What “internal competition” actually looks like in Google Ads
When advertisers say their campaigns are “competing against each other,” they’re usually describing one of three problems: the same search intent is being covered in multiple places, budget is being pulled away from the campaign they want to win, or reporting becomes so fragmented that it’s hard to optimize with confidence.
The important nuance is that in keyword-based Search, overlapping keywords in the same account don’t behave like two separate advertisers bidding against each other. Only one keyword (or eligible targeting method) is selected to enter the auction for a given search, and that selection follows a predictable prioritization framework.
How Google Ads decides which campaign/ad group gets the query
At a practical level, you can think about internal “winner selection” in this order:
First, an exact match keyword that is identical to the user’s query gets the strongest preference. Next, phrase/broad match (and certain AI-driven query expansion features) that are identical can be considered. If nothing is identical, the platform uses relevance signals to prioritize the most relevant ad group, and if multiple options remain, Ad Rank is effectively the tie-breaker.
There are two common exceptions that make internal overlap feel worse than it “should.” One is when the preferred campaign is restricted by budget, in which case another eligible campaign can take that traffic. The other is that different ad formats don’t always follow the same preference rules, so you can still see Shopping ads appearing alongside Search ads even when you have strong Search keyword coverage.
Why Performance Max can feel like it’s “stealing” Search traffic
Performance Max is designed to complement keyword-based Search and generally respects your keyword targeting. If a user’s query is identical to an exact match keyword in your Search campaign, Search should be prioritized. However, branded overlap can still happen, particularly when your Search campaign is limited by budget or when Search targeting is tighter than the Performance Max campaign. When that happens, you need to add explicit controls (brand exclusions and/or negative keywords) to prevent unwanted overlap.
A systematic way to diagnose overlap (without guessing)
Internal competition is easiest to fix when you stop debating “which campaign should win” and start documenting where the overlap is happening: by query, by geography, by brand/non-brand intent, by product category, or by channel type (Search vs Performance Max vs Shopping).
Use this quick diagnostic checklist first
- Pull the Search terms report by campaign and identify repeated high-volume queries showing up across multiple campaigns (especially brand terms, “near me” terms, and top converters).
- Check for “Limited by budget” on the campaign you want to be the primary winner. If it’s constrained, you should expect traffic to leak into other eligible campaigns.
- Compare location settings between overlapping campaigns (for example, “Presence” vs “Presence or interest”), because that can create unintended reach differences that look like cannibalization.
- Confirm conversion goals and bidding alignment across campaigns that are fighting for the same intent. Even small differences in goals, targets, or settings can cause noticeable performance shifts and make the overlap hard to diagnose.
- Identify any “coverage” campaign types (Performance Max, Dynamic Search Ads, broad match expansion/AI features) that are designed to find incremental queries—these often overlap with less mature Search structures unless you fence them in.
The simplest litmus test: “What is the job of each campaign?”
If you can’t describe each campaign’s job in one sentence (for example, “non-brand high-intent services in Texas,” “brand protection nationwide,” or “shopping feed scale with efficiency target”), internal overlap is almost guaranteed. Most accounts that suffer from internal competition aren’t “over-advertising”—they’re under-structured.
How to avoid internal competition between campaigns (the fixes that actually hold up)
1) Build campaigns around intent first, not match type
The cleanest accounts separate campaigns by user intent and business priorities, then use match types inside those campaigns to control reach. For example, splitting “Brand” vs “Non-brand” is still one of the highest-ROI structural moves because it gives you budget control, messaging control, and cleaner measurement.
Where people go wrong is creating multiple campaigns that all target the same “non-brand services” intent, differentiated only by match type or minor ad copy variations. That’s the fastest route to duplicated search terms, split learning, and inconsistent results.
2) Use negative keywords to create “lanes,” not just to block irrelevant traffic
Negative keywords aren’t only for excluding junk queries—they’re your primary tool for traffic shaping across campaigns. If you want Campaign A to own a set of queries, Campaign B should explicitly not be eligible for those same queries.
For scalability, lean on shared negative keyword lists to keep governance consistent. You can maintain multiple lists (with meaningful themes like “Brand Negatives,” “Careers,” “Free/DIY,” “Competitors,” etc.) and apply them across the right campaigns. It’s also worth knowing the practical limits: you can create up to 20 negative keyword lists per account, and each list can contain up to 5,000 negative keywords.
