There’s nothing worse than watching your own products compete against each other.
When your paid media strategy starts pitting your product lines against one another, you’re not just inflating costs; you’re undercutting your own chances at conversion.
That’s the question this month’s “Ask A PPC” will tackle:
“I work for a company that has three brands in the same niche with a high ticket item for house renovation. All companies have high spend on search ads, but we are targeting the same keywords and we are seeing cannibalization.
What can we do with our bidding strategy to try and reduce our CPC and still compete on the same products/keywords, but not cannibalize each other?”
Let’s break down how to avoid keyword cannibalization, particularly when dealing with premium products, and how to structure campaigns in a way that keeps everything working together.
The Hard Truth: You Can’t Avoid All Cannibalization
Let’s start here because this is what no one wants to hear: If you’re targeting the same non-branded keywords, the same geographies, and similar audiences with similar value props, some level of internal competition is inevitable.
Search campaigns don’t know your product lines are siblings. All they see are bids, relevance scores, and conversion data. Some keywords/ads will win. Some won’t.
The goal is to mitigate the internal crossfire and make strategic decisions that give every product its best shot to shine.
Prioritize: Which Products Get Which Keywords?
We don’t like to play favorites with our products, but when it comes to generic, high-volume keywords, you might have to.
Unless you have contractual obligations to spend equally across product lines (try to avoid this), you’ll need to assign certain non-branded queries to one product or another.
Here’s how you can do it:
- Segment by market: Allocate geographic zones to different products based on performance trends, sales reps, or product-market fit.
- Use keyword research as a compass: Both Google’s and Microsoft’s keyword planners can show you which search terms have better affinity with which product.
- Establish thematic lanes: If Product A is more “entry-level” and Product B is the “pro version,” let them own different stages of the funnel.
Use Category Pages, Not Product Pages
One workaround, especially with Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) and Performance Max (PMax), is to avoid pushing people directly to product pages. Instead, drive them to category or collection pages.
Why this works:
- It gives consumers options without forcing them to pick one.
- You can still control targeting and ad creative at the campaign or asset group level.
- It creates a more balanced distribution of visibility without inflating cost-per-click (CPCs) by bidding on the same SKUs.
DSAs and PMax campaigns do this particularly well. You’re not bidding on keywords in the traditional sense; you’re letting Google’s (or Microsoft’s) AI determine which queries to match based on content and intent.
On Google, AI Max lets you guide that intent more narrowly through ad group-level settings.
On Microsoft, PMax can do something similar, especially if you feed it clean, structured data and lean into visual creative.
Build A Branded Safety Net
You likely already have branded campaigns in place, and if you don’t, this is an important go do.
Branded search and Shopping should ensure that anyone looking for a specific product by name sees only that product. This is where you can (and should) be strict about campaign segmentation.
Branded campaigns give you clean performance data, protect your CPCs from cannibalization, and provide the clearest attribution path.
Leverage Visual Differentiation
This is where platforms like Google Demand Gen and Microsoft Audience Ads really shine.
Visual content lets you sidestep keywords altogether and lean into product storytelling. You can target by interest, topic, or custom segments – not search intent – which means you can:
- Run one campaign per product and assign each a budget.
- Or run one big campaign and let the creative guide user choice.
You can use PMax here, too, especially on Microsoft, where PMax makes it more likely to secure Copilot placements across mobile and desktop.
Copilot has been shown to have 25% more relevancy than traditional search, according to Microsoft internal data.
The key is to treat these upper-funnel plays as audience builders. Then, once users engage, you can segment them with remarketing across both platforms.
Pro tip: On Microsoft, even just an impression is enough to build an audience. Which means your remarketing and exclusions can get very precise, very quickly.
So long as there’s at least one audience ad campaign in your impression-based remarketing sources, you can allow PMax to remarket to PMax and Search/Shopping to remarket to Search/Shopping, i.e., you can capture intent from Copilot even if they didn’t engage with you there.
Does This Really Solve Cannibalization?
The only surefire way to fully prevent cannibalization would be to run entirely separate ad accounts, one per product. But that opens up a Pandora’s box of compliance risks.
Google and Microsoft are both very aware of efforts to double-serve, and if they perceive your accounts as trying to game the system – even if you’re just trying to stay organized – you could end up suspended.
So instead, your best move is to manage the overlap, not eliminate it. Focus on:
- Using category pages for non-branded queries.
- Owning branded queries with tightly segmented campaigns.
- Differentiating products visually through audience-first formats.
- Using geographic and thematic separation when assigning generic keywords.
When done right, the consumer makes the final decision, not your CPC strategy. That’s not cannibalization. That’s just a user choosing which of your great products fits their needs best. And either way? You win.
Final Takeaways
To recap:
- You can’t fully eliminate cannibalization without risking violating platform policies.
- Smart segmentation of campaigns by geography, theme, and intent, helps mitigate overlap.
- Category pages + visual ads can guide consumers to the right product without inflating CPCs.
- Branded campaigns are your best friend; keep them clean, tight, and product-specific.
- Audience-based targeting gives you control without competing on search terms.
At the end of the day, your campaigns should reflect how your users shop: exploring, comparing, deciding. Make that process easier for them, and less expensive for you.
More Resources:
- How To Avoid Search Budget Cannibalization For A Better Share Of Spend
- Find Keyword Cannibalization Using OpenAI’s Text Embeddings With Examples
- PPC Trends 2025
Featured Image: Paulo Bobita/Search Engine Journal
