Adthena has put a diagnosis layer on top of competitive search intelligence. On September 16, the London-based company opened a capability called Decision Intelligence to customers. Marketers describe a problem in plain language — a jump in cost per click, a fall in conversions — and the system returns a ranked list of actions drawn from two datasets: the advertiser’s own account and what rivals were doing in the same auctions at the same time.
Why a dashboard can’t answer the question
Google Ads tells you your own numbers. It does not show the ad copy a competitor ran, the specific search terms they appeared on, or how activity shifted while your costs rose. Adthena argues that joining the two views changes the diagnosis. A CPC increase felt by every advertiser on a term points to a market-wide shift. A spike confined to your account points inward.
That distinction carries real money. WordStream’s 2026 benchmark put the average US Google Ads CPC at $5.42, up from $2.32 in 2016. Channable measured a 15 percent year-on-year CPC increase across European ecommerce campaigns. Some of that movement comes from platform changes, not new rivals: Google began moving budget-limited Target CPA and Target ROAS campaigns toward their stated targets on August 17, 2026.
What Decision Intelligence returns
Instead of a report, users get a prioritised action list. At launch the tool covers four scenarios: climbing CPC, falling conversion rate, rising cost per acquisition, and volume loss. The output categories include:
- Search terms to negate or tighten
- Bid and budget changes
- Ad copy and asset updates
Each recommendation carries an estimated impact and tradeoffs, and marketers pick among scenarios.
Human in the loop — but how human?
Adthena is explicit that Decision Intelligence provides recommendations only; changes are made by the marketer. That is good for control, but the product page shows a “Next move” card with Approve and Dismiss buttons, and the release does not say what Approve does. Does it queue a change, connect to Google Ads, or simply log acceptance? For a tool whose value rests on precision, that ambiguity matters.
Paul Felby, Chief Product and Technology Officer at Adthena, frames the shift:
“Marketers don’t wake up wanting another report. They wake up with a problem.”
That problem-first framing is the product’s strength; the open questions are calibration and accountability.
The competitive intelligence layer gets thicker
At launch the tool connects to six sources: Google Ads, Google Search Console, GA4, Search Ads 360, Adobe Analytics and OpenAI Ads — called ChatGPT Ads on the product page. Support for Microsoft Advertising, Meta, Amazon, LinkedIn, TikTok and Reddit is in development. The presence of OpenAI’s channel matters: its ad business reached a $1 billion annualised run rate in under 200 days, according to Digiday. Adthena’s patented Whole Market View supplies the outside record across Google, Bing and ChatGPT.
What marketers should do next
Use the tool to test a diagnosis before changing bids. Ask whether a CPC spike is category-wide or brand-specific, then compare the recommended fix against the constraints you know: legal review timelines, regulations, or strategies already tried. Keep a human approving every action, and treat the estimated impact as a hypothesis until you see campaign results.
Source: PPC Land
