A builder getting ready to launch Google Ads usually pictures the auction full of the biggest names in town, each with a budget the size of a small project. So the first bids go in high, set to outspend firms that may not be there.
In our example market, most of them weren't.
This chapter shows who was running Search ads on construction websites in the example market, how Google's auction insights report shows the advertisers in your own auctions, and how to set bids while the account is young: by hand first, then a target cost once there's enough data behind it. It follows Chapter 6, which chose the searches to bid on.
One Local Commercial Builder Ran at Least 15 Search Ads Since August. Messer, Skanska and Miller Valentine Ran None.
We looked up 102 construction websites connected to our example market, Cincinnati, in Google's Ads Transparency Center, and counted the Search ads each one showed between August 1 and October 30, 2026.
The 42 local commercial general contractors and design-build firms produced two advertisers:
- Cincinnati Commercial Contracting showed at least 15 Search ads in that window. Fifteen is the most our pull collected per website, so the real count may be higher.
- HGC Construction showed 2, and both name the firm's Columbus team.
The other 40 showed none, and they include big names. Three of the five largest general contractors on the Cincinnati Business Courier's 2025 list are among the 42: Messer, Miller Valentine and The Huseman Group, the firm formerly called HGC. Only HGC had Search ads in the window, and those point at Columbus. The other two of the five, Turner and Skanska, are national firms we checked with the out-of-market group. Skanska returned no Search ads, and Turner's website turned up one ad placed under an unrelated advertiser's name, so we left it out.
One limit matters here. The Transparency Center shows that an ad ran, not where. A firm could also advertise under a website we didn't check. So read the count as a floor and a direction: in this market, the big commercial builders were mostly not buying Search ads.
Out-of-Town Builders, Home Remodelers and Directories Made Up 19 of the 22 Advertisers We Found
Across all 102 websites, 22 showed Search ads in the window under their own names. Only three were local commercial firms: the two builders above and an asphalt paving contractor. The other 19 came from three groups.
- Builders based outside the metro or selling nationally (8). A design-build firm for medical, dental and veterinary offices with offices in Illinois, Florida and Wisconsin. A church design-build firm based in Utah, whose ads name states from Florida to California. A general contractor from Sidney, Ohio, with offices in Columbus and Indiana. A Columbus commercial roofer with a Cincinnati office. A national design-build firm advertising cold storage, a roofer advertising its Massachusetts branch, and makers of fabric, salt-storage and steel buildings.
- Residential remodelers and home-exterior trades (8). Design-build remodelers, a kitchen remodeler, roofers and an excavation company.
- Directories (3). Two home-services directories, and one construction directory whose ads are aimed at subcontractors.
The pattern matters for bidding. A local builder pricing its first bids against "the big guys" is pricing against firms that, here, weren't bidding. And the firms that were bidding are a mixed lot: some chase the same commercial owner (the medical and church specialists), and some chase homeowners on searches a commercial builder shouldn't be buying anyway.
Your own market will have its own mix. The way to see it isn't a guess or a search on your phone. It's a report inside your own account.
Auction Insights Names the Advertisers in Your Auctions Once You Hold 10% of the Impressions
Google's auction insights report lists the other advertisers whose ads showed in the same auctions as yours, with numbers for how often. You can pull it for a whole campaign, for one ad group, or for a single keyword like [tenant improvement contractor]. In the account, open the ad groups list, tick the box next to an ad group, and choose Auction insights.
The report has six columns for Search. A builder can get most of what matters from four of them:
- Impression share: of all the times your ads were eligible to show, the share in which they actually showed. Google estimates the eligible total from your targeting, approvals and ad quality.
- Overlap rate: how often another advertiser's ad showed in the same auction as yours.
- Position above rate: the share of shared auctions where the other firm's ad landed higher on the page than yours.
- Outranking share: the share of your impressions where you beat that firm, including the auctions it sat out.
Two cautions for a new commercial account. First, Google says the report stays empty while your impression share sits below 10%, and keywords or ad groups with little activity don't get one. With searches as thin as Chapter 6 showed (most commercial phrases at 10 to 40 a month in the metro), a new account may see an empty report for weeks. That isn't an error. It means the account hasn't shown up in enough auctions yet.
