Tapper Lift
What Lift does
Not all wasted budget comes from bad traffic. A lot of it comes from the account itself: a campaign that hasn't converted in weeks, keywords absorbing clicks and returning nothing, a bid target set so far from reality that Google's bidding can't work against it, or Display expansion left switched on by default.
The Lift tab runs a set of checks across your connected Google Ads account and surfaces each finding as a card, with the exact change to make and what it's worth per day.
Findings are ranked by daily impact, so the top of the list is always the biggest thing to fix.
Recommendations are apply-it-yourself
Every recommendation in Lift is apply-it-yourself.
Tapper identifies the issue, shows the evidence behind it and tells you what change to make. You make the change in Google Ads, then return to the card and select Mark as actioned so it's recorded against your account history.
Lookback window
Lift uses an account-level lookback window across its performance checks.
The available windows are:
- 7 days
- 14 days
- 30 days
The default is 30 days.
Some checks use additional historical data where needed. Search-term and placement checks can use up to 90 days of data.
Reading a card
The category badge tells you what kind of finding it is:
- Waste: money being spent inefficiently right now. Fixing it stops or reduces the loss.
- Upside: profitable spend you're currently leaving on the table.
- Settings: account or campaign settings that should be reviewed.
The impact figure is shown per day, and its meaning follows the category:
Label | Meaning |
|---|---|
Wasted spend $163/day | Estimated daily spend associated with the issue until it is fixed. |
Potential upside +$223/day | Additional profitable spend or return available to you. |
Affects $242/day of spend | The volume of daily spend governed by the setting. It is used to rank the recommendation's importance. |
Evidence expands to show the underlying numbers the check fired on: conversions, spend, CTR, the evaluation window and any thresholds used.
Timeline shows when the issue was first detected and when it was last seen. A recommendation detected weeks ago and still active means the condition has remained present.
Audit trail records who marked the recommendation as actioned or dismissed, and when.
Waste
Check | What it finds | What to do |
|---|---|---|
No-conversion campaign waste | A conversion campaign with zero conversions during the selected lookback window after its spend passes the applicable threshold. Where available, the threshold is based on the benchmark CPA for comparable brand or non-brand campaigns, rather than mixing the whole account together. | Pause the campaign or rework its targeting, creative and landing page before spending further. |
Low-conversion campaign waste | A campaign with only 1 to 4 conversions during the selected lookback window after its spend passes the applicable threshold. This catches heavily spending campaigns that have generated some conversions but remain close to no-conversion performance. | Review the campaign's targeting, bidding, creative and landing page before spending further. |
Low-efficiency CPA | A campaign with a Target CPA where actual CPA is 3× or more above target, based on at least 5 conversions. | Rework the campaign to bring CPA back toward target. |
Low-efficiency ROAS | A campaign with a Target ROAS achieving one-third or less of its target, based on at least 5 conversions. | Rework the campaign to improve return on ad spend. |
Pause losing ad | An ad performing significantly worse than the best ad in its ad group at 95% confidence. Each compared ad requires 1,000+ impressions and recent delivery. Lift considers conversion performance and CTR, with click performance used where conversion data is too thin. | Pause the underperforming ad so budget consolidates behind stronger creative. |
Pause keyword | A keyword performing materially worse than the other keywords in its ad group. Zero-conversion keywords must pass the applicable spend threshold; keywords with 5+ conversions are evaluated on CPA. The campaign is used as a fallback when the ad group does not contain enough data. The top 30% of keywords by conversions are protected. | Pause the underperforming keyword. |
Add negative keyword | A search term from the Google Ads search query report that has zero conversions after passing the applicable spend threshold and is not already covered by an existing keyword or negative. Uses up to 90 days of data. An active bid keyword will never be proposed as a negative. | Add the search term as an exact-match negative keyword. |
Disable Search Partners | Search Partner traffic running at 3× or more the CPA of Google Search, with at least 5 conversions on each side. | Turn off Search Partners for the campaign. |
Disable Display on Search | Display traffic on a Search campaign that passes the applicable spend threshold with zero conversions, or runs at 3× the Search CPA on 5+ conversions. | Turn off Include Display Network for that Search campaign. |
Exclude placements | A site, app or channel that passes the applicable spend threshold with zero conversions, or runs at 3× benchmark CPA on 5+ conversions. Uses up to 90 days of placement data. | Add the placement to the campaign's placement exclusions. |
How benchmark thresholds work
Where a check relies on benchmark CPA, Lift compares like-for-like campaigns where possible.
Brand campaigns are benchmarked against brand campaigns. Non-brand campaigns are benchmarked against non-brand campaigns.
This prevents a low-CPA brand campaign from distorting the benchmark for higher-CPA non-brand activity.
Where brand/non-brand segmentation cannot be established, the account benchmark can be used with a stricter 5× threshold.
For checks involving zero conversions, the trigger is expressed as a spend threshold. CPA itself cannot be calculated when there are no conversions.
For example:
Zero conversions AND spend above the applicable threshold.
Upside
Check | What it finds | What to do |
|---|---|---|
Raise budget cap | A campaign at least 8 days old on its own budget that reached 85%+ of its daily budget on 7 of the last 8 days while beating its Target CPA. | Raise the daily budget to capture additional profitable volume. |
Settings
Settings checks identify configurations that may have been enabled intentionally or accidentally.
These checks appear as soon as the setting is detected. They do not wait for enough conversions or performance data to determine whether the setting has already caused an efficiency problem.
Where applicable, Lift can therefore surface the same issue in two stages:
- Flag the configuration immediately so it can be reviewed.
- Flag its performance impact later if enough data accumulates.
Check | What it finds | What to do |
|---|---|---|
Search Partners enabled | Search Partners is enabled on a Search campaign. This is flagged immediately without waiting for Search Partner conversion data. | Review whether Search Partners is intended for the campaign. Turn it off if it isn't. |
Display Network enabled on Search | Include Display Network is enabled on a Search campaign. The setting is flagged immediately without waiting for Display performance data. | Review whether Display expansion is intended. Turn it off for Search-only campaigns. |
Automatically created assets enabled | Automatically created assets are enabled for the account or campaign. | Review whether automatically generated assets are intended and disable them where appropriate. |
AI Max features enabled | AI Max functionality has been enabled on a campaign, including features such as text customisation and other applicable AI Max settings. | Review the enabled AI Max features and disable anything that was not intentionally activated. |
Location inconsistencies | Potential inconsistencies across campaign location settings. Lift provides a summary of the affected campaigns with counts by issue category. | Review the affected campaigns and correct location settings that do not match the intended targeting strategy. |
Target nudge | A campaign where achieved CPA or ROAS is more than 20% away from its target, based on at least 10 conversions. | Move the Target CPA or Target ROAS toward the campaign's actual performance. |
Budget pacing | An account projected to finish the month more than 15% over or under the monthly budget set in Tapper. | Adjust pacing so projected month-end spend moves toward the monthly budget. |
Understanding Target nudge
This one is worth a note because the number attached to it behaves differently from the others.
Smart Bidding works toward the Target CPA or Target ROAS you set. When that target sits a long way from what the campaign actually achieves, it can stop reflecting realistic campaign performance.
Target far too aggressive
Say Target CPA is 50.00 but the campaign genuinely delivers at 113.38. Google is being asked to reach a CPA materially below demonstrated performance. Raising the target toward reality can give the campaign more room to deliver.
Target far too loose
Say Target CPA is 250.00 while the campaign is consistently achieving a much lower CPA. The target may allow substantially more cost per conversion than current performance requires.
We only flag a target once actual performance sits more than 20% away from the target, based on at least 10 conversions, so small normal fluctuations don't generate noise.
The figure on a Target nudge card, for example Affects $242/day of spend, is the amount of daily spend governed by that setting. It's how Lift ranks the recommendation.
Marking recommendations as actioned
Once you've made a change in Google Ads:
- Return to the recommendation in Lift.
- Select Mark as actioned.
This records the change in the audit trail and removes the card from your open list. Your account history is preserved, making it straightforward to see what was changed and when.
If a recommendation doesn't apply to your situation, such as a deliberately unprofitable brand campaign, a test you're running on purpose or a placement you keep for strategic reasons, select Dismiss instead.
Where to find it
From your Tapper dashboard, select Lift from the left-hand navigation.
Updated on: 07/09/2026
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