If you need a blunt instrument for brand safety or broad exclusions across Search and Shopping inventory, account-level negative keywords apply broadly across relevant campaign types. Keep in mind there’s a limit of 1,000 account-level negative keywords, so reserve these for your highest-impact exclusions.
One advanced “gotcha” that matters for overlap: negative keywords don’t match close variants the same way positive keywords can, so you may need to add plural/singular or meaningfully different variants if you’re trying to tightly fence traffic between campaigns.
3) Prevent Performance Max from cannibalizing Brand (and other “owned” intent)
If you run both Search and Performance Max, assume you’ll need explicit overlap controls—especially for brand. Even when Search should have priority for identical exact match queries, budget restriction or stricter targeting can cause branded queries to slip into Performance Max.
The strongest modern approach is to use brand exclusions in Performance Max to keep it from serving on branded queries you want Search to own. Brand lists are particularly efficient because they handle misspellings, variants, and multiple languages without you having to build endless keyword variations.
On top of that, you can add negative keywords directly to Performance Max to block specific terms on Search and Shopping inventory. This is especially useful for protecting specific product names, internal navigation queries, customer support queries, or sensitive competitor terms that you simply don’t want Performance Max to touch.
One important operational detail: Performance Max negative keywords apply to Search and Shopping inventory, not every surface Performance Max can serve on. That’s still enough to solve most “cannibalization” complaints, because the bulk of overlap anxiety happens on Search queries.
4) Consolidate campaigns when overlap is self-inflicted
If you have multiple campaigns with near-identical settings and goals, you’re often better off consolidating rather than trying to “negative keyword” your way out of chaos. This is especially true when you’ve duplicated structures over time (for example, multiple Performance Max campaigns created from upgrades or reorganizations).
While multiple Performance Max campaigns in the same account won’t truly compete in the classic sense, performance can shift between them, and the campaign with the highest Ad Rank enters eligible auctions. From a management standpoint, consolidation reduces fragmentation, stabilizes learning, and makes it easier to diagnose what changed when performance moves.
5) Fix budget leakage: make sure your “priority” campaign can actually serve
Many internal competition issues are really budget problems wearing a targeting disguise. If your brand Search campaign (or your highest-intent non-brand campaign) is frequently constrained, the system will naturally serve other eligible campaigns more often, including Performance Max or broader non-brand campaigns.
If multiple campaigns share the same goal and you’re constantly reallocating budgets manually, a shared budget can reduce internal friction by letting spend flow to the campaigns that can capture demand on a given day. This can be a win for efficiency, but only when the campaigns grouped together truly have aligned intent and success metrics. If you mix “experimental” and “must-win” campaigns in the same shared budget, you’ll recreate the problem in a new form.
6) Align location strategy to avoid accidental overlap
Location settings quietly create internal competition. Two campaigns can look “different” on paper, but if one uses broader location intent targeting (for example, reaching people who show interest in a location) and another uses stricter presence-based targeting, you can end up with unexpected reach, uneven volume, and confusing splits in performance.
A simple best practice is to keep location and language strategy consistent among campaigns that should be comparable, and deliberately different only when geography is the point of segmentation (such as separate states, separate store radiuses, or separate service areas).
7) Treat Dynamic Search Ads and AI-driven expansion as coverage layers—with fences
Dynamic Search Ads and AI-driven query expansion features are excellent for incremental reach, but they can overlap with your core keyword set unless you proactively add exclusions. The right mindset is: let these campaign types discover new queries, but don’t let them take credit for the queries you’ve already intentionally built and optimized in Search.
The most reliable way to do that is a combination of negative keywords (to block your highest-priority terms from the coverage layer) plus page/URL exclusions (to prevent the system from routing traffic to sections of the site that shouldn’t generate ads).
A practical “no-internal-competition” structure you can implement
If you want a clean, scalable setup that minimizes overlap in most industries, start with a clear separation of Brand vs Non-brand in Search, ensure the Brand campaign is never budget constrained, then run Performance Max as an incremental layer with brand exclusions (and targeted negative keywords for any sensitive or protected terms). Round it out with disciplined negative keyword lists applied consistently across campaigns, and only split additional campaigns when you can articulate a real business reason (different geographies, different budgets, different goals, or meaningfully different intent).
When you do this well, “internal competition” mostly disappears—not because you eliminated overlap entirely, but because you made it intentional, controlled, and measurable.
