Competitive Campaign Benchmarks
What we are seeing across $1M in monthly ad spend
Last week, I wrote about why I think competitive campaigns are becoming more important in the AI era.
The core thesis was simple:
AI tools are accelerating vendor discovery, but they are not creating deep vendor conviction.
Buyers are increasingly discovering vendors inside ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude first, then going to Google afterward to validate whether those companies actually deserve consideration.
That changes the intent behind branded search dramatically.
Historically, if someone searched a competitor’s brand, the assumption was they were already mostly committed.
Today, that search behavior appears much more exploratory. So we decided to validate whether the data actually supports that theory.
Over the last two weeks, we analyzed competitive search campaign performance across 16 B2B SaaS companies representing just over $1M in combined monthly Google Ads spend.
A few caveats before diving in:
Spend volume varies significantly across accounts
Some companies operate in extremely competitive markets while others are in newer categories
Sales cycles ranged from sub-30-day SMB motions to enterprise cycles exceeding 9 months
Attribution models differed across accounts
I’m not a data scientist, and this is not some formal peer-reviewed industry study. This is directional analysis based on real-world account performance patterns we kept seeing repeatedly across the accounts we manage.
With that said, the directional trends were surprisingly consistent across the dataset.
The Biggest Shift: Pipeline Performance
The clearest signal was pipeline generation.
Across the dataset, competitor campaigns generated 1.8x more pipeline per dollar spent compared to the same period 12 months ago.
Not impressions.
Not clicks.
Actual pipeline generated.
Even more interesting, several accounts saw competitive campaigns outperform branded non-competitor search in terms of pipeline efficiency for the first time.
Conversion Rates Are Increasing
The second major shift was conversion efficiency.
Across the accounts analyzed:
Click-to-demo conversion rates increased 27% YoY
Opportunity creation rates increased 41% YoY
Cost per opportunity decreased 18% YoY despite CPC inflation
The surprising part is that CPCs did not materially improve. Average competitor CPCs were actually up 11% YoY across the sample.
Meaning performance improvements were not being driven by cheaper traffic.
The quality of the intent itself appears to be changing.
Buyer Behavior Looks Different
What stood out most across the dataset was not necessarily top-of-funnel engagement metrics.
It was the downstream buying behavior.
Across multiple accounts, buyers arriving through competitor campaigns were:
More likely to visit pricing pages
More likely to engage with comparison pages
More likely to convert into qualified opportunities
More likely to move into active sales conversations
That’s important because it suggests competitor traffic is behaving less like passive research traffic and more like active evaluation traffic.
CTRs Improved, But Not Dramatically
One thing that surprised us was that CTR improvements were relatively modest compared to downstream conversion metrics.
Across the sample:
Average CTR increased 14% YoY
Impression share remained relatively flat
CPCs increased 11%
In other words, the gains were not primarily happening at the ad-click level. They were happening after the click.
The buyer arriving through competitor search today appears more willing to genuinely evaluate alternatives than they were previously.
The Messaging That Worked Best
The best-performing campaigns had very little in common with traditional “feature comparison” ads.
The strongest performers consistently focused on:
Tradeoffs
Operational pain
Migration complexity
Category misconceptions
Scalability constraints
Workflow philosophy
“Why teams switch” narratives
Meanwhile, generic “we’re better” comparison messaging underperformed almost universally.
The companies seeing the strongest results were not just intercepting searches. They were reframing how buyers thought about the category itself.
Why We Think This Is Happening
Our working theory is still the same:
AI tools are compressing vendor discovery dramatically.
A buyer asks ChatGPT for “best payroll software” or “best AI security platform” and immediately gets a shortlist.
But the AI response itself is usually not enough to create deep trust or conviction.
So the buyer moves into validation mode.
They Google the vendors.
They compare reviews.
They search pricing.
They read customer experiences.
They evaluate alternatives.
Which means competitor-branded search increasingly represents:
“I’m researching.”
Not:
“I’m decided.”
That distinction changes the economics of competitive campaigns entirely.
I think many GTM teams still underestimate how much AI is reshaping buyer behavior upstream.
Thanks for reading,
Adam
P.S. If you’re thinking through how AI is changing your paid strategy, positioning, or competitive motion, that’s exactly the kind of work we do at Growth Union.
We’re the team behind growth programs for companies like RevenueHero, Plane, Writer, and others, helping B2B teams rethink how modern GTM actually works in the AI era.
If you want a second set of eyes on your paid strategy, competitive campaigns, or overall growth motion, feel free to book some time with us.