Account consolidation in Google Ads is the act of merging campaigns and aggregating data to make Smart Bidding more effective. It involves simplifying your account structure to provide better input (more data) for the Smart Bidding algorithm, which should lead to better output (results). The goal is to enable Smart Bidding to optimize towards the same marginal cost per conversion across all related traffic, leading to the highest possible conversion volume at a given efficiency target.

Account consolidation is effective for Google Ads performance because it allows Smart Bidding to have maximum flexibility and access to more data. This enables it to compete in more auctions and find the most conversions at a singular efficiency target. By consolidating traffic, Smart Bidding can optimize towards the same marginal cost per conversion across all related traffic, which in theory, leads to the highest possible conversion volume at a given efficiency target.

To consolidate campaign structures in Google Ads, you should follow the 'Golden Rule' of campaign structures: 'Always consolidate as much traffic as possible. Only segment when there is a good reason to do so.' Start by consolidating and aggregating data, and then consider segmenting only if there is a compelling business reason, such as different business objectives, specific budgets, campaign-specific goals or settings, providing additional insights or reporting, addressing attribution discrepancies, or isolating an experiment.

The common mistakes to avoid when consolidating Google Ads campaigns include:

1. Unnecessary segmentations, such as segmenting based on match types, locations, demographics, or audiences, which can harm performance.
2. Consolidating Branded & Non-Branded traffic, which typically have different goals and should be kept separate.
3. Not considering cannibalization between Performance Max (pMax) & Search campaigns.
4. Not focusing on simplicity, which can make management more difficult and hinder performance.

To consolidate Ad Groups for better performance in Google Ads, create one ad group per creative theme, ensuring a tight correlation between keywords, ad copy, and landing pages. Aim for more than 2,000 impressions per month per ad group for asset performance labels. Only segment ad groups if necessary, for reasons such as creative relevance, different user intents, high-performers, different ad messages, directly relevant landing pages, applying negative keywords, different efficiency targets, or isolating experiments.