Let AI handle
the Google Ads grunt work
| Area | What it is / Problem | Why it matters | Recommended approach from post | Relevant Google Ads docs |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Internal competition definition | “Internal competition” is when the same search intent is covered by multiple campaigns, budgets pull away from the campaign you want to win, or reporting gets fragmented so it’s hard to optimize. | Leads to duplicated search terms, split learning, unstable performance, and noisy reporting that hides where intent is actually being captured. | Remember that in keyword-based Search, only one keyword/target enters the auction for a query. Google picks a “winner” based on a prioritization framework, so the goal is to structure campaigns so the “right” campaign is eligible and properly funded. | Search terms insights for understanding which campaigns and ad groups capture demand. |
| How Google chooses which campaign/ad group wins a query | Exact match keywords identical to the query are preferred, then phrase/broad and AI-driven expansions. If multiple options remain, Google uses relevance signals and then Ad Rank as a tie-breaker. | Explains why overlapping structures don’t behave like separate advertisers bidding against each other, and why “winner” selection is usually predictable if structure and budgets are clean. | Design for a clear “owner” of each intent, then let Google’s selection logic work in your favor instead of creating multiple campaigns that all chase the same queries. | Dynamic Search Ads, Ad Rank, and performance (shows how relevance and Ad Rank decide which eligible target serves). |
| When overlap feels worse than it should | Two big exceptions: (1) the preferred campaign is budget‑limited, so other eligible campaigns pick up traffic; (2) different formats (for example, Shopping and Search) can both show, so it feels like internal competition. | Advertisers often misdiagnose a budget or format behavior issue as a targeting problem. | Before restructuring, check budgets and format behavior. Expect Shopping and Search to appear together; focus on whether the “must win” Search campaign is actually able to serve. | How campaign budgets work (to understand budget limits and overdelivery). |
| Performance Max vs Search overlap (especially Brand) | Performance Max is designed to complement Search and generally respects exact match keywords, but branded queries can still flow to Performance Max when Search is budget‑limited or narrowly targeted. | Can look like Performance Max is “stealing” brand traffic and make it harder to measure and control branded performance. | Use brand exclusions in Performance Max plus campaign‑ or account‑level negative keywords to stop branded or sensitive queries from entering Performance Max and to keep Brand Search as the owner of that intent. |
Brand exclusions in Performance Max Stopping Performance Max from serving on branded queries Account-level negative keywords |
| Systematic diagnosis of overlap | Instead of arguing which campaign “should win,” identify where overlap exists: by query, geography, brand vs non‑brand, product category, or channel type (Search vs Performance Max vs Shopping). | Objective mapping of overlap makes fixes clearer and reduces guesswork. |
Use a quick checklist: • Pull the search terms by campaign and find repeated high‑volume queries. • Check “Limited by budget” on the preferred campaign. • Compare location settings. • Confirm conversion goals and bid strategy alignment. • Identify “coverage” campaign types (Performance Max, DSA, broad/AI expansion). |
Search terms insights Target ads to geographic locations Choose your bid and budget |
| Litmus test: “Job of each campaign” | If you can’t describe each campaign’s job in one sentence (for example, “non‑brand high‑intent services in Texas”), internal overlap is very likely. | Vague or redundant campaign purposes lead to duplicated structures and cannibalization. | Define each campaign by clear intent and business role (brand vs non‑brand, geography, product line, or funnel stage). Avoid creating multiple campaigns with the same role. | Use location targeting and budget settings to operationalize distinct campaign “jobs”. |
| 1) Build campaigns around intent, not match type | Common mistake: multiple “non‑brand services” campaigns split only by match type or minor copy differences. | Causes duplicated search terms, split learning, and inconsistent results; harder for automation to learn. | Split at the campaign level by user intent and business priorities (for example, Brand vs Non‑brand, or service category), then use match types inside those campaigns to manage reach. | Search terms insights to confirm which intents each campaign is actually capturing. |
| 2) Use negative keywords to create “lanes” | Negatives are not only for irrelevant traffic; they are the main tool for traffic shaping between campaigns. | Without explicit negatives, multiple campaigns can stay eligible for the same queries, increasing internal overlap. |
• Decide which campaign “owns” each set of queries, then explicitly exclude those queries from other campaigns. • Use shared negative lists for governance (for example, “Brand Negatives,” “Careers,” “Competitors”). • Know practical limits: up to 20 shared negative lists and 5,000 negatives per list; account‑level list can hold up to 1,000 negatives. • Remember negatives don’t match close variants, so add key singular/plural or meaningfully different forms when fencing traffic tightly. |
Account limits for negative keyword lists Account-level negative keywords Add negative keywords |
