To some degree the OP is right. A static campaign, sending traffic to the same landing page, not increasing the bids to account for changes in CPC, will be les

To some degree the OP is right. A static campaign, sending traffic to the same landing page, not increasing the bids to account for changes in CPC, will be less successful than before. Over the last several years, the barrier to entry has dropped but the barrier to success has risen extremely high. It is much more difficult to profit when most of your competitors are using every tool at their disposal to crush yo. The two things that could easily make/crush his conclusion is average position and quality score. I want to see the average position on search and quality score over time as that will indicate: 1. If he has not kept bids in line with the market 2. If his site has continued to be updated with sufficient fresh content to appease the googlebot 3. If he has continued to improve his ads (CTR is one of the components of quality score!) Those things will indicate where his efforts have fallen down.