The law firm said it will investigate whether Australian advertisers have been overcharged by Google as a result of its dominance in the local advertising market.

“For the average small or medium Australian business, there is little alternative to Google, and no room to challenge the fees Google can extract,” said the firm in a May 29 statement. 

“As a result, sellers virtually have no choice but to use Google’s advertising services, spending thousands of dollars a month, in addition to having to pay Google a significant commission on every piece of online ad space that they buy.”

Slater and Gordon is looking to represent businesses of any size that have used Google technology (Google Ads, AdWords, DV360, or AdX) to purchase online ads since May 2019. 

In a statement, the firm said its investigation is likely to lead to a class action against Google. If successful, the action could result in advertisers being reimbursed for excess advertising fees, on the basis that Google allegedly overcharged them due to its market dominance.

Aussie business owners are all too familiar with Google’s hegemony

Google’s hegemony over the local advertising market is well known to small-business owners in Australia. And it’s not just its paid ads services that are a problem.

ISB recently published the story of business owner Matt Holyoake, whose Google Business Profile was taken down with no warning or explanation. Like many local and service-based businesses, Holyoake’s cleaning enterprise is dependent on Google’s Business Profile for a significant portion of its customer base. The unexplained shutdown of his account cost the business owner significantly.

“If you’re a local business, being findable on Google isn’t optional,” said Holyoake. “There’s no comparable platform you can run to if you’re not happy with Google.”

Though Google Business Profiles is a free service, Google reaps the benefits of both data and further market dominance from its community of dedicated users, Holyoake pointed out.

“A few changes would go a long way to helping protect small businesses from Google, or any other future platform that may accumulate the power to damage them at such a significant scale,” he said.

A global power struggle

If Slater and Gordon launches a class action against Google, it won’t be the first time the tech giant has been challenged over its market dominance. In 2023, the US Department of Justice found that Google had monopoly power over key digital advertising technologies and had engaged in anticompetitive conduct.

Then there have been other local actions against Google – though, according to Slater and Gordon, these have focussed on ad publishers (i.e. the websites hosting the ads), while this investigation focusses on the advertising businesses themselves.

“Google’s power in the ad tech industry is so extensive that the vast majority of ads you see online – whether on websites or in search results – will have gone through one of Google’s platforms, allowing Google to extract its high fees and earn millions from Australian businesses,” said Slater and Gordon Practice Group Leader Ben Hardwick.

“Many of these Australian businesses are start-ups or small to medium businesses – the job-creating lifeblood of Australia’s economy – who have little choice but to operate and advertise online,” Hardwick continued. “With their profit margins already cut to the bone, these high fees are adding to the cost of doing business.”

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AI-powered online advertising has become the new normal, with Google’s Performance Max (PMAX) and Meta’s Advantage+ campaigns leading the charge for e-commerce brands.

On the surface, they promise simplicity, automation, and powerful results by leveraging AI to reach customers more effectively than ever before.

But, there’s a hidden catch: without careful management, these platforms can rapidly exhaust your budget, chasing short-term conversions at the expense of long-term strategic value.

What is crucial is that businesses do not blindly hand over their budgets to AI systems controlled by the same platforms that sell the ads. 

The core issue isn’t automation itself; it’s control. These largely automated campaigns are designed to maximise spending efficiency based on immediate data signals, often prioritising quick wins rather than sustainable growth. They can generate strong sales for a brand. However, without guardrails, this aggressive optimisation can quickly escalate costs, dominating spend and leaving little room for strategic testing or innovation.

Instead, AI should work for advertisers, not just ad channels. It should act as an independent decision-maker. It should not just follow what each channel might prescribe – it should actively control these campaigns to ensure that businesses get the best return on their investment, with an understanding that all platforms can play a role in the conversion funnel.

Creative: The new currency

Creative has become the new currency, especially in platforms like Meta, which places a significant emphasis on creative assets. Many agencies will also suggest brands flood automated campaigns with multiple creative variations, allowing the algorithm to “pick winners”.

But let’s unpack this approach: brands then find themselves producing extensive amounts of content simply to let the ad platform determine what performs best. This results in campaigns running 10, 20, or even 30+ variations of the same creative message yet we see consistently the top 20 per cent of ads secure around 80 per cent of the impression share.

Therein lies the challenge: “What performs best” can mean different things to different brands and even differ between the brand’s own goals and the ad platform’s priorities

It’s not hard to see why many ecommerce brands are so reluctant to hand control to ad networks. 

The problem with one-platform dependence

Handing full control to Google’s or Meta’s AI means trusting that their goals align perfectly with yours. 

Consider the case of Lalo, a baby products brand featured in a recent Wall Street Journal article. The company saw Google’s AI-driven PMAX campaigns “drive sales,” but it couldn’t tell if its ads were reaching its ideal customers. Without transparency, how do you optimise for long-term customer value instead of just short-term ad platform performance?

Advertisers should know exactly where their dollars go and whether they’re reaching the right customers. But untangling the web of attribution, or which channel is responsible for a sale, is thwart with challenges.

The AI behind the AI

Top-of-funnel budget allocation is notoriously challenging. Accurately determining which platform truly deserves credit for performance is often complicated, further burdening businesses as they decide how to allocate their marketing spend.