| Account-level negative keywords as a broad “fence” | Account-level negative keywords exclude terms across Search and Shopping inventory in all relevant campaign types, including Performance Max. | Useful as a blunt instrument for brand safety and for blocking high‑risk or clearly unwanted traffic across the account. | Reserve account‑level negatives for the highest‑impact exclusions because you can only have up to 1,000 negative keywords at this level. | Account-level negative keywords |
| 3) Keep Performance Max from cannibalizing Brand | Even though exact match Brand Search should have priority, brand queries can go to Performance Max when Brand campaigns are budget‑constrained or more tightly targeted. | Can erode control over brand costs, messaging, and measurement. |
• Apply brand exclusions in Performance Max to block owned brand queries and variants. • Add campaign‑level negative keywords to Performance Max to block specific navigational, support, or sensitive terms on Search and Shopping inventory. • Remember these negatives affect Search and Shopping surfaces of Performance Max, which is where most overlap concerns sit. |
Brand exclusions in Performance Max Preventing Performance Max from serving on branded queries Account-level negative keywords |
| 4) Consolidate overlapping campaigns | Multiple campaigns with near‑identical settings and goals (including multiple Performance Max campaigns created over time) create self‑inflicted overlap. | Splits data and learning, increases volatility, and makes performance shifts harder to diagnose. | Consolidate redundant campaigns instead of trying to fix everything with negatives. Aim for fewer, stronger campaigns aligned to clear intents, with enough volume for automation to learn. | Performance Max feature compatibility (for how Performance Max behaves with other tooling such as shared budgets and portfolios). |
| 5) Fix budget leakage and “Limited by budget” issues | Many overlap problems are actually budget problems: high‑intent or Brand campaigns are constrained, so other eligible campaigns (including Performance Max) soak up demand. | If the “priority” campaign can’t serve, Google will route traffic to other campaigns, changing performance and attribution. |
• Make sure Brand and high‑intent non‑brand campaigns are not frequently “Limited by budget.” • When campaigns truly share the same intent and goal, use a shared budget so spend can flow to whichever campaign can capture demand on a given day—avoiding manual reallocations. • Don’t mix “must‑win” and experimental campaigns in the same shared budget. |
Choose your bid and budget About shared budgets Manage a shared budget across campaigns |
| 6) Align location strategy | Different campaigns can use different geographic strategies (“Presence” vs “Presence or interest” and different regions/radii), which can create unexpected reach and apparent cannibalization. | Misaligned location settings distort performance comparisons and can cause one campaign to capture traffic that another was supposed to own. | Keep location and language strategy consistent for campaigns that should be comparable. Deliberately make them different only when geography itself is the segmentation logic (different states, store radiuses, etc.). |
Target ads to geographic locations Performance Max location behavior |
| 7) Treat DSA and AI expansion as coverage layers—with fences | Dynamic Search Ads and AI-driven query expansion can discover incremental queries, but will overlap with your core keyword set unless fenced. | Without controls, coverage campaigns can “steal” traffic and data from your intentionally built Search structures. |
• Let these campaigns discover new queries, but block your highest‑priority terms with negative keywords. • Use page/URL exclusions or page feeds to prevent coverage layers from hitting sections of the site that shouldn’t generate ads or that are already well covered. |
About Dynamic Search Ads Search terms insights (to see what coverage layers are finding) |
| Practical “no‑internal‑competition” structure | Clean baseline structure that minimizes overlap while staying scalable. | Reduces unintentional cannibalization while still allowing Google’s automation to optimize within defined lanes. |
• Separate Search into Brand vs Non‑brand, and keep the Brand campaign unconstrained by budget. • Run Performance Max as an incremental layer with brand exclusions and targeted negatives for sensitive terms. • Maintain disciplined, themed negative keyword lists applied consistently to shape traffic lanes. • Only add more campaigns when there is a real business reason (different geos, budgets, goals, or meaningfully different intent). • Accept that some overlap will remain—but it’s intentional, controlled, and measurable. |
Brand exclusions in Performance Max Account-level negative keywords About shared budgets |
Let AI handle
the Google Ads grunt work
If you’re trying to reduce internal competition in Google Ads—by making sure each campaign has a clear “job,” keeping budgets from leaking when a priority campaign is limited, and using negative keywords and Performance Max brand exclusions to create clean traffic “lanes”—Blobr can help you operationalize that day to day. It connects to your Google Ads account, monitors search terms and campaign behavior, and uses specialized AI agents (like the Negative Keywords Brainstormer) to surface practical, ready-to-apply recommendations that keep intent ownership clear across Brand, Non-brand, and coverage layers such as Performance Max or DSA, while you stay in control of what gets changed and where.
