> It isn't good for companies buying the ads by participating in sham "auctions" with no real insight into or control over the process. They are literally beggi

> It isn't good for companies buying the ads by participating in sham "auctions" with no real insight into or control over the process. They are literally begging to be ripped off. You seem to think that companies have a choice. I've been advertising for years, Google has been rolling out the standard ads in favor of automated "personalized" one for a long time. They kept removing features again and again. In more of removing features and making basic ads impossible to use, they have a team of people that will keep calling you and to offer you 'guidance' on how to run your ads. These guidance almost always revolved around enabling the automatic advertising algorithms and disabling your old school ads. I consider myself quite smart with internet things but even me, at some point, got baited into switching to these automated ads because at the end you run a business that is completely different from marketing and it's not your core business. You're not expert into marketing and especially not into Google ads so it's easy for these experts to trick you. I have seen my money syphoned by these automatic techniques with quite bad roi. And all these self made people or very small companies (which represent the vast majority of the business), they are just as easy target for Google than I was. Big companies can afford ads consultant that will run the advertising campaigns and optimize everything, but small ones are stuck doing things themselves on a system that is purposely made to hand over your money and let the computer do it's 'magic' with targeted advertising. And if you're not happy with Google, what you gonna do ? It's not like there is competition. Everyone use Google, Google is a monopoly. I tried switching to bing ads, Facebook ads, but its just not possible. No one use bing. Facebook leads were never as profitable as Google one, at least in the market I advertised.