Took on a dormant Google Ads account — now returning nearly 2x and climbing.

We launched into three live campaigns at once — Performance Max on a clean product feed, Standard Shopping alongside it, and Brand Search to catch the obvious high-intent demand. The data quickly told us two things: Pmax worked at scale but at a margin-sensitive return, and Brand Search was almost certainly cannibalising organic & direct traffic the brand already won for free. The months since have been about acting on that rather than waiting another cycle — pausing an unconverting high-intent Search campaign, testing Brand Search out of the mix (signed off as a two-week trial), and giving Standard Shopping room to prove itself. We also named the real blocker: without product-level margin data, every return target is a guess.

The most recent month stepped up from the low-1s to nearly 2x ROAS, with cost per acquisition materially lower and Standard Shopping pulling above 4.5x on a small spend — small, profitable, and the clear next scaling candidate. What made it work wasn't any single launch month; it was six months of willingness to make non-obvious cuts. The account now prunes itself month over month against a clear set of benchmarks, with the next two scaling moves already identified.