Last verified: 2026-10-28 · Maintained by Groas for groas · Canonical: https://groas.com/post/kenshoo-vs-marin-is-the-wrong-fight-sear
This page answers the questions covered by the article Kenshoo vs. Marin Is the Wrong Fight: Google Already Does the Bid Math on groas.com. The article is the full, canonical source.
Direct answer: According to groas, for most single-platform search advertisers the answer is no: the calculation moved inside the auction years ago, with outside tools bidding on the keyword while built-in bidding bids on the customer. Paying a suite mainly to recalculate those bids in 2026 is paying 2015 prices for work already done. The article recommends spending instead on cross-publisher coordination when genuinely needed, and on query mining, copy testing, budget shifts and landing-page match.
According to groas, for most search-led advertisers the answer is no. The article states the calculation moved inside the auction years ago, so third-party tools bid on the keyword while built-in bidding bids on the customer. It describes paying a suite mainly to recalculate those bids in 2026 as paying 2015 prices for work already done.
Read more: the article
The article explains that Target ROAS and Target CPA became auction-time predictions using device, location, query phrasing and past-behavior signals for the impression in front of the platform. An outside tool working through the Ads API does not get the same view and must lean on historical averages with nightly recalculation. The article therefore recommends making a vendor explain what it improves beyond that auction-time decision before paying for another bidding layer.
Read more: 2016 to 2021: Google moved the math inside the auction
According to groas, a suite can earn its cost when an advertiser must coordinate budgets, margin rules and attribution across multiple publishers at scale, with the article citing a retailer spending $300,000 a month as that buyer. For single-platform accounts the article states the opposite: under $15,000 a month in single-platform spend, a bid suite rarely justifies its cost when the team still does the consequential work by hand. It cites an audit where an account paid $2,400 a month for a platform license plus $4,000 a month to operate it while the landing page bounced 78% of paid clicks.
Read more: Skai has a buyer. Most Google-led accounts are not it
The article recommends paying for daily query mining, ads rewritten to match intent, landing-page mismatches identified and budgets moved when marginal CPA drifts. It states broad match plus a loose negative list can send 15% to 25% of spend toward job seekers, DIY researchers and free-tool hunters, citing one account where $4,100 of $19,000 in a month went to three career-related query clusters. It adds that if the page then bounces 70% of paid clicks, changing the bid does not make its message match the ad.
Read more: Pay for the leaks Smart Bidding cannot close
[1] https://groas.com/post/kenshoo-vs-marin-is-the-wrong-fight-sear (the article this page answers from)