we’re spending tens of millions on google ads every month for ecom brands. i did a quick analysis to figure out what moved the needle the most for our clients this year so far. here’re a few of my takeaways: 1. test landing pages on google like how you test creatives on meta your landing pages are one of the biggest (if not the biggest) factors in your performance. and the same way you’d test creatives on meta… you should be testing landing page variations, angles, and formats on google to: - lower acquisition costs - improve conversion rates - scale to new levels of spend - capture new traffic sources from different customer avatars, problems, and use cases 2. reach more potential customers google is so much more than BOF Search, Shopping, and retargeting. sell to colder traffic (youtube ads, TOF search, MOF/comparison, native style ads, etc) go after different use cases, avatars, problems, and angles build dedicated landing pages for different channels and angles to keep your funnel congruent. just like on meta, if you truly want to scale on google, never stop looking for new customers to sell to. 3. match your funnel to how people buy on each placement people care about different things depending on where they see your ads. take Shopping, for example. price matters a ton here. and showing a good deal can make a huge difference in CTR. so you can promote a lower-priced product to get more people to click and buy then upsell them to higher-priced products later in the funnel. the same applies to other channels and placements. figure out what people care about, then match your offer, creative, and landing page to it. the better you understand this, the higher CTR and conversion rate you’ll get and the more you’ll scale. 4. get serious about your product feed & gmc shopping is the money placement for ecom. and your feed + gmc are 2 of the biggest things you can control. don’t be lazy and optimize your titles, