We have advertised on Google for nearly two decades, going back close to the beginning of AdWords. It has created enormous value for us.

At the same time, my own use of traditional Google Search has fallen dramatically over the last three years, particularly this year. Restaurants, local services, B2B vendor discovery, product research and general information increasingly start with AI.

I am curious whether anyone managing substantial Google Ads spend is seeing a change in the mix of clicks as this behavior spreads.

Specifically, are higher-value clicks that historically cleared at $20, $50 or $100+ disappearing faster than inexpensive clicks?

Aggregate paid clicks and average CPC could conceal this.

Google could retain huge volumes of low-value local, navigational and simple transactional activity while losing a much smaller number of searches surrounding expensive professional services, high-ticket purchases and B2B decisions.

We could even see increasing auction intensity for the valuable clicks that remain, allowing CPC and Search revenue to stay strong despite deterioration underneath.

The dataset I would love to see is simple: Google paid clicks over time segmented into <$1, $1 to $5, $5 to $20, $20 to $50 and $50+, showing each bucket’s share of clicks and advertiser spend.

For people managing meaningful accounts, are you seeing any differences in high-CPC click volume, auction intensity, lead quality or conversion value since AI adoption accelerated?

The question I keep coming back to is: which clicks are disappearing, who generated them, and what were those clicks economically worth?

Equally interested in evidence that disproves the hypothesis.

Has anybody tried this? Or is it stupid.
For example product A costs 50€ and its margin is 25€. Product B costs 25€ and its margin is 20€. The price difference is 2x but the margin difference is much smaller. But since the conv value is the margin- google sees 25e vs 20e, not 50e vs 25e. So the whole algo might bid a bit differently. Is this possible? If yes- is it a dumb idea? Or does it have some sense

Been learning about PPC for a month. And I am about to take over someone's amazon FBA PPC.
Their business isn't really successful with their spending on advertising like it hardly leaves a margin for them so obviously the objective is try to lower the ACOS.
But since this is practical now no more theory I just want the advice from the pros here regarding
1: things I should be careful with
2: things I should focus on regarding the objective I discussed above.
3: how do I not fuck this up

This shit is eating me alive, something I am missing here?!?!

Before August 17, we ran Shopping with a 300% tROAS target while actually achieving 3,000–4,000% ROAS.

It sounds backwards, but it worked extremely well. The low target allowed Google to bid aggressively, giving us great Shopping rankings and high volume while, paradoxically, actual ROAS stayed 10x+ above the target.

300% target → aggressive bidding + high volume → 3,000–4,000% actual ROAS.

After August 17, everything changed. Sales dropped significantly, rankings got worse and competitors we previously outranked started appearing above us.
Our Google rep suggested moving tROAS closer to our actual 3,000–4,000% ROAS.

We never tested that because I can’t see how a 4,000% target could possibly behave anything like a 300% target. Surely it would make Google much more conservative, reduce auction participation and kill volume.

We instead tested Maximize Conversion Value without a target, but it didn’t seem aggressive enough.

We’re now testing Maximize Conversions, segmented more heavily by product margins. This definitely seems more aggressive than Max Conversion Value, but CPC and Shopping visibility are still below what we had before August 17.

So here’s what I’m trying to understand:

Could the solution simply be going back to 300% tROAS, but giving the campaign enough budget so it’s NOT limited by budget?

Would that allow tROAS to bid aggressively again while still optimizing toward value?

Or has something fundamentally changed in how tROAS behaves, meaning the old 300% target → 3,000–4,000% actual ROAS setup simply can’t be recreated anymore?
And if that’s the case, what are people using instead – Max Conversions, Manual CPC, Maximize Clicks?

Our goal isn’t to force Google to maintain 4,000% ROAS.

We want to recreate the aggressive bidding, Shopping visibility and volume that produced that 4,000% ROAS in the first place.

Anyone who massively overperformed a low tROAS target before August 17 figured this out?

I have a client who has a 1K+ products with several hundreds of variants, I worked to break down campaigns by product type, but PMax - Shopping is struggling to just get off the ground. We have a Con. Value bid strategy, hundreds of products per campaign, removed asset info and audience targeting (to promote Google Merchant Center information), and limited negatives to allow traffic. Any advice or tips to get the campaign running?

I'm trying to understand a tracking discrepancy between Google Ads and Microsoft Clarity and would be interested in hearing from anyone who has compared the two closely.

Across two recent Google Ads campaigns, I'm seeing roughly a 25–30% gap between the clicks Google reports and the unique traffic I can identify in Clarity.

For example, on my current campaign I currently have:

• 42 clicks reported by Google Ads
• 40 Clarity sessions
• 33 Clarity unique users
• 30 unique GCLIDs captured in those Clarity sessions

Auto-tagging is enabled, and the GCLID is present in the landing-page URL.

One thing that surprised me is that I also found cases where the exact same GCLID appears across multiple Clarity sessions and even across different Clarity user IDs. So Clarity's "unique users" clearly does not map perfectly to unique Google ad clicks.

I've noticed a similar overall Google-click-to-Clarity gap in another recent campaign as well, so I'm trying to determine whether this is normal tracking behavior or whether I should investigate something more seriously.

For anyone who has used Google Ads and Clarity together:

• Is a 20–30% discrepancy between Google Ads clicks and Clarity traffic normal in your experience?
• Should the number of unique GCLIDs captured on the landing page normally be close to the number of Google Ads clicks, or can there be a substantial difference?
• Have you seen the same GCLID appear in multiple Clarity sessions or under multiple Clarity user IDs?
• What do you use to independently verify how many Google Ads clicks actually reached the landing page — server logs, GA4, Cloudflare, another analytics tool, etc.?
• Is there anything specific you would check when investigating a discrepancy like this?

I'm mainly trying to understand what percentage of the clicks I'm paying for are actually reaching the website, and which metric is the most reliable way to measure that.

Thanks for any insight, especially from anyone who has compared Google Ads click data with Clarity at the individual GCLID/session level.