Case studies

Five accounts. Five different things that were broken.

Each one below is a real ecommerce Google Ads account: what we found when we opened it, what we changed, and what happened afterwards. Client names are withheld, so each is listed by category.

Figures are taken from the accounts over the periods described. Results vary with margin, category, competition and the state of the account at the start.
Case 01 Musical instruments DTC ecommerce

From $20K a month to $2M in revenue by fixing the whole funnel, not the bids

A musical instruments brand with healthy traffic and stalled growth. Spend was going up, revenue was not. The account was only one part of the problem: conversion rate was weak, structure was loose, and almost nobody bought twice.

$20K → $2MRevenue over the engagement
+50%ROAS improvement
-40%Wasted ad spend
+30%Repeat purchase rate

What we found

  • High traffic converting poorly: weak landing pages and unclear product messaging were losing the sale at the bottom of the funnel
  • Campaigns built without intent structure, so bidding had nothing coherent to optimise toward
  • Almost all revenue came from first-time buyers, leaving lifetime value untouched
  • A competitive category pushing acquisition costs up and making profitable scale hard

What we changed

  • Rebuilt campaigns around high intent products and moved bidding onto target CPA and target ROAS once the data supported it
  • Cut irrelevant audiences and placements, refined keywords from search term data, and added dynamic remarketing
  • A/B tested the key landing pages: speed, messaging, CTAs and social proof
  • Built the retention layer that did not exist: behavioural segments, email flows, upsells and repeat purchase incentives

What happened

  • Revenue scaled from $20K a month to $2M
  • Conversion rate up 25% on the same traffic
  • ROAS up 50% while wasted spend fell 40%
  • Repeat purchase rate up 30%
  • Branded search demand up 15%, a sign the brand itself was growing

The lesson. Scaling revenue is rarely a budget problem. Conversion rate and lifetime value were worth more here than any bid adjustment, and the ad account only started compounding once both were fixed.

Case 02 Health and supplements High spend account

$100K a month in spend, $40K of it going to queries that never converted

A supplements brand running Shopping, Search and Demand Gen at high six figure spend. Volume was not the issue. Structure was. Brand clicks were costing $10 to $13, non-brand was past $20, and the reporting was inflated enough that nobody could see it.

$40K+Non-performing spend eliminated
-30 to 50%Brand cost per click
-20 to 40%Cost per acquisition
+20 to 40%Shopping click-through rate

What we found

  • Roughly $40K spent on search queries that produced zero revenue, with no negative keyword system in place
  • Branded traffic leaking into prospecting campaigns, inflating reported performance and hiding the real acquisition cost
  • Individual clicks reaching $18 to $49 on a bidding setup that had no ceiling
  • Several primary conversion actions plus engaged-view attribution, so Demand Gen looked far better than it was
  • $140K spent in 90 days on Demand Gen audiences with over 90% drop-off in the first seven seconds of video

What we changed

  • Consolidated the structure and split brand from non-brand, then applied a full negative keyword system across prospecting
  • Changed bidding strategies specifically to pull brand CPC back down
  • Rebuilt the feed: product duplication across real search angles, high intent titles, lifestyle imagery, cleaner Merchant Center setup
  • Collapsed conversion tracking to a single primary purchase event and cut the engaged-view and view-through windows
  • Cut spend on the Demand Gen audiences that were not working and rebuilt the creative approach around hooks and UGC style
  • Creative asset briefing. Directed the client's creative team to script high-retention video hooks based on customer psychology, transforming Demand Gen from a money pit into an acquisition source

What happened

  • $40K+ in non-performing spend removed from the account
  • Brand CPCs down 30 to 50%
  • Cost per acquisition down 20 to 40%
  • Wasted spend down 20 to 30% overall
  • Shopping CTR up 20 to 40% and Shopping revenue up 15 to 30%
  • Demand Gen CPA improved 25 to 50%

The lesson. At $100K a month, structure is the whole game. Spend amplifies whatever is already broken, and inaccurate tracking gives you the confidence to scale the broken version faster.

Case 03 Lawn and garden care UK, seasonal and subscription

Rebuilding an account so it could survive £100K a month in peak season

A seasonal lawn care brand with subscription products and an aggressive peak season budget. On paper the account looked strong. The ROAS was being carried by branded queries inside Performance Max, and it fell apart every time spend went up.

£100K/moSpend level the account was rebuilt for
-30 to 50%Cost per click
+20 to 40%ROAS at higher spend
3x+Target return achieved

What we found

  • A large share of Performance Max conversions were branded queries, making ROAS look strong right up until the budget increased
  • No segmentation or negative keyword structure, so budget spread across low intent queries at scale
  • Product titles with no high intent keyword alignment, costing visibility and CTR in Shopping
  • Heavy reliance on Performance Max, which removed control over traffic quality
  • Multiple conversion actions and long attribution windows inflating what the reports showed

What we changed

  • Separated brand from non-brand across every campaign and built dedicated high intent Search alongside segmented Shopping
  • Built account-level negative keyword lists and added scripts to keep query quality from drifting back
  • Rebuilt product titles around high intent keywords, added custom labels for segmentation and ran product duplication
  • Consolidated conversion actions into one primary event, shortened attribution windows and added enhanced conversions
  • Activated customer lists for targeting and exclusion, then layered in YouTube, Discover and remarketing

What happened

  • Infrastructure capable of absorbing £100K+ a month without performance collapsing
  • CPCs down 30 to 50% through query control and better targeting
  • ROAS up 20 to 40% despite the higher spend level
  • Conversion rate improved through intent-matched landing pages
  • Wasted spend cut significantly across every campaign type

The lesson. Separating brand from non-brand is what makes ROAS mean anything at scale. Without it you are reading a number that rises with your own organic demand and falls the moment you try to grow.

