Yes, I didn't express that correctly; I know about the second price auction and what I was referring to is that since Google does everything in their power to get you away from keyword level bidding and into their "smart bidding" solutions you have no _direct_ say in what the traffic costs (AFAIK it's still possible to use keyword level bidding but Google will email you very regularly to try to get you off). This fact is even more obvious in non-competitive markets as I was trying to point out.
I manage a decent size Google Adwords account. The Google adwords "strategist" they have call me is always pushing the Smart Bidding endlessly. So I try it on one campaign. Smart bidding increased the click cost from about $20 to $100. The one click converted but I get conversions on that campaign for about $60 so it was a disaster. Turned off that smart bidding and went back to my own eCpc bidding.
