Case study
Running a 17-campaign account without losing the plot
Universidad Taller 5 is a design and architecture university in Colombia. Its Google Ads account is the largest and most structurally complex we manage: seventeen live campaigns in Spanish, in Colombian pesos, competing for students against local institutions. This is what disciplined paid search looks like at that size.
What the account actually looked like
- 17
- live campaigns structured by intent rather than left to sprawl
- 2
- roles for DSA used as a discovery tool, not a set-and-forget campaign
The context
Student recruitment is unlike most lead generation. Demand is seasonal and tied to enrolment windows, so being underfunded during the deciding weeks costs a year rather than a month. The consideration period is long, the decision is high-stakes, and the institution competes both on programme and on reputation. On top of that, everything runs in Spanish for a Colombian audience, which means the campaigns have to be built around the language applicants actually use, not a translation of an English keyword list.
Structure by intent, not by convenience
Seventeen campaigns sounds like sprawl until you look at what they separate. Someone searching the university by name has already decided to consider it. Someone searching a programme is comparing options. Someone searching a subject area is still exploring. Those deserve different budgets, different bidding, and different ad copy, and merging them means the highest-intent traffic quietly pays for the browsing. The structure exists so budget can be moved deliberately rather than averaged away.
Dynamic Search Ads as a listening device
An institution with many programmes generates far more genuine search variations than anyone will ever write into a keyword list. We run Dynamic Search Ads deliberately as a discovery mechanism: they catch the long tail, and more importantly they report back the real phrasing prospective students use, which then graduates into properly structured keyword campaigns. Left unattended DSA will spend enthusiastically on the wrong intent, so it is paired with aggressive negative-keyword work rather than treated as a set-and-forget campaign.
Cleanup is the actual job
Large accounts accumulate: campaigns built for a semester that ended, bidding strategies chosen for conditions that changed, keyword overlap where two campaigns bid against each other. We run structural cleanup as routine work rather than a one-off audit, then watch search-term quality and cost per enquiry for a fortnight afterwards, because in a seasonal account a change made at the wrong moment is expensive in a way it would not be elsewhere.
How we manage PPCHow we judge it
Not by clicks or cost per lead, but by whether enquiries come from people who could realistically enrol, and whether budget was present during the windows that decide a cohort. We do not publish clients' commercial performance data, and we would treat yours the same way. What is fair to say is that this is an ongoing, weekly-managed engagement, and that it is the most structurally demanding account in our portfolio.
Frequently asked questions
Do you run campaigns outside Israel and in other languages?
Yes. Taller 5 is a Colombian university, so the account runs in Spanish, in Colombian pesos, against a local competitive set and a local academic calendar. The campaign craft is the same everywhere; the market knowledge has to be built with the client, who understands their applicants far better than any agency will.
What is a DSA campaign and why use one here?
Dynamic Search Ads let Google match queries against your site content rather than a keyword list you wrote. For an institution with many programmes, that is useful for two reasons: it covers long-tail programme searches nobody thought to add as keywords, and it surfaces the real language prospective students use, which then feeds the keyword campaigns. It also needs tight control, because left alone it will happily spend on the wrong intent.
Why so many campaigns in one account?
Because different intents deserve different budgets and different bids. Someone searching the institution by name is not the same as someone comparing programmes, who is not the same as someone browsing a subject area. Collapsing those into one campaign is simpler to manage and reliably worse, since the highest-intent traffic ends up subsidising the rest.
How do you handle education marketing specifically?
Demand is seasonal and tied to enrolment periods, so pacing matters more than in most categories: the budget has to be there when applicants are actually deciding. And the conversion that counts is a genuine enquiry from someone who could enrol, not a form fill from someone browsing.
Got an account that has grown messy?
Most large accounts are not badly built, just unattended. We will audit the structure, the search terms, and the tracking, and tell you plainly what we would change.