Case 04 Wellness devices US, UK, CA, AU

€29K to €168K of monthly Google Ads revenue in four months

A wellness device brand with real demand and an account built almost entirely around capturing it. The job was not proving the product sold. It was building an acquisition engine that could reach people who had never heard of the brand, across four markets, without losing control of efficiency.

+475%Monthly Google Ads revenue
+458%Monthly purchases
3.85xBlended ROAS in month four
2.74xProspecting ROAS, above a 2.2 target

What we found

  • The account was almost entirely brand demand capture, with no systematic prospecting layer
  • Brand and non-brand were not cleanly separated, so attribution and budget decisions were built on blended numbers
  • Conversion settings, cart data, audience setup, customer list syncing and tagging all needed cleanup before anything could be trusted
  • Merchant Center and feed quality were holding Shopping back: weak titles, no branded feed, price mismatches, no segmentation labels
  • A sensitive wellness category where claims, feed structure and landing page language carry real ad approval risk

What we changed

  • Fixed the foundation first: conversion settings, dynamic remarketing variables, audiences, customer list syncing, UTMs, negative keyword lists and brand safety exclusions
  • Preserved and cleaned brand Search, then launched Standard Shopping Brand on a branded feed and Performance Max Prospecting on a non-branded feed
  • Introduced a feed management layer, enriched titles with high intent search terms, prepared product duplicates and added custom labels for segmentation
  • Built acquisition in layers: Performance Max Prospecting first, then Search Prospecting, then Demand Gen and competitor and landing page tests
  • Scaled budget against campaign data, monitoring the efficiency tradeoff as spend moved from capture into prospecting

What happened

  • Monthly Google Ads revenue grew from €29.28K to €168.46K, a 5.75x increase
  • Monthly purchases grew from 373 to 2,080
  • Store-wide sales grew from $892K to $2.07M across the same four months
  • Prospecting reached 89% of spend and €107.09K of monthly revenue at 2.74x, above the 2.2 target
  • Brand continued protecting blended performance at 13.2x return
  • Early expansion into two new markets showed positive traction at 2.7x

The lesson. Prospecting became the dominant spend and the dominant revenue driver while staying inside the efficiency target. That is the outcome worth aiming at, not a high blended ROAS propped up by demand the brand already owned.

Case 05 Specialty food and natural products US, UK, CA, AU

A supply-capped brand where the job was efficiency, not scale

A high AOV natural products brand operating under hard supply constraints, with revenue deliberately capped to keep operations intact. Scaling aggressively would have broken the business. Google Ads had to earn its place as a profit channel instead of a growth channel.

3x+ROAS achieved and held
$150-200KMonthly revenue from Google Ads
4 marketsLocalised feeds built
~6%Retention rate the model had to work around

What we found

  • A revenue cap of $400K to $500K a month, so efficiency rather than volume was the actual objective
  • Repeat purchase rate around 6%, leaving the business almost entirely dependent on new customer acquisition
  • Shopping showing the wrong currency in the UK and US, with no localised feeds across four markets
  • No store ratings or consistent review system in a category where buyers are actively asking whether the seller is legitimate
  • Demand Gen budget leaking into Discover and Gmail placements with negative return, running 15 second creatives at cold audiences
  • Search built on a narrow keyword set with no comparison or advertorial pages behind it

What we changed

  • Rebuilt Merchant Center with localised feeds for all four markets and fixed the currency, pricing, shipping and tax mismatches
  • Made Shopping the primary revenue driver: product duplication across search angles, titles written for intent rather than description
  • Built the trust layer that was missing, store ratings and a review system, because in this category trust is a conversion lever
  • Kept Search strictly bottom of funnel on high intent terms and added comparison and advertorial landing pages
  • Cut Discover and Gmail entirely, moved Demand Gen to YouTube only and switched to longer form 60 to 120 second creative
  • Aligned with the brand's primary demand channel so Google captured the branded and high intent traffic it was generating

What happened

  • $150K to $200K a month in revenue from Google Ads
  • 3x+ ROAS achieved and stabilised
  • Shopping established as the primary revenue driver
  • Conversion rate up through feed localisation and trust signals
  • Eliminated inefficient top-of-funnel spend to maximize bottom-line contribution margins
  • Performance stable inside the $400K to $500K revenue cap

The lesson. Not every account should scale. When supply is the constraint, the right strategy is to make every pound of spend more efficient and let Google capture demand rather than try to create it.

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