Protect Your Holiday Budget: Tackle Uncontested Ad Costs

I recently discovered that uncontested ads might be silently eating away at my holiday budget. Even when I’m the sole bidder, my CPCs remain stubbornly high. Here’s how I began to reclaim those wasted dollars.

This holiday season, Google Search and Shopping Ads are projected to surpass a staggering $70 billion in spending. However, many advertisers, myself included, overlook a critical flaw in Google’s auction system that drains our funds—even in the absence of competitors.

The team at BrandPilot identifies this issue as the “Uncontested Google Ads Problem,” a significant yet often ignored source of wasted ad spend during peak times.

During SMX Next, I learned from John Beresford, the Chief Revenue Officer at BrandPilot, about a little-known quirk in Google’s auction logic. It’s fascinating how this can lead advertisers like me to overspend on our brand terms, shopping placements, and category keywords because Google doesn’t automatically lower our CPCs when no one else is bidding.

Instead of enjoying lower costs as the sole bidder, I found myself paying the same high rate as if competitors were still active. It’s a situation that unfolds thousands of times a day for major brands, and like me, many marketers don’t even realize it.

In John’s session, we explored:

• Understanding why “competition gaps” are far more frequent than we think.
• Discovering how uncontested moments can warp CPCs, even on brand keywords.
• The potential of real-time auction visibility—and how AI is revolutionizing the field.

He also shared how advertisers are deftly reclaiming wasted spending and channeling it back into growth, without giving up impression share, traffic, or revenue.

Watch the session from BrandPilot to learn how to:

• Identify why CPCs are artificially high when competitors are missing.
• Calculate the true financial impact of the Uncontested Ads Problem on your budget.
• Execute AI-driven bidding and suppression strategies to avoid self-bidding and increase ROAS.

If you’re managing Google Search or Shopping campaigns this holiday season, this session is a must-see. Learn how to keep Google from sneaking off with your budget and start converting those savings into real performance improvements.

Inspired by this post on Search Engine Land.