The 2026 No-Fluff PPC Housekeeping Guide to Fix Your Google, Meta & Microsoft Accounts

As the dust settles from Q4 and dashboards finally stop screaming, January gives you something rare in paid media, breathing room.

Space to rethink.

Space to re-evaluate.

Space to clean up everything you didn’t have time for during peak… which, let’s be honest, is a lot.

Most advertisers roll straight into new campaigns, refreshed KPIs and bold 2026 plans, all while running accounts that are still carrying the weight of last year’s clutter. 

Old events. Stale audiences. Abandoned tests. Creative fatigue. 

Feed issues you promised you’d fix “after Black Friday.” Settings that suited Q4 but make absolutely no sense now.

This is the housekeeping guide that cuts through the noise and shows you what actually needs resetting, the fixes that make your account cheaper to run, easier to optimise and far more stable going into 2026.

Why Housekeeping Truly Matters

Every PPC account collects mess.

Not because you’re doing anything wrong, but because advertising platforms evolve constantly, business priorities shift, testing accelerates in Q4, and automation keeps making changes in the background.

Individually, none of these things break your account. But together? They drag down performance quietly, steadily and expensively.

January is your reset button. Lower CPCs, calmer audiences, more predictable behaviour.The perfect moment to tidy the engine before you expect it to scale again.

A clean account learns faster, wastes less budget and gives you cleaner data, which becomes a huge advantage for the rest of the year.

Clean Up Your Conversions First, Because Everything Depends on Them

If your conversion data is messy, misaligned or outdated, the platform’s optimisation will be too.This is the highest-impact housekeeping task, and the one most people delay for far too long.

For most businesses that don’t live or die by Q4, December/January is your main conversion housekeeping window. Things have calmed down, behaviour is more normal, and you finally have the headspace to fix what drifted across the year.

For eCommerce brands with a heavy Q4 peak, a proper tracking review ideally happens in August/September, before Black Friday, when you stress-test CAPI, Enhanced Conversions, event quality and goal alignment.

If you didn’t get to it then (it happens), or if Q4 introduced extra noise, temporary events, dev updates, new pages, accidental duplicates, January becomes your essential clean-up pass so you don’t drag tracking issues into 2026.

What to review

• Which conversions your campaigns are actually optimising toward, not just which ones exist

• Pixel / CAPI / Insight Tag health across Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok and Pinterest

• Old or seasonal events still firing (e.g., BFCM or holiday-specific goals)

• Microsoft Ads goals added automatically during Google imports or recommendations

• Enhanced Conversions & Consent Mode still firing correctly after peak-season changes

Clean signals = faster learning, more stable bidding, and fewer surprises.

Refresh Your Audiences, Because They Age Faster Than You Think

Audience lists decay. CRM data becomes stale. Seasonal behaviour skews intent. And platform match rates drop when shoppers switch out of “peak mode.”

If you carry Q4 audiences into January untouched, you’re essentially bidding against a completely different customer profile.

What to review

• Seasonal audiences (Black Friday, holiday shoppers) that shouldn’t follow you into Q1

• CRM list freshness and any lists that haven’t synced in months

• Viewed / abandoned segments with outdated lookback windows

• Incorrect or outdated exclusions causing wasted spend

• New Q1 audience themes (wellness, travel, planning, home improvement, fresh starts)

Better audiences = cleaner targeting and less wasted spend.

Fix Your Feed, The Quiet Performance Lever

If you run Shopping or PMax, your product feed is the campaign. And Q4 exposes every weakness: inconsistent titles, missing attributes, seasonal descriptions, low-quality images and products that simply shouldn’t be active anymore.

January is the best moment to fix it, before PMax spends weeks learning from outdated information.

What to review

• Titles rewritten with attributes first (size, colour, material, model)

• Updated product types & Google Product Categories

• Missing attributes filled in (material, colour, size, gender, pattern)

• Seasonal or expired product data removed

• Image quality issues flagged or reshot

• Product highlights added for richer AI-powered SERP formats

  
  

A clean feed strengthens relevance across every automated surface. Read more about feeds in our Women in Tech SEO Article “Why Product Feeds Deserve More Love (Beyond PPC)“

Detox Your Campaign Structure, Q4 Leaves Clutter

Q4 moves fast. Urgent tests, emergency duplications, boosted bids, seasonal landing pages, short-term campaigns… and many of them get forgotten as soon as December hits its peak.

If you don’t clean this out now, your 2026 foundation is already unstable.

What to review

• Duplicate campaigns or ad groups created in peak

• PMax asset groups still containing seasonal creative

• Naming conventions tidied for clarity

• Old drafts and experiments left open

• Rules, schedules or scripts that no longer apply

• Landing page URLs connected to expired offers or festive messaging

A clean structure makes optimisation faster and reporting more reliable.

Update Your Creative, December Ads Don’t Belong in January

User mindset changes dramatically after the holidays. Urgency, gifting and “last chance” messaging becomes irrelevant overnight, and keeping it running into January drains performance fast.

Your ads should reflect the tonal shift into a calmer, more intentional Q1.

What to review

• Seasonal references removed across all ads

• Sale messaging replaced with evergreen value

• Creative fatigue addressed with fresh hooks and new angles

• Social creatives updated to align with Q1 themes

• Testing frameworks restarted to collect new data intentionally

Fresh creative resets engagement, and avoids the “post-peak slump.”

Review Google Ads Recommendations, Before They Surprise You

Google Ads Recommendations can be helpful or chaotic depending on how they’re applied. They influence bidding, budgets, structure, creative and even conversions, and Q4 tends to flood the tab with noise that shouldn’t follow you into the new year.

January is the moment to review them with a clear head.

What to review

• Auto-applied changes made during Q4

• Budget & bidding suggestions that don’t match Q1 seasonality

• Keyword / search term recommendations misaligned with strategy

• Asset recommendations based on festive saturation

• Conversion recommendations that could shift optimisation

If you’re unsure which recommendations are smart and which to ignore, I’ve broken down every category here

Understanding recommendations is part of good hygiene, not an optional extra.

Reset Your Budgets & Bidding, Q1 Behaves Differently

January is calmer, cheaper and far less volatile than Q4. If you keep peak-season ROAS or CPA targets in place, you’ll hold your campaigns back unnecessarily.

Bidding strategies need space to relearn, and Q1 is the cheapest time to give them that space.

What to review

• tROAS / tCPA targets adjusted for new behaviour

• Daily budgets redistributed for Q1 priorities

• Spend caps removed or softened

• Channel mix rebalanced (e.g., less PMax aggression, more search stability)

• Minimum budgets increased where platforms demand them (LinkedIn, TikTok)

Give automation the room it needs to recalibrate.

🔹 Final thoughts

Housekeeping isn’t glamorous, but it’s one of the biggest competitive advantages you can give yourself going into a new year.

Clean signals.

Clean structure.

Clean creative.

Clean feed.

Clean strategy.

Everything becomes easier when the foundation is stable.

January gives you space to fix what drifted, remove what expired, and strengthen the data your campaigns depend on.

Don’t Panic - just tidy up!

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4M Digital is a paid media consultancy specialising in Google Ads, Microsoft Ads, and Paid Social campaigns. With over 15 years of expertise, we help businesses unlock the full potential of their digital advertising strategies through tailored management, audits, and training.