Second, read the report one ad group at a time. The tenant build-out group and the church group can face entirely different advertisers. Combined into one campaign view, a church specialist from another state and a local remodeler blur into one list, and neither tells you much.
When names do appear, sort them into two piles. Advertisers chasing the same commercial owner are your real rivals, and their overlap and position above rates say how hard you need to bid to stay ahead of them. Advertisers clearly chasing homeowners are a sign that some of your searches are leaking toward residential intent, and the fix there is keywords and negatives (Chapters 5 and 6), not a higher bid.
A Hand-Set Bid Is a Builder's Ceiling, Not the Price. Google Often Charges Less.
At launch, the account bids by hand. This is the Isolation stage from Chapter 6: exact match keywords, and a maximum cost per click that you type in for each one. Google's manual bidding page describes that number as a cap: a click can cost up to it and often costs less, since the charge is just enough to clear Google's minimum and stay ahead of the ad below yours.
Three numbers set the first bids:
- Keyword Planner's top-of-page range. For each launch keyword, Keyword Planner shows a low and high "top of page bid," Google's estimate of what advertisers have paid to appear above the free results. In the example market, "commercial construction company" showed about $2.13 to $15.00, and "commercial contractors" about $3.56 to $23.38. Many thin commercial phrases show no range at all. Our working rule from builder accounts: expect actual click costs to run as much as roughly 30% above or below those figures. Treat them as a starting point.
- What an inquiry is worth. Chapter 3 worked out the most a builder can afford per project inquiry; in its example, $768. That number never becomes a bid directly, but it's the ceiling the whole account answers to. If a keyword's clicks are costing far more per inquiry than that, the bid comes down or the keyword goes.
- Impression share. Google describes impression share as a way to see whether more bid or budget might reach more people. A launch keyword at 30% impression share on a tight budget is being held back; one at 90% has little more to gain from a higher bid.
Raise bids on keywords that bring project inquiries, lower them on keywords that bring clicks and nothing else, and check auction insights once the report fills in. Small, regular moves beat dramatic ones: each change needs a few weeks of thin commercial traffic before it says anything.
Target CPA Bidding Learns From Conversions. Four Inquiries a Month Teach It Very Little.
The next stage hands bids to Google. Exploration is our name for the stage that follows: broad match keywords, with Google picking each bid to hit a cost per conversion you name. That number is the target CPA, short for target cost per acquisition. For a builder, it's the average cost per project inquiry you're aiming for. Google then prices each bid itself from the account's history and what it can tell about each search.
Google says target CPA can start with no conversion history at all. We wait anyway, for a reason on the same help page. For a campaign that already has conversions on record, Google's suggested target is what each conversion cost on average across the past 30 days, adjusted for conversions that arrive late. And to tell whether the strategy is working, Google says to review a 30-day stretch holding 30 or more conversions.
Chapter 3's example builder wanted four project inquiries a month. At that pace the account never reaches 30 in a month; the inquiry volume has to grow first, and a target built on four data points is mostly guesswork. So a single-market commercial builder usually stays on hand-set bids far longer than a busy consumer business would. That's normal, and it's cheaper than handing a thin account to an algorithm with nothing to learn from.
When the account does reach about 30 good conversions a month (real project inquiries, not job applications or vendor emails), start target CPA from the account's own number. Pull the account's real cost per project inquiry for the past month, start the target close to that figure, and give it several weeks before touching it. Google cautions that an overly ambitious target can make the system skip clicks that would have turned into inquiries, so the account ends up with fewer of them.
None of this needs guesswork about rivals. The Transparency Center sketches the market, auction insights names your own competitors once you hold enough of the impressions, and your cost per inquiry tells you when it's time to hand Google the bids. If you'd like help setting launch bids and reading these reports for your firm, our Google Ads agency does this with commercial builders.
Next: Commercial Clients Praise Builders for Hitting the Schedule
Chapter 8 turns to the ads themselves: what commercial clients praise in reviews, what builders' ads actually say, and why the schedule belongs in the headline. The full chapter list is on the Google Ads for Construction Companies guide home.
