS as the tiebreaker.

Count Your Winners

This table tells you which campaign type should own which queries. If Search wins 80% of overlapping queries (consistent with the industry-wide 84.18% figure), those queries should be assigned to Search and negated from other campaign types.

---

Step 3: Brand vs. Non-Brand Segmentation (15 minutes)

Separate your overlapping queries into two groups: branded (queries containing your brand name) and non-branded.

This separation matters because branded overlap is almost always wasteful. Only 30% of branded search conversions attributed to Performance Max are truly incremental (Measured.com, 322 tests). When Performance Max and Search compete on your brand name, you're paying twice for customers who were going to find you regardless.

Categorize Your Overlap

Measure Branded Overlap Cost

For branded overlapping queries specifically:

Estimated branded overlap waste:

If Search converts branded queries at a higher rate (it almost always does), calculate the cost:

• PMax branded spend that could shift to Search: $__________
• Expected conversion improvement if Search owned these queries: __________

This number is usually the single largest savings in the entire audit. One DTC skincare brand in our portfolio was losing $8,200/month just from Performance Max cannibalizing branded Search.

---

Step 4: Performance Max Channel Breakdown (15 minutes)

Performance Max hides where it's actually spending by aggregating metrics across channels. To properly audit overlap, you need to know which channels Performance Max is using.

Pull the Channel Data

In Google Ads, open your PMax campaign. Go to Insights and look for channel-level performance data. Note the percentage of spend and conversions by channel:

Interpret the Results

If PMax spends more than 30% on Search/Shopping channels: Your Performance Max campaign is doing what your dedicated Search and Shopping campaigns should be doing, likely less efficiently. This is a direct cannibalization signal.

Common pattern we see: 40-60% of PMax conversions come from Search and Shopping channels. That means PMax is claiming credit for conversions that your dedicated campaigns could capture at a lower cost with better control.

If PMax spends more than 20% on Display/YouTube: Check whether you're also running Demand Gen. If yes, there's likely audience overlap between PMax and Demand Gen on these placements.

---

Step 5: Brand Exclusion Checklist

Brand exclusion is the single highest-ROI fix in most multi-campaign accounts. Implementing it takes 10 minutes and recovers 15-35% of branded Search ROAS within 30 days.

Implementation Steps

• 1. Open PMax campaign settings. Go to your Performance Max campaign > Settings > Brand safety > Brand exclusions.

• 2. Add your brand name. Enter your exact brand name.

• 3. Add common misspellings. List every misspelling, abbreviation, and variation customers use for your brand.

• 4. Add distinctive product names. If any product names are distinctive enough to count as branded queries, add them too.

• 5. Verify the exclusion is active. Wait 24 hours, then check the PMax search terms report. Your brand name should no longer appear.

Brand Terms to Exclude

Fill in all variations:

Post-Exclusion Monitoring (14 days)

Track these metrics for 14 days after implementing brand exclusions:

What you should see:

• PMax branded impressions drop significantly
• Search branded impression share increases
• Overall branded conversion cost decreases
• Total branded conversions stay flat or increase (proving PMax wasn't generating these - just claiming credit)

---

Step 6: Role Assignment Template

After the audit, assign each query (or query group) to the campaign type that should own it. This prevents future overlap.

The Four Campaign Roles

Query Assignment Worksheet

For your top 30 overlapping queries, assign each to one campaign type. Then add it as a negative keyword in the other campaign types.

Assignment decision logic:

Is the query branded?
  YES --> Assign to Search. Negative in PMax and Demand Gen.
  NO  --> Is it high-intent (purchase/transactional)?
    YES --> Does monthly search volume exceed 200?
      YES --> Assign to Search.
      NO  --> Let PMax handle via broad reach.
    NO  --> Is it informational or comparison?
      YES --> Assign to Demand Gen or top-of-funnel PMax.
      NO  --> Is it product-specific?
        YES --> Assign to Shopping (hero products) or PMax (long-tail).
        NO  --> Monitor. Assign when pattern becomes clear.