The winning businesses know how to use AI – not surrender to it. Instead of blindly following automated suggestions from platforms like Google’s PMAX or Meta’s Advantage+, smart businesses stay in the driver’s seat. They run each channel on its merits, objectively evaluating performance across platforms and using their own data as the arbiter of truth. By actively managing where and how their budget is spent, they unlock the best of each system – making sharper decisions, reallocating spend with confidence, and ultimately driving better returns.

The future of digital advertising isn’t about surrendering control to any one channel – it’s about empowering advertisers by placing AI directly into their hands. True success arises when AI serves the strategic goals of your business, enabling you to make informed, intelligent decisions tailored to your specific needs. Ultimately, the most effective AI for managing your advertising is one built explicitly to serve your business interests.

The post Should small businesses opt into AI-powered online ad campaigns like Meta’s Advantage+? appeared first on Inside Small Business.

Without a doubt, the search engine has huge capabilities for growth and visibility for small businesses. And with less than one per cent of people (0.63 per cent) clicking on the second search page, the role that Google Ads can play is pretty darn important – especially when new research shows that 65 per cent of people click on Ads when they want to make a purchase.

Yet, despite these stats, many SMEs get stuck in the tech or feel under-resourced (both from a human resources and money perspective) and sadly lose the opportunity to reach a highly engaged buyer.

This leaves money on the table. And as we hit a tighter economic market, every investment is an important one in growing your business.

So, if you’re new to the Google Ads game or are hoping to better optimize your Google Ads, here are 4 tips that you can use to confidently leverage Google Ads to help grow your business.

1. Get your conversion tracking setup right the first time
   This is hands down the most important part of any Google Ads account. Big agencies get this one wrong all the time – it is crucial that your tracking is accurate so you know how much you spent on ads and how much you made. Bad tracking is a profit killer and something to avoid.
2. Keyword search: Focus on quality and relevance over quantity
   Don’t get caught up on keywords that have lots of volume – this will easily blow your budget. Instead, focus on choosing keywords that are relevant and targeted for your business – rather than the most popular keywords (relevance over reach everyday of the week). When choosing keywords, steer clear of information-gathering phrases such as “which is the…” and “what should I..” – you’re looking to target those people that already know what their problem is and are searching for a fix.
3. Run a streamlined account
   Businesses with small budgets don’t need to have a complex account structure. Start small and focus on the core campaigns that perform for your business and exhaust the opportunity there before expanding into other types of campaigns.
4. Focus on conversions
   Remember the best thing about Google Ads is that you’re showing ads to people when they’re searching online for a solution. The only way you should be measuring success inside Google Ads is through an increase in leads and sales. Don’t get caught up on your Click Through Rate (CTR) or number of impressions. Focus on the conversions.

It is important to remember that knowledge is your superpower. And with the right framework, any small business owner can confidently and profitably manage their own Google Ads.

The post How small businesses can leverage Google Ads for growth appeared first on Inside Small Business.

In reality, neither option is “right” – the best choice for any business will depend on its market, goals, timelines and a host of other factors. The key though is to know your options and the likely outcomes and invest accordingly.

Starving for sales?

PPC is when you pay for an ad on the Google search results page so that when users google a relevant keyword, the ad comes up at the top or bottom of that page. The benefits are that ads can go live pretty much immediately and, if you have a reasonably good website (and all the other critical boxes ticked), the traffic you generate can be turned into leads in next to no time.

If you’re starving for sales this may well be a better way to go, rather than waiting for SEO to work. However, be aware that the minute you stop paying for ads, the leads will stop rolling in.

Optimising your website

SEO, on the other hand, is about optimising your website so that Google considers it a high-value option for any user searching for a particular keyword. The downside is that, yes, it’s a long-term investment and it will only work if you commit to playing the Google game.

Optimising a website for SEO involves carrying out research into what people are searching for online, then tailoring your website so that it becomes the go-to for those keywords. It often requires a host of tweaks and additions to the technical aspects, structure, content, images and pages of the site as well as generating off-site backlinks. This all takes substantial time and resources and, even then, there can be a wait as Google picks up on the changes and considers whether or not to improve your rankings.

Mix paid ads and SEO

In an ideal world, I can tell you that a mix of paid ads and SEO is likely to be a beautiful blend for your business. It’ll get you off the starting blocks, bringing in some immediate sales, while you set the scene for long-term success through a sustainable, organic solution.

Then, over the long term, by analysing your traffic, you can start to adjust your investment. As SEO brings in more sales, you can step down your ads investment and enjoy the benefits of a search engine optimised website without PPC costs.

SEO tips

For SEO, focus your efforts on the most important pages of your site. For service businesses that’s usually homepage and services pages – make sure you have a separate page for each of the services you offer. For e-commerce, its homepage and collections page – think about which categories and products are most profitable for your business, bring in the most revenue or which you have exclusive access to, and focus on improving those pages.

If you’re on a budget and can’t afford to outsource an entire SEO campaign, I recommend outsourcing at least keyword research and mapping so that you know what you’re optimising each page for.

It can be hard to pass up on the option of the “quick wins” promised by paid ads, but I’d encourage you to make SEO your friend. It takes time to nurture, but with patience, it’s the best option for solid, low-maintenance results.

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