If you’ve ever tried to switch your Google Ads account to Expert Mode and found yourself right back at the Smart campaign setup screen the next time you logged in, you already know how frustrating this can be. You’re not doing anything wrong; it’s a known bug that, unfortunately, affects many advertisers and merchants.
In this article, I’m going to walk you through exactly what’s happening and, more importantly, how to work around it so you can get to your Expert Mode dashboard without the headache.
First, a Little Context
Most of the Google Ads accounts I manage are already running in Expert Mode, so I don’t deal with this very often. But now and then, a new client comes to me with an account that’s still stuck in Smart Mode, and that’s exactly what happened recently.
Smart Mode is Google’s simplified version of the Ads interface, designed for beginners who want to run basic campaigns without getting into the weeds. Expert Mode, on the other hand, gives you full control over your campaigns, bidding strategies, targeting, and more. For anyone serious about Google Ads, Expert Mode is where you need to be.
The problem is that switching between them isn’t always as clean as it should be.
What’s Supposed to Happen
Normally, when you log in to a Google Ads account in Smart Mode, you’ll see a button to toggle to Expert Mode. You click it, your dashboard changes, and you’re good to go. Simple enough?
Well, not always.
The issue kicks in when you toggle to Expert Mode, close the browser, and then log back in. Instead of landing on your Expert Mode dashboard as you’d expect, Google Ads greets you with the Smart campaign setup screen again, as if you never made the switch at all.
The Workaround That Actually Works
Here’s what you need to do to get around this. It’s annoying, but once you know the steps, it only takes a minute.
Step 1: Toggle to Expert Mode (if you haven’t already). When you first see the Smart Mode interface, look for the option to switch to Expert Mode. Go ahead and click it.
Step 2: Create a New Campaign. Click on “New Campaign” and when prompted, select “Switch to Expert Mode.” If you have multiple accounts linked, make sure you select the correct one before proceeding. You’ll then be taken into the campaign creation flow, even though it might still feel like a hybrid version of Smart Mode at this point. Create your campaign.
Step 3: Don’t Panic When You Can’t See Your Campaign. Here’s where things get weird. After you finish (or cancel out of) the campaign setup, you’ll likely be taken back to a screen that looks like the Smart Mode overview. Even if you created a campaign, it won’t show up there. That’s because you’re still technically looking at the Smart Mode view.
Step 4: Use Campaign Filters to Break Out This is the key step. Go to your campaign filters and select the campaign type you just created. If you created a Performance Max campaign, click on Performance Max. This forces Google Ads to display the correct Expert Mode overview, and suddenly, everything looks the way it should: your campaigns are visible, and your dashboard is back to normal.
Step 5: Navigate Through Campaigns to Confirm Once you’ve used the filter trick, click on “Campaigns” in the left-hand menu. You should now see the standard Expert Mode campaign overview that you’d expect. That’s your sign that it worked.
You can also try to click on this link: https://ads.google.com/aw/campaigns
But Wait, It Might Happen Again
Here’s the really frustrating part, even after going through all of this, if you log out and log back in, there’s a chance you’ll be greeted with the Smart Mode screen again. In my experience with this particular client account, that’s exactly what kept happening.
Every time I logged back in, Google Ads would show me the Smart overview instead of my Expert Mode dashboard. The campaign I created wasn’t showing up on the main screen, and I had to repeat the filter trick each time, going to Performance Max, then clicking Campaigns, just to get back to a normal view.
This may be a caching or database-sync issue on Google’s end. The account is stuck in a limbo where it knows Expert Mode has been enabled, but the interface hasn’t fully caught up yet. Hopefully it’s the sort of thing that resolves itself over time as the system updates, but there’s no guarantee.
The Bottom Line
Until Google pushes a fix, here’s your quick reference for what to do when you’re stuck in Smart Mode:
- Toggle to Expert Mode and create a campaign (even if you don’t plan to use it right away)
- If you end up back on the Smart overview, go to campaign filters
- Select your campaign type (Performance Max, Search, etc.)
- Navigate to Campaigns from the left-hand menu
- You should now be in the correct Expert Mode view
Is it a perfect solution? No. Is it a little tedious every time you log in? Absolutely. But until Google irons out this bug, it’s the most reliable way to get where you need to be.
If you’ve run into this issue yourself or found a different workaround that works, I’d love to hear about it in the comments. And if you’re struggling with anything else Google Ads related, feel free to drop a question, we’re all figuring this out together.