Negative Keyword Coordination

Critical rule: Every negative keyword you add to one campaign should have corresponding positive coverage in another campaign. If you negative "organic collagen" from Shopping, Search should be actively targeting it. Otherwise, you've created a dead zone where no campaign serves that query.

Use this tracker to verify coordination:

---

Step 7: Measure Your Orchestration Tax

Now calculate the total cost of the overlap you found.

The Calculation

Branded overlap waste: PMax spend on branded queries where Search converts better: $__________

Non-branded overlap waste: Sum of spend in the losing campaign type for each non-branded overlapping query: $__________

Total estimated monthly orchestration tax: $__________

Annualized waste: $__________ x 12 = $__________

Benchmark Check

---

Action Plan

Based on your audit, prioritize fixes in this order:

This Week (Immediate)

• Implement brand exclusions on PMax (Step 5)
• Add obvious negative keywords where one campaign type clearly wins by 20%+ on conversion rate

This Month (Short-term)

• Complete query-by-query role assignment for top 50 overlapping terms (Step 6)
• Build negative keyword coordination spreadsheet to prevent coverage gaps
• Set up shared negative keyword lists in Google Ads (Brand Terms, Search-Owned Queries, Shopping-Owned Products)

Ongoing (Monthly - 30 minutes)

• Re-run Step 1 (search term cross-reference) to catch new overlap
• Review brand exclusion effectiveness (branded impression share should stay high in Search)
• Check for coverage gaps (queries negated from one campaign but not targeted anywhere)
• Update negative keyword lists with new brand misspellings and emerging overlap patterns

---

Interpreting Common Patterns

After running the full audit, you'll likely see one of these patterns:

Pattern 1: High branded overlap (more than 50% of overlap is branded queries) Most common, most wasteful. Fix: Brand exclusions resolve 80%+ of this overlap. Expected timeline to full impact: 14 days.

Pattern 2: PMax and Shopping competing on hero products Your top 10-20 products appear in both campaign types. Fix: Use custom labels to control which products PMax prioritizes, or create separate PMax asset groups with different bid strategies for hero versus catalog products.

Pattern 3: Search and PMax competing on non-branded terms Both campaign types bid on the same non-branded queries. Fix: For queries where Search CVR exceeds PMax CVR by more than 20%, add as negative to PMax. For queries where PMax outperforms, negative from Search.

Pattern 4: Low overlap but poor overall performance Campaigns aren't competing, but they're not coordinating either. Each campaign operates in isolation with no funnel effect. This is a role assignment problem, not an overlap problem. The campaigns need to be structured so awareness feeds consideration feeds purchase.

---

What This Workbook Doesn't Cover

This audit finds and fixes the overlap. The complete orchestration system goes further:

• The 7-Layer Budget Distribution Model for allocating spend by funnel stage with margin-based guardrails
• The 4-Stage Deployment Model for adding campaign types sequentially without fragmenting data
• Incrementality testing protocols (brand exclusion tests, pause tests, geo holdout tests) for measuring whether campaigns generate real value or just claim credit
• The 5-Tier Negative Keyword Architecture with cross-campaign coordination and shared list management
• Presell page orchestration for integrating editorial and advertorial content into your paid media system
• Demand Gen coordination including the 14-day video view audience pipeline that feeds PMax
• The Monthly Orchestration Review protocol with specific trigger conditions for budget rebalancing
• Architecture templates by spend level ($5K-$100K+)

The Google Ads AI Agentic System ($4,997+) covers the full four-phase system: Overlap Audit, Role Assignment, Channel Budgeting, and Health Monitoring.

---

This workbook is extracted from the Google Ads AI Agentic System, our coordination system for multi-campaign Google Ads accounts built on $10M+/mo in managed spend across 20+ brands.