How Retail Marketers Are Bleeding Budget on Google Shopping Ads On Black Friday

Introduction

Google Shopping ads is a popular channel for consumers to find deals and make their purchase. The whole point for retailers is to sell and deplete selected stock, while generating as much revenue as efficiently as possible in the process. This means, naturally, the products will go out of stock. But when this happens, there is a big problem. Once products go out of stock, the ads remain live and are charged for by Google on a cost per click basis. See the example video below showing Argos continuing to advertise products which are not even available, leaving customers frustrated and businesses short-changed. Think about how many products Argos sells, and the ad spend going towards such products as they sell out and the amount of people continuing to search and click on the ads. We are talking thousands of pounds worth of ad spend. While this happens all year round, it is exacerbated on Black Friday as literally every minute counts.

Supporting Feature:

A landmark study from ShoppingIQ spanning 500 retailers globally has uncovered that 97 percent of retailers continue to pay for Google Shopping ad clicks on products that are no longer available, sometimes for up to 24 to 48 hours after they sell out.

“In the day in age we are in, it doesn’t make sense for retailers to continue to pay for ad clicks when stock is not available. You would not get a sales assistance in a physical store pushing an out of stock product, the same should not happen online, especially at cost” says Alam Hosseinbor, Director at ShoppingIQ. “

The issue is also highlighted by KieranLaurie,  e-commerce director at Omnicom Media Group’s Flywheel,  “Driving customers to out-of-stock product pages undermines trust and damages the user journey. ”

How Big is the Problem?

Google Shopping Ads continue to dominate the digital retail ad market in 2025, while studies differ, it tends to represent approximately 75% of all retail search spend in the US. Yet few realise that Google's default settings allow ads to run even after stock runs dry, wasting precious ad spend and damaging customer experience.

But it’s not just wasted ad clicks. These inefficiencies muddy the waters of campaign performance, skew AI learning models and send smart algorithms off-course. Once a product is out of stock, every click still registered by Google lowers conversion rates and signals underperformance, causing a knock-on effect in rankings and future visibility.

What does this mean and what can be done about it?

Google has yet to publicly acknowledge the scale of the issue and no efficient retailer wants to spend money on out of stock products. In a world where marketing teams request more budget, at first the relevant hygiene factors to divert wasted spend on out of stock to spend on in stock products. That is the first step.  This requires real-time technology. Retailers like Mamas & Papas are turning to ShoppingIQ’s real-time stock  technology to fight back.

“ShoppingIQ has been a game-changer,” says Samantha Dabek, Senior Digital Marketing Manager at Mamas & Papas. “We’ve been able to cut unnecessary costs in real time and ensure our advertising focuses only on products we actually have in stock, especially during peak periods, where costs are higher and stock levels can change quickly” 

The financial implications stretch beyond wasted clicks. Stockouts can lead to Google disapprovals, distorted performance signals, lower ROI, and long-term bidding algorithm damage.

 

Demanding More from Google:

 

Despite being the world’s most powerful advertising channel, Google has remained silent on this issue. No guidance, no alerts—just quiet inefficiency.

That’s why ShoppingIQ is urging retailers to push back. “It’s time for transparency,” says ShoppingIQ. “Google must acknowledge the problem and retailers need tools that put them back in control.”