Is your Google Ads account performing as well as it could be? Between a changing macroeconomic landscape, changes to ad platform features, squeezed marketing budgets, and more, driving a successful paid search marketing strategy is as difficult now as ever. Our client partners get a competitive advantage by using our cutting-edge knowledge and expertise built from $13M+ in monthly Google Ads spend to drive their businesses forward. Here are the top 2025 Google Ads trends we’re seeing in the industry based on our Q2 results, and what that means for strategy moving forward.
Overall, Paid is Driving Success
Tariff uncertainty and higher inflation has had some businesses reforecasting for lower sales in 2025. So far, we haven’t seen that uncertainty translate into lower sales, so clients who are leaning into demand are reaping rewards. Across the agency, Google Ads investment and revenue were both higher in Q2 2025 than both Q1 2025 and Q2 2024. Performance has been stronger for our B2B clients overall, while B2C businesses were flat to last year and down slightly to Q1.
The main drivers of our clients’ success were flat click costs and higher conversion rates. Search demand across categories has remained strong, but some advertisers have pulled back after reforecasting lower sales. That means that remaining advertisers in the auctions have access to a higher supply with less demand. Our clients are driving higher conversion rates with a combination of thoughtful paid search strategy, product prioritization, and focusing on the on-site experience for their buyers.
CPC Inflation is Slowing
After years of double-digit CPC growth rates in Google Ads, agency-wide CPCs rose less than 5% YoY in Q2, the second quarter in a row that saw that little of growth. Again, part of that is driven by strong search demand coupled with some advertisers pulling back on search. It’s also driven by improvements in Performance Max campaigns. With greater insight into channel-level performance and new search term reporting, our teams have been able to get more out of their existing budget from these campaigns.
Early projections for the holiday season are optimistic, so we’re anticipating a more competitive environment in Q4. That means a savvy advertiser should take advantage of lower click costs now to build awareness and remarketing lists to lessen the burden on Q4 spend.
Demand Gen is Providing Scale
ROI clients’ investment in Demand Gen campaigns more than doubled in Q2 2025 compared to the year prior, and conversion value grew at a similar rate. As this product from Google has improved, so have our clients’ returns, making it a greater part of our clients’ overall mix. Our teams are winning with Demand Gen by working with clients on developing high-quality, attention-grabbing creative assets based on what we see do well on non-search channels like Meta and CTV. We’re also using a mix of clients’ 1st-party data along with Google-defined audiences to reach the right customers at the right time. If you haven’t tested Demand Gen yet, or if it’s been a while since you’ve tested, Q3 is the perfect time to retest to see if it should be part of your strategy for Q4.
Broad Match in Search is Getting Better
Google has touted the power of broad match for some time, but poor performance from testing in previous years had our clients less invested in this match type. However, Google has made recent improvements to the product, and it’s starting to show. In Q2, broad match keywords drove a higher AOV in non-brand search campaigns than exact match. While the total ROAS for broad match keywords is still lower than exact match, the difference is as small as it’s ever been between the two match types. That difference is smaller for B2C clients than B2B clients, so it’s especially worth testing if your business is B2C.
As AI chat bot usage proliferates, optimizing for natural language, long-tail searches is becoming much more important, and broad match is a great way to cover those bases. It’s also worth remembering that Google uses individual users’ search history to inform the intent of a given search. A Google product expert recently gave us the example that a search for “rose” may return results about flowers for one user and wine for another. While we still find a lot of value in exact match keywords, our teams are rolling out broad match more comprehensively to prepare for the new future of search.
Performance Max vs. Standard Shopping – Not One or the Other
While total investment across both Performance Max and Standard Shopping campaigns grew YoY in Q2, the growth rate in Standard Shopping was higher. It’s still a lower portion of our ecommerce clients’ total shopping spend, but recent split tests have informed our teams that Standard Shopping still has its place, with a ROAS several hundred points higher than Performance Max across our clients.
Our teams have found Standard Shopping makes it easier to dominate an auction if we’re trying to show in shopping listings as often as possible for a certain category. CPCs are higher than Performance Max given it’s only showing in shopping listings, but conversion rates are higher as well. Up until recently, Standard Shopping has also given advertisers much more control at the query level. As new features for Performance Max like asset reporting, search term reports, and channel performance reports roll out to all accounts, this gap in control will close. We’re expecting to get an even better return for our clients’ investment in Performance Max, so split-testing against Standard Shopping will start anew.
Expert-Level Insights Drive Search Marketing Success
You don’t need to navigate these changing landscapes alone. If you’re ready to maximize the impact of your paid search program, you need a partner who keeps you on the leading edge of the dynamic digital marketing landscape. Contact our experts to learn how you can leverage ROI Revolution’s wealth of data-backed strategies for your business today.
