Now that you know a campaign is "budget + goal + reach", the next question is: how many campaigns do I need and how do I split them? There is no single answer, but there are criteria that work in almost every account — and a couple of mistakes that repeat in almost every account too.
The criteria for splitting campaigns
Split into separate campaigns whenever one of these things changes:
1. The goal
Winning new customers is not the same as selling to people who already know you, and promoting an app is not the same as selling a product. Different goals call for different bidding strategies and therefore different campaigns.
2. The product or service (and its margin)
If you sell implants (high ticket) and cleanings (low ticket), you cannot pay the same for a customer of each. Different budget and target CPA = different campaigns. The exception: products with similar economics can share a campaign and be split into ad groups.
3. The location
When the business, the competition or the prices change by area (Madrid vs Barcelona, Spain vs Latin America), each area deserves its own budget. If the area changes nothing, a single campaign with several locations is enough.
4. Brand versus generic
Searches for your own brand («smile clinic») convert far better and cost far less than generic ones («dentist madrid»). Mixing them inflates the campaign's metrics and misleads the algorithm. An almost universal rule: a separate brand campaign, with its own small budget and its own report.
5. The network
Search and Display are different worlds (intent versus reach) and are managed in different campaigns. Never mix networks "because Google suggests it": it will suggest it on every screen.
6. The campaign type
Obvious but worth saying: Shopping, Video, PMax and Demand Gen are separate campaigns by definition.
How many campaigns are too many
There are two bad extremes:
- One campaign for everything: you cannot split the money or read the results.
- Fifty campaigns for a €30/day account: the budget is pulverised, no campaign gathers enough data for automated bidding to learn, and managing it becomes impossible.
The practical rule in 2026 leans towards fewer, more consolidated campaigns, because Smart Bidding needs volume (as a rough guide, several dozen conversions a month per campaign) to work. Split by the criteria above and only by those; everything else goes into ad groups.
Names: a convention that holds up
Give each campaign a name that tells you what it is without opening it. A convention that works:
[Type] · [Goal/Product] · [Area] · [Extra]
SEARCH · Implants · Madrid · Generic
SEARCH · Brand · Spain
PMAX · Catalogue · Spain
DISPLAY · Remarketing · Spain
The advantages: campaigns sort themselves when you list them, the interface filters work by typing a single word, and anybody new understands the account in a minute.
And now, the truth about names
Names change. You change them, your agency changes them, the client changes them — because an area is added, because things get reorganised, because somebody fixes a typo. And every change breaks anything that depended on the name: a spreadsheet, a report, an automated rule, a script.
That is why every campaign (and every ad group, ad and keyword) has a numeric ID that Google assigns when it is created and that never changes. You can see it in the URL when you open the campaign, or by adding the "Campaign ID" column to the table.
💡 Ninja trick: all serious automation is built on IDs, never on names. It is one of the house rules at Ninja Scripts: the scripts identify campaigns and ad groups by their ID and keep the name only to display it. That way, when you rename a campaign on a Tuesday, Wednesday's history still adds up. If you ever inherit a spreadsheet or a report that "has stopped working", check first whether somebody changed a name.
What you should remember
- Split campaigns only when the goal, product economics, area, brand/generic, network or type changes. Everything else goes into ad groups.
- Brand always separate.
- In 2026: fewer campaigns, more volume per campaign, so that automated bidding can learn.
- Clear names with a fixed convention... and the ID as the real reference, because names change.