What “internal competition” actually looks like in Google Ads
When advertisers say their campaigns are “competing against each other,” they’re usually describing one of three problems: the same search intent is being covered in multiple places, budget is being pulled away from the campaign they want to win, or reporting becomes so fragmented that it’s hard to optimize with confidence.
The important nuance is that in keyword-based Search, overlapping keywords in the same account don’t behave like two separate advertisers bidding against each other. Only one keyword (or eligible targeting method) is selected to enter the auction for a given search, and that selection follows a predictable prioritization framework.
How Google Ads decides which campaign/ad group gets the query
At a practical level, you can think about internal “winner selection” in this order:
First, an exact match keyword that is identical to the user’s query gets the strongest preference. Next, phrase/broad match (and certain AI-driven query expansion features) that are identical can be considered. If nothing is identical, the platform uses relevance signals to prioritize the most relevant ad group, and if multiple options remain, Ad Rank is effectively the tie-breaker.
There are two common exceptions that make internal overlap feel worse than it “should.” One is when the preferred campaign is restricted by budget, in which case another eligible campaign can take that traffic. The other is that different ad formats don’t always follow the same preference rules, so you can still see Shopping ads appearing alongside Search ads even when you have strong Search keyword coverage.
Why Performance Max can feel like it’s “stealing” Search traffic
Performance Max is designed to complement keyword-based Search and generally respects your keyword targeting. If a user’s query is identical to an exact match keyword in your Search campaign, Search should be prioritized. However, branded overlap can still happen, particularly when your Search campaign is limited by budget or when Search targeting is tighter than the Performance Max campaign. When that happens, you need to add explicit controls (brand exclusions and/or negative keywords) to prevent unwanted overlap.
A systematic way to diagnose overlap (without guessing)
Internal competition is easiest to fix when you stop debating “which campaign should win” and start documenting where the overlap is happening: by query, by geography, by brand/non-brand intent, by product category, or by channel type (Search vs Performance Max vs Shopping).
Use this quick diagnostic checklist first
- Pull the Search terms report by campaign and identify repeated high-volume queries showing up across multiple campaigns (especially brand terms, “near me” terms, and top converters).
- Check for “Limited by budget” on the campaign you want to be the primary winner. If it’s constrained, you should expect traffic to leak into other eligible campaigns.
- Compare location settings between overlapping campaigns (for example, “Presence” vs “Presence or interest”), because that can create unintended reach differences that look like cannibalization.
- Confirm conversion goals and bidding alignment across campaigns that are fighting for the same intent. Even small differences in goals, targets, or settings can cause noticeable performance shifts and make the overlap hard to diagnose.
- Identify any “coverage” campaign types (Performance Max, Dynamic Search Ads, broad match expansion/AI features) that are designed to find incremental queries—these often overlap with less mature Search structures unless you fence them in.
The simplest litmus test: “What is the job of each campaign?”
If you can’t describe each campaign’s job in one sentence (for example, “non-brand high-intent services in Texas,” “brand protection nationwide,” or “shopping feed scale with efficiency target”), internal overlap is almost guaranteed. Most accounts that suffer from internal competition aren’t “over-advertising”—they’re under-structured.
How to avoid internal competition between campaigns (the fixes that actually hold up)
1) Build campaigns around intent first, not match type
The cleanest accounts separate campaigns by user intent and business priorities, then use match types inside those campaigns to control reach. For example, splitting “Brand” vs “Non-brand” is still one of the highest-ROI structural moves because it gives you budget control, messaging control, and cleaner measurement.
Where people go wrong is creating multiple campaigns that all target the same “non-brand services” intent, differentiated only by match type or minor ad copy variations. That’s the fastest route to duplicated search terms, split learning, and inconsistent results.
2) Use negative keywords to create “lanes,” not just to block irrelevant traffic
Negative keywords aren’t only for excluding junk queries—they’re your primary tool for traffic shaping across campaigns. If you want Campaign A to own a set of queries, Campaign B should explicitly not be eligible for those same queries.
For scalability, lean on shared negative keyword lists to keep governance consistent. You can maintain multiple lists (with meaningful themes like “Brand Negatives,” “Careers,” “Free/DIY,” “Competitors,” etc.) and apply them across the right campaigns. It’s also worth knowing the practical limits: you can create up to 20 negative keyword lists per account, and each list can contain up to 5,000 negative keywords.
