The account structure conversation in SaaS Google Ads tends to focus on what produces the best performance. That is a fine concern. The more practical concern, the one we end up fixing more often, is what produces an account that the next marketing team can take over without spending a quarter just figuring out what the previous team did.
This is the structure we recommend for any SaaS Google Ads account that is going to be managed by more than one person across more than one year.
Campaign structure follows funnel intent, not product feature
The most legible Google Ads account structures we have seen separate campaigns by funnel intent first and product feature second. A typical SaaS account has campaigns for branded search, competitor search, category head terms, comparison shopping, problem first searches, and so on. Inside each campaign, ad groups split by product feature or use case as needed.
This structure makes performance reporting roll up cleanly by intent, which is how leadership thinks about the funnel. It also makes budget allocation decisions natural because each campaign maps to a recognizable stage of the buyer's journey.
Naming conventions are not optional
The naming convention you pick for campaigns and ad groups is the contract between the current account manager and the next one. A good convention encodes campaign intent, audience, and geography in a fixed order so that the name itself communicates the campaign's purpose without anyone needing to open it.
A workable example: Search NB Category US, where Search is the campaign type, NB indicates non brand, Category indicates the keyword theme, and US indicates the geography. Apply the same convention to every campaign in the account. The naming convention is more important than which specific words you choose; consistency is the value.
Single intent ad groups
Inside each campaign, ad groups should hold keywords that share a single user intent. The ad group is the smallest unit at which the platform optimizes ad relevance and landing page experience, and groups that span multiple intents force compromises in both.
For most SaaS campaigns, single intent ad groups end up being smaller than the ad groups in poorly structured accounts. Ten to twenty keywords per ad group is typical. Smaller ad groups feel inefficient until you see the Quality Score and conversion rate improvements they produce.
Negative keywords belong at the right level
Account level negatives, campaign level negatives, and ad group level negatives each have a role. The structure that holds up over time uses account level negatives for terms that should never trigger an ad regardless of campaign, campaign level negatives for terms that should not trigger inside a specific funnel stage, and ad group level negatives sparingly for the specific cases where the granularity matters.
Maintain the negative keyword lists like real assets. Document why each list exists, who owns it, and how often it gets reviewed. Stale negative lists become the source of mysterious performance problems six months after the person who built them leaves.
Conversion goals at the account level
The conversion goals an account optimizes against should be set deliberately at the account level and reviewed quarterly. Most SaaS accounts inherit a conversion goal set that has accumulated over the years and includes microconversions that distort the bidding signal.
Restrict the optimization goals to your real revenue events. Demote microconversions to secondary goals that are tracked but not optimized against. The bidding algorithms work meaningfully better when the goals are clean.
Documentation lives in the account
The single most underused field in Google Ads is the campaign and ad group note feature. Use it. Document the campaign's purpose, the audience it targets, and the most recent significant change with a date and reason. Six months from now, the note is the difference between the next account manager understanding the campaign and the next account manager rebuilding it from scratch because they assumed the structure made no sense.
Want to talk about applying any of this to your account? Send us a note and a senior expert will reply within one business day.