B Evidence Grade B Graded accuracy verified by the review judge Safe to Cite Dated

75%

75% -- wasted ad budget share for Google Ads (2020)

Name: Wasted Ad Budget Share Statistics
Creator: Lighthouse Intelligence
Published: 2026-10-03

2020 · Disruptive Advertising

Over 75% of the average Google Ads budget is wasted on search queries that do not convert or add value to the business.

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Attribution: Disruptive Advertising View source

Lighthouse Research Team

Last verified: 2026-10-03 · How we verify data →

Source verified Evidence graded

Value

75%

Unit

Percentage

Data Vintage

2020

Entity

Google Ads

Evidence Quality

Strong, reliable evidence

Sourced from a well-regarded research firm or industry leader with transparent methodology and a reasonably large sample.

61/100 confidence

Single source - not yet corroborated

Score breakdown

Extraction

Source Trust

Citation Chain

Independence

Methodology

Freshness

Source

Disruptive Advertising Primary Tier B

https://nowskills.co.uk/common-ppc-mistakes-avoid/ ↗

Confidence: 53/100 Vintage: 2020 Channel: Deep Crawl

Source Article

Common PPC Mistakes To Avoid

Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising can deliver fast results, but it’s easy to waste money if campaigns aren’t managed correctly. Over 76% of Google Ads budgets are wasted on poor targeting and irrelevant clicks. To avoid this, focus on these key areas: - Broad Match Keywords: Using these too often attr…

Original Research

Disruptive Advertising · Original study ↗

Methodology

Study by Disruptive Advertising

Methodology documented

Trend Over Time

Period	Value	Change
2020 (current)	75%
2025	76%	+1.3%

Segmentation

Industrymarketing

Cite this stat

Plain Text

Google Ads: 75% wasted ad budget share. Source: Disruptive Advertising (2020). Via Lighthouse Intelligence -- https://lighthousedata.io/data/disruptive-ads-budget-wasted-75

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<blockquote cite="https://lighthousedata.io/data/disruptive-ads-budget-wasted-75" style="border-left:3px solid #2563eb;padding:12px 16px;margin:16px 0;font-family:system-ui,sans-serif;background:#f0f4ff;"><strong>75%</strong> -- wasted ad budget share for Google Ads<br><small>Source: Disruptive Advertising (2020) · <a href="https://lighthousedata.io/data/disruptive-ads-budget-wasted-75" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lighthouse Intelligence</a></small></blockquote>

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