With reports surfacing about a Google Ads tool unexpectedly reactivating paused keywords, we’re sitting down with digital marketing expert Anastasia Braitsik to understand the real-world impact. As a global leader in data-driven advertising, Anastasia will help us cut through the noise and explore what this means for account managers on the ground. We’ll delve into the practical consequences for campaign budgets, the erosion of trust in platform automation, and the concrete steps advertisers should take to protect their accounts. This conversation will unpack how to identify these changes, manage the fallout, and communicate the risk to clients in this uncertain environment.
Advertisers are reporting that the “Low activity system bulk changes” tool is re-enabling paused keywords. What specific entries should managers look for in their activity logs, and what are the first performance indicators that suggest an unintended keyword reactivation has occurred?
The first place you’ll see the evidence is right in your account’s change history. You need to filter for changes made by the user “Low activity system bulk changes.” The log entry itself will explicitly state that a keyword was “Enabled.” It’s a jarring sight, especially since we’ve historically associated this tool with pausing things, not turning them back on. The first red flag in your performance data is often a sudden, unexplained spike in impressions or clicks in a campaign you considered stable or intentionally limited. You might notice your daily budget depleting faster than usual or see a dip in your overall return on ad spend because a less efficient, previously paused keyword is suddenly back in the auction, pulling in traffic you never intended to pay for.
When this system unexpectedly enables keywords, how does it concretely impact campaign budgets and pacing in a tightly managed account? Please walk us through a scenario demonstrating how this could quietly derail performance metrics before being noticed.
Imagine you’re managing a high-stakes e-commerce account with a very strict daily budget. You’ve spent months testing and have a set of highly-optimized, top-performing keywords running. All the old, low-converting, or broad-match keywords from previous experiments are paused. Then, this system change happens overnight. It reactivates a handful of those old, expensive broad-match terms. Before your morning coffee, those keywords have already spent 40% of the daily budget on unqualified traffic, leaving little for your proven performers. By the time you log in, your cost-per-acquisition has skyrocketed, your conversion rate has tanked, and your best keywords have been starved of the budget they needed to drive sales. It’s a silent killer for performance because it doesn’t trigger an obvious error alert; the campaign just starts performing poorly for reasons that aren’t immediately clear until you dig deep into the logs.
Historically, this tool was known for pausing inactive elements, not reactivating them. How does this reversal in behavior affect the trust between advertisers and Google’s automation, and what new challenges does it create for agencies that rely on paused keywords for structural control?
It creates a significant trust deficit. As advertisers, we operate on the fundamental assumption that “paused” means “off.” It’s a foundational control mechanism. We use paused keywords to preserve historical data, to structure A/B tests, or to temporarily hold seasonal terms without deleting them. When an automated system overrides that direct, manual instruction, it feels like the platform is working against you. For agencies, this is a nightmare. We build complex account structures and promise clients a certain level of control and predictability. This change introduces a volatile, unpredictable variable. It forces us to add new, time-consuming audit layers to our workflow just to ensure the platform isn’t undoing our strategic decisions behind our backs.
For an account manager needing to address this, what is a practical, step-by-step routine for auditing their change history? Beyond using the “Undo” function, are there any scripts or alert systems you recommend for more proactive monitoring of these automated changes?
First, make checking the change history a daily ritual, at least for now. Filter specifically for changes made by the “Low activity system bulk changes” user. Look for any action that says “Enabled” next to a keyword or ad group you know should be paused. If you find one, the “Undo” function is your immediate first aid. For a more proactive approach, you could set up an automated rule or a simple Google Ads Script. A script could run every hour, scan the change history for these specific automated changes, and send you an immediate email alert if it finds a keyword being re-enabled. This moves you from a reactive position, where you’re finding the damage after it’s done, to a proactive one where you can intervene almost instantly.
With Google yet to clarify if this is a bug or an intentional feature, how should advertisers communicate this uncertainty and risk to their clients or stakeholders? Please detail what a transparent conversation about managing this potential account volatility would sound like.
Transparency is absolutely key here. I would tell a client something like this: “We’re currently tracking an unconfirmed behavior in Google Ads where a system tool is, in some cases, automatically re-enabling paused keywords. While we haven’t seen it in your account yet, we want you to be aware of the potential risk. We’ve implemented an enhanced daily monitoring protocol to catch any such changes immediately. This means we’re adding an extra layer of auditing to our daily routine to ensure your budget is only spent on the keywords we’ve strategically selected. We’re staying on top of industry news and will let you know as soon as Google provides any official clarification.” This approach demonstrates proactive management, acknowledges the risk without causing panic, and reassures them that you are their safeguard against this platform volatility.
What is your forecast for the balance between manual advertiser control and automated system changes within platforms like Google Ads?
My forecast is that we are on a firm, unyielding trajectory toward greater automation. The balance will continue to tip away from granular, manual control and toward system-led management. While this can bring incredible efficiency, this current situation is a stark reminder of the potential pitfalls. The future isn’t about fighting automation, but about mastering it and demanding transparency. We’ll see a greater need for ‘human-on-the-loop’ strategies, where experts don’t pull every lever but are tasked with setting the strategic direction, defining the guardrails for the AI, and, most importantly, acting as the critical auditors who can spot when the machine goes astray. The role of the advertiser is shifting from a hands-on technician to a strategic overseer of an automated system.
