You ask AI to write an ad, and ten seconds later you have a smooth, confident text. The temptation to paste it into your account and launch is strong: it looks professional. This is exactly where money gets lost. AI writes fast, but it does not know your prices, your delivery terms or what you can really promise a customer.
One Ukrainian agency says in its own article (March 2026) that it throws away about 80% of what AI generates as “junk”, and edits and tests the strongest variants against campaign numbers. Let us be clear right away: this is not research and not our statistics, just one team’s stated practice. There is no single percentage for everyone, and we are not making one up. But the logic is clear to anyone who has used AI: generating text is cheap, selecting a good one is not.
Below are four steps a business owner can take alone, with no marketer next to them.
1. Ask for ten variants, not one
The first variant is the average of everything AI has seen online. That is why it looks like a thousand other ads: “best prices”, “high quality”, “contact us”. If you ask for ten at once and set different angles (price, speed, guarantee, reviews, who it is for), some drafts appear that no longer look like a template.
This fits well with how ads in Google are built. A responsive search ad can have up to 15 headlines and up to 4 descriptions; a headline must fit in 30 characters and a description in 90. Google’s help also advises writing as many unique headlines as possible: the more variety, the more combinations the system can show. So ten variants are not a whim but ordinary work with this format.
What to do yourself: tell AI what you sell, to whom and what your real advantage is, and ask for ten headlines up to 30 characters. Add: “without the words ‘best’ and ‘#1’”.
2. Keep the two strongest
Of the ten, most will be weak: general words, repetition, promises with no substance. Do not feel sorry for them. Keep those with specifics: a “from” price, a deadline, a condition, a city, something that sets the offer apart.
A simple test: cover your company name. If the ad could belong to any competitor, it is weak. If it is clear after reading what exactly makes you different, keep it.
Two, not five, because an honest test needs variants that really differ. Five similar texts will only show you noise.
3. Check every price, deadline and promise against your website
This is the most important step, and it is where AI lets you down most often. It confidently writes “free delivery”, “we reply in 5 minutes”, “5-year warranty”, even if you have none of that. We covered this separately in the piece on how AI hallucinates and what it can make up about your business.
Why this is not a detail. First, a customer clicks the ad, lands on the site, does not find what was promised and leaves, and you paid for the click. Second, Google Ads rules include a policy on misrepresentation: ads and landing pages may not contain inaccurate claims or promise improbable results. If you guarantee a result, the refund terms must be clearly stated and easy to find. For a violation, Google first sends a warning at least 7 days before suspending the account, but you should not keep your ads under such a threat.
What to do yourself: from the two chosen texts, write out everything that can be checked: numbers, deadlines, terms, the words “free”, “guarantee”, “cheapest”. Next to each, write where it is confirmed on your site. No confirmation on the site means we remove it from the ad or first fix the terms.
A separate word on “best” and “#1”. We did not find a separate Google rule specifically about such words in its help, so we do not claim they are banned. But an unfounded “best in Ukraine” is exactly the promise you will not be able to prove to a customer. AI produces them especially often, which is why they are the first to be cut.
4. Launch and look at the numbers, not the impression
Even a well-chosen and checked text is only a hypothesis. You may like one variant while customers click on another. So launch both and compare in your account: how many clicks, how many leads, what it costs. Decide by numbers, not by the feeling that “this one sounds better”.
An important detail about Google: it has a feature that creates headlines and descriptions itself using generative AI, based on the page the ad leads to. In its help it was earlier called automatically created assets, and now it is a text optimization setting within the AI Max features for search campaigns. Which text was used can be seen in the asset report at campaign level, and unacceptable assets can be removed. So even if you generated nothing yourself, it is worth looking there from time to time to see what is shown in your name.
Where this breaks most often
Three traps we see most often:
- AI was not told about your offer. You wrote “make an ad for a shoe shop”, not “handmade shoes, delivery by courier, 14-day returns”. Without facts it fills them in itself.
- A text that was “only slightly edited”. One word was removed, but a promise that is not on the site stayed. A style edit does not replace fact-checking.
- The impression was checked, not the result. You and a colleague liked the ad, it was launched, and two weeks later nobody looked at the account. Without a comparison with another variant you do not know whether the text is good.
Each can be closed in an hour: one description of your offer for AI, one sheet for checking against the site and one date in the calendar when you open the report.
From our practice
From our practice: the biggest benefit of AI is not that it writes without mistakes but that it quickly gives material to choose from. We did not count what share of the discarded text is ours: it depends on the niche and on how well the task is set. But we do not put anything into a client’s ads without a human between generation and publication. Decisions on bids, budget and campaign structure also stay with a person.
There is also a disputed point, and we will be honest about it. Some practitioners believe AI can be trusted with almost all of the text if given a good description of the business. Others check every word by hand. There is no single official figure for “how much to discard”, neither from Google nor from agencies, so rely not on a percentage but on the principle itself: the first variant is a draft.
Summary
- Ask for ten variants instead of one.
- Keep two that have specifics.
- Check every price, deadline and promise against the site.
- Launch and judge by the numbers in your account.
We checked Google’s help on October 18, 2026. We name features in words rather than as menu items: the interface can differ between accounts.
For why AI texts for a website also need a manual check, see the article “AI writes your website text? What Google says to check by hand”. You can read how we set up advertising in the search advertising and Performance Max sections.
Want a free audit of your Google Ads account? Send us a request — we will look at your account and tell you which texts to keep and which to replace.