29 May Ahh, Google Ads. What Happened?

Ahh, Google Ads. What Happened?

Once the gold standard of intent-based advertising, Google Ads has become an increasingly opaque, manipulative, and frustrating platform. What used to be a performance playground for smart marketers is now a maze of automation, inflated costs, and missing data.

Let’s break it down.

Less Visibility, More Guesswork

Google slowly stripped away what made the platform powerful. Search term visibility? Gone. Keyword control? Loosened. Even “Exact Match” doesn’t mean exact anymore. You get offshoot terms and barely-relevant queries baked in by default.

The PMax Problem

Performance Max campaigns are Google’s push toward full automation – and full mystery. You can’t see what’s working, where your ads appear, or how your money is truly being spent. It’s a black box that demands blind trust – and rarely earns it.

Your Brand, Their Playground

Google now treats your brand name as a product category. That means when someone searches your company, your competitors can show up – sometimes above you. Bidding on your own name becomes a defensive tax, just to protect what should be yours.

CPC Inflation Games

You’re told to “trust the auction,” but even in low-competition markets, CPCs are often inexplicably high. Google’s system now behaves less like a fair market and more like a rigged toll booth – raising prices because it can.

Under Federal Scrutiny

It’s not just marketers sounding the alarm. The DOJ has brought antitrust lawsuits against Google across both the Biden and Trump administrations, alleging monopolistic practices in digital advertising. Even the government sees the manipulation.

It Takes a Wizard

To succeed on Google Ads in 2025, you need more than tools. You need intuition. You need historical context. You need someone who remembers how things *used* to work – and can decode what’s happening now. Maybe 5% of advertisers fit that bill. The rest? They get rinsed.

Final Thought: Know the Game You’re Playing

Google Ads isn’t dead – but it’s dangerous to treat it like it’s still 2016. The rules have changed. The power dynamics have shifted. And if you’re not working with someone who knows the old playbook and the new reality, you’re paying too much for too little.

In this world, guessing is expensive.

Precision is rare.

And expertise is everything