Adthena x Revvim: Cut branded CPCs & fund real growth with Brand Activator Premium

In the world of paid search, every dollar counts. Yet many advertisers are unknowingly leaving money on the table, paying premium prices for brand terms even when no competitors are in sight. What if you could automatically reclaim that wasted spend and redirect it toward growth?

That’s exactly what Brand Activator Premium delivers.

In a recent webinar, Adthena CEO Philip Thune joined forces with Matt LeBaron, CEO and founder of Revvim, to unveil this game-changing technology. The conversation revealed not just a new product, but a fundamental shift in how smart advertisers approach brand defense and budget optimization.

Here’s a scenario that plays out millions of times a day: Your branded search ad appears at the top of Google. No competitors are bidding against you. Yet you’re still paying full price for those clicks.

“With Brand Activator Premium, you’ve got a patented system that’s going to work constantly, 24 hours a day, making sure that you’re not paying more than you should anytime you have an uncontested ad,” Philip explained during the webinar.

It’s a problem that’s only getting worse. Google’s publicly available data tells a consistent story: while click volume grows modestly year over year, cost-per-click rises even faster. Advertisers might see 2-4% more clicks, but they’re paying 10-12% more than the previous year.

Brand Activator Premium, powered by Revvim, takes a radically different approach to brand defense. Instead of treating every auction the same way, it makes split-second decisions based on competitive presence.

Here’s how it works:

When competitors are present: Your full-price campaign runs normally, defending your brand position exactly as you’ve configured it.

When no competitors appear: The system automatically swaps in a low-bid version of the same ad, identical copy, same landing page, same customer experience, but at Google’s minimum bid for that auction.

The result? Immediate cost-per-click reductions of 50% or more, with further optimization bringing CPCs down to around one cent over subsequent weeks and quarters.

“It’s really important to note that with Brand Activator Premium, your ads, by default, will stay up,” Matt emphasized. “That CPC will immediately drop once you launch it by a significant amount, not all the way to one cent, and then over time, it will actually be reduced until eventually reaching that one cent CPC after a quarter or two.”

The data speaks for itself. Let’s look at a real customer example that launched Brand Activator Premium in April 2024.

The graph above tells a compelling story. The blue line shows average CPC steadily declining from left to right starting at around $0.13 (already reflecting the initial 50%+ savings) and dropping approximately 80% to just $0.02-0.03 by the end of the first quarter.

But here’s what makes this truly remarkable: look at the red line tracking Search Impression Share. It remains virtually flat throughout the entire period, hovering consistently near 100%.

What this means in practice:

• Same ads running at the same frequency
• Same click-through rates maintained
• Same landing page experience for users
• Same number of clicks, conversions, and revenue

The only variable that changed? Cost efficiency.

This isn’t a trade-off scenario where you sacrifice performance for savings. Your down-funnel metrics remain completely untouched. You’re simply paying dramatically less for the identical results you were already getting.

Across hundreds of brands now using the technology, the average savings on branded budgets hits around 30%. For brands spending $10,000 or more monthly on Google Ads branded search, that translates to thousands of dollars in reclaimed spend every single month.

Those savings compound over time. As the AI learns and optimizes, efficiency continues to improve week after week.

Brand Activator Premium now extends to Product Listing Ads (PLAs), bringing the same cost-saving intelligence to shopping campaigns.

Some major brands are taking this even further. When their shopping ads appear uncontested, they’re not just saving money, they’re running low-bid versions of their ads, effectively clawing back margin and directly increasing revenue.

So how does Brand Activator Premium actually work? It’s a sophisticated system that combines multiple data sources:

• Google Ads integration for campaign management
• Google Search Console data for organic traffic insights
• Revvim’s search engine results page data, sampling Google millions of times per day across different devices and locations globally

These inputs feed probabilistic models that predict when ads will be uncontested. But the system doesn’t just predict, it detects and responds to unpredicted changes in just 8 minutes and 45 seconds on average for high-volume terms (35 minutes for low-volume tail terms).

The implementation is simple. The system uses Google Ads scripts to create and manage a negative keyword list within your account, adding or removing exact match search terms to toggle between your full-price and low-bid campaigns. It never touches your existing bids, budgets, keywords, or ads, meaning zero interference with your team’s work or other tools you’re using.

Matt challenged a common industry practice during the webinar: the brand holdout test.

“With a brand holdout test, what you’re really saying is that at this moment in time during which the holdout test is happening, would it have been okay to remove the ad or not?” he explained. “Whatever the answer to that question is, it only is valid as long as the competitive landscape doesn’t change.”

But competitive landscapes change constantly. With over $5 billion in annual Google Ad spend managed by Revvim’s technology, the data shows competitors flowing in and out of auctions regularly, testing conquest campaigns and adjusting strategies.

Brand Activator Premium essentially runs a continuous, dynamic incrementality test, responding in near real-time to competitive changes rather than relying on static conclusions from weeks or months ago.

The savings are impressive, but the real power lies in what you do with that reclaimed budget.

Philip noted that Adthena has long focused on turning insights into action. “What I love about Brand Activator Premium is it’s not only the ultimate in actionability, it’s totally automated,” he said. Customers are using their reclaimed spend in creative ways:

• Reinvesting in brand defense where aggressive competitors require it
• Pushing budget up-funnel to generic and non-brand terms for growth
• Funding new channel tests including YouTube and other platforms
• Enabling additional agency services that previously lacked budget

“This is a budget creation and growth enablement tool,” Matt emphasized. “You will continue to get all the clicks, conversions and revenue while using Brand Activator Premium straight through the paid search program, just as you always have. You’ll suddenly just have more budget to do more fun things with.”

The Adthena-Revvim partnership brings together complementary strengths. Adthena’s competitive search intelligence platform helps advertisers understand the competitive landscape, while Revvim’s automation turns those insights into immediate, measurable action.

Together, they serve over 600 clients who can now leverage both platforms’ capabilities. As Philip put it, instead of fighting for market share, the companies are focused on creating more value, a win for everyone involved.

Philip sees several converging factors making this the right moment for advertisers to embrace budget optimization:

• Rising costs: Google’s ad costs continue their upward trajectory with no signs of slowing
• Budget pressure: Marketing teams face increasing demands to prove ROI and do more with less
• Market uncertainty: For the first time in decades, Google faces real competition from AI-powered alternatives like ChatGPT
• Peace of mind: In an uncertain environment, having automated protection working 24/7 provides valuable assurance

“I think uncertainty is only going to increase,” Philip noted. “Having something that you know is working on your behalf, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, finding every opportunity to save money, give you back that reclaimed spend, I think there’s a bit of peace of mind.”

For existing Adthena clients, the first step is simple: talk to your Customer Success Manager or Account Manager. They can walk you through how Brand Activator Premium works specifically for your account (including the ability to optimize shopping ads triggered through Performance Max campaigns) and help you set up that risk-free trial.

Brand Activator Premium represents a fundamental shift in paid search strategy: from accepting Google’s pricing as fixed to actively optimizing every auction based on competitive reality.

The combination of Adthena’s competitive intelligence and Revvim’s automated optimization creates something greater than the sum of its parts, a truly hands-off system that protects your brand, maximizes efficiency, and creates budget for growth.

In an environment of rising costs and increasing uncertainty, that’s not just valuable. It’s essential.