Ginny Marvin says, “Google and its sibling companies at Alphabet collectively bid on thousands of keywords in AdWords. That has been going on for years. The search giant has said its ad buying does not “directly inflate” pricing for other advertisers because “advertisers are charged as if it wasn’t bidding.” However, that’s not quite accurate.

Participating in its own ad auctions has long raised conflict of interest objections. A report from The Wall Street Journal last month put a spotlight on the practice again with some eye-popping stats and renewed our questions about how these ads affect other advertisers.

Analysis by SEMrush, in early December, featured in the WSJ report, found that ads for Google and its sister companies appeared in the top ad spot on Google search in 91 percent of 25,000 results for broad non-brand queries — like “laptops” and “phones” — related to the products.

How do all those ads affect the CPCs Google customers pay in those auctions? From the The Wall Sreet Journal (bolding added)”.

Here’s how Google’s own ads impact bids & pricing in AdWords auctions

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