When does it become a conflict when an advertising platform provider advertises its own services taking up valuable inventory? When you are one its customers fighting it out with said ad platform for a particular piece of real estate?

The scenario: One of our larger clients has had great success using Google's placement-targeted campaigns with a particular web property. Recently we noticed impressions, CTR and overall conversions dropping significantly from this placement. Upon further investigation, we were getting bumped from that lucrative spot. Normally we would expect a competitor or similar service to be the culprit. Not this time, Google themselves are acing us out with their own Adwords promotion, hence the title of this post.

We have spent the last few weeks trying to recapture the spot with increased bids, switching between the CPM and CPC model, all to no avail. I fear Google has also found a spot it finds lucrative for Adwords sign-ups. Given that Google has some serious cash to throw at acquiring new customers for its primary revenue stream, we are probably out of luck, at least if we want to maintain something resembling an actual return.

Our client's product doesn't compete with Adwords, and oddly Google isn't pushing its most relevant product to the content of this web property. So, how do you beat Google on its own network? Hopefully in a few weeks we will have that answer.