If you need a blunt instrument for brand safety or broad exclusions across Search and Shopping inventory, account-level negative keywords apply broadly across relevant campaign types. Keep in mind there’s a limit of 1,000 account-level negative keywords, so reserve these for your highest-impact exclusions.
One advanced “gotcha” that matters for overlap: negative keywords don’t match close variants the same way positive keywords can, so you may need to add plural/singular or meaningfully different variants if you’re trying to tightly fence traffic between campaigns.
3) Prevent Performance Max from cannibalizing Brand (and other “owned” intent)
If you run both Search and Performance Max, assume you’ll need explicit overlap controls—especially for brand. Even when Search should have priority for identical exact match queries, budget restriction or stricter targeting can cause branded queries to slip into Performance Max.
The strongest modern approach is to use brand exclusions in Performance Max to keep it from serving on branded queries you want Search to own. Brand lists are particularly efficient because they handle misspellings, variants, and multiple languages without you having to build endless keyword variations.
On top of that, you can add negative keywords directly to Performance Max to block specific terms on Search and Shopping inventory. This is especially useful for protecting specific product names, internal navigation queries, customer support queries, or sensitive competitor terms that you simply don’t want Performance Max to touch.
One important operational detail: Performance Max negative keywords apply to Search and Shopping inventory, not every surface Performance Max can serve on. That’s still enough to solve most “cannibalization” complaints, because the bulk of overlap anxiety happens on Search queries.
4) Consolidate campaigns when overlap is self-inflicted
If you have multiple campaigns with near-identical settings and goals, you’re often better off consolidating rather than trying to “negative keyword” your way out of chaos. This is especially true when you’ve duplicated structures over time (for example, multiple Performance Max campaigns created from upgrades or reorganizations).
While multiple Performance Max campaigns in the same account won’t truly compete in the classic sense, performance can shift between them, and the campaign with the highest Ad Rank enters eligible auctions. From a management standpoint, consolidation reduces fragmentation, stabilizes learning, and makes it easier to diagnose what changed when performance moves.
5) Fix budget leakage: make sure your “priority” campaign can actually serve
Many internal competition issues are really budget problems wearing a targeting disguise. If your brand Search campaign (or your highest-intent non-brand campaign) is frequently constrained, the system will naturally serve other eligible campaigns more often, including Performance Max or broader non-brand campaigns.
If multiple campaigns share the same goal and you’re constantly reallocating budgets manually, a shared budget can reduce internal friction by letting spend flow to the campaigns that can capture demand on a given day. This can be a win for efficiency, but only when the campaigns grouped together truly have aligned intent and success metrics. If you mix “experimental” and “must-win” campaigns in the same shared budget, you’ll recreate the problem in a new form.
6) Align location strategy to avoid accidental overlap
Location settings quietly create internal competition. Two campaigns can look “different” on paper, but if one uses broader location intent targeting (for example, reaching people who show interest in a location) and another uses stricter presence-based targeting, you can end up with unexpected reach, uneven volume, and confusing splits in performance.
A simple best practice is to keep location and language strategy consistent among campaigns that should be comparable, and deliberately different only when geography is the point of segmentation (such as separate states, separate store radiuses, or separate service areas).
7) Treat Dynamic Search Ads and AI-driven expansion as coverage layers—with fences
Dynamic Search Ads and AI-driven query expansion features are excellent for incremental reach, but they can overlap with your core keyword set unless you proactively add exclusions. The right mindset is: let these campaign types discover new queries, but don’t let them take credit for the queries you’ve already intentionally built and optimized in Search.
The most reliable way to do that is a combination of negative keywords (to block your highest-priority terms from the coverage layer) plus page/URL exclusions (to prevent the system from routing traffic to sections of the site that shouldn’t generate ads).
A practical “no-internal-competition” structure you can implement
If you want a clean, scalable setup that minimizes overlap in most industries, start with a clear separation of Brand vs Non-brand in Search, ensure the Brand campaign is never budget constrained, then run Performance Max as an incremental layer with brand exclusions (and targeted negative keywords for any sensitive or protected terms). Round it out with disciplined negative keyword lists applied consistently across campaigns, and only split additional campaigns when you can articulate a real business reason (different geographies, different budgets, different goals, or meaningfully different intent).
When you do this well, “internal competition” mostly disappears—not because you eliminated overlap entirely, but because you made it intentional, controlled, and measurable.
