My Google Ads campaign burned $1400 in 8 days because I forgot one checkbox, watch your settings

Ray Young · 2026-10-03T14:05:05.413058+00:00

So I run ads for a small flooring company here in Boise, and back on March 3rd I launched what I thought was a tight little campaign for their spring promo. Set up the keywords, wrote the ads, capped the daily budget at $50, felt pretty good about it. Eight days later I log in and the thing has spent $1,400 and I'm staring at the screen in my kitchen at 11pm. Turns out I left the default on for the Display Network and my ads got blasted across every junk site you can think of, plus some mobile app placements that had zero to do with flooring. I had maybe 40 clicks that could ever turn into a lead, and the rest was pure noise. I paused the whole thing, pulled the placement report, and found one site that had eaten almost $300 by itself. Now I check that network setting every single time before I hit publish, and I'm setting up a shared negative placement list too. Anyone else get burned by a default setting you didn't even know was on, and what else should I be double checking before launch?

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My Google Ads campaign burned $1400 in 8 days because I forgot one checkbox, watch your settings | Digital Marketing - Guest Forum