Single Keyword Ad Groups had their moment. In the exact-and-phrase-match era, breaking every keyword into its own ad group gave you granular control over bids, ad copy, and quality score. That logic made sense when match types were tight and bidding was manual. It makes considerably less sense now, and accounts still built this way are usually paying a real efficiency cost for a structure that stopped matching how Google Ads actually works years ago.
Smart Bidding needs conversion volume per campaign and per ad group to make good decisions. Splitting your account into hundreds of single-keyword ad groups spreads that volume thin across every one of them, which means each individual ad group is working with too little data to let automated bidding converge reliably. You end up with an account that looks meticulously organised and performs worse than a consolidated one because the algorithm is starved of signal at every level.
Close variant matching compounds this. Google has expanded what counts as a match for exact and phrase keywords for years now, which means your carefully separated ad groups are frequently triggered by overlapping queries anyway. The precision SKAGs were built to provide has eroded even for accounts that kept the structure.
Theme-based ad groups, grouping keywords by shared intent and shared landing page rather than isolating every keyword, consolidate conversion signal while still letting you write relevant, specific ad copy through Responsive Search Ads. Broad match paired with Smart Bidding and strong negative keyword hygiene reaches more relevant queries than exact match alone, and gives the bidding algorithm more room to find efficient conversions rather than fighting it with rigid match type restrictions.
This does not mean abandoning structure altogether. Separating campaigns by genuinely different intent, brand versus non-brand, high-value commercial terms versus informational queries, different product lines with different economics, still matters. The consolidation applies within those sensible boundaries, not across all of them.
Your highest-value terms, the ones with the clearest commercial intent and the biggest impact on the business, can still justify their own tighter structure if you have the conversion volume to support it. Brand protection campaigns, where you want absolute control over what triggers your ad, are another reasonable exception. The rule is not "never be granular," it is "do not default to granularity everywhere when most of your keywords do not have the volume to benefit from it."
Consolidating structure increases the importance of regularly reviewing search term reports, because broader match types and theme-based ad groups will surface more query variety than tight SKAGs ever did. The trade is real: less structural rigidity for more active monitoring. Skipping the monitoring half of that trade is how broad match gets a bad reputation it does not entirely deserve.
If your account still carries a SKAG structure from years ago and you want a view on whether consolidating it would help, get in touch.