The Cannibalization Report — Issue I
The PMax cannibalization alert Optmyzr charges $249 for. $19/mo.
One alert. One feature. One price. No 47-tab dashboard. No annual contract. Just a Telegram message when your branded spend leaks.
§1 The leak Google won't name
Performance Max is the only Google Ads campaign type that does not surface a keyword report. The advertiser uploads creative, names a budget, sets a goal — then cedes auction logic to Google's AI. The AI, optimizing for conversions, bids on whatever query it can win — including branded queries already covered by your Search campaign at a fraction of the cost. The result: two of your own campaigns bidding against each other in the same auction. PMax wins, you overpay.
This is not a bug. Google built the product this way and advertisers have, until recently, lacked the tooling to detect it.¹
§2 How the audit runs
Connect Google Ads
OAuth in 60 seconds. Read-only access. We never edit your campaigns.
scope: adwords (read-only)
Detect cannibalization
We pull PMax search-terms + Search keywords. Compute waste per term.
GAQL · search_term_view + keyword_view
Telegram, every morning
Daily alert at 9 AM EST when cumulative waste crosses your threshold.
cron · 13:00 UTC · idempotent
§3 The receipt — a real audit, redacted
30-day · annualized
$4,988
= $415.69 detected, last 30 days
Five branded queries where PMax CPC ran 4.4× higher than what your Search campaign was already paying. Sorted by waste descending.
| Search term | PMax spend | PMax CPC | Search CPC | Waste |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| acme coffee | $246.56 | $1.84 | $0.42 | $190.27 |
| acme dark roast | $133.63 | $1.61 | $0.38 | $102.46 |
| buy acme coffee | $98.60 | $1.45 | $0.51 | $63.92 |
| acme single origin | $61.57 | $1.31 | $0.62 | $32.43 |
| acme cold brew | $44.84 | $1.18 | $0.47 | $26.61 |
| Total · 30 days | $585.20 | $415.69 |
Source: PMax Sentinel detection algorithm against Acme Coffee Co.'s Google Ads search-term-view, last 30 days. See live demo →
§4 Why not buy Optmyzr
You can pay $249/mo for sixty features you don't use, or pay $19 for the one that matters.
Optmyzr
$249–2,499 / moAnnual contract · 60+ features
- Bid optimization across 17 strategies
- Quality Score tracker
- Negative keyword finder
- A/B ad copy testing
- Budget pacing alerts
- Account audit (47 categories)
- Shopping feed optimizer
- PMax cannibalization detection
- Auction insights weekly digest
- Anomaly detection
- White-label client reports
- Slack · Looker Studio · API access
- + 47 more features
PMax Sentinel
$19 / moCancel any time · 1 feature
- PMax cannibalization detection
The argument is the layout. The single thing both products do — surfaced for the cost of two coffees, on a personal credit card, no procurement.
§5 Terms
$19 per Google Ads account, per month. No annual contract. Cancel any time.
Most customers monitor one to three accounts. Stripe-secured checkout. The first audit is free — connect your account, see the dollar number, then decide.
Start free auditCurrently watching 1 Google Ads account · accepting new accounts
p99 audit latency: 2.4s · cron uptime: 100.0%
Sources & footnotes
- ¹Optmyzr (Feb 2025). Performance Max Cannibalization in Google Ads: An Analysis of 1,800 Accounts. 91.45% of audited accounts showed PMax bidding on branded queries already covered by Search campaigns.
- ²Google Ads API Reference, search_term_view and keyword_view entities. PMax Sentinel queries both, last-30-days segment, via GAQL.
- ³Mike Rhodes, v28 of the Google Ads cannibalization script (open-source). Inspiration for the detection threshold; PMax Sentinel productizes the same waste-vs-Search-CPC ratio (≥1.5×) into a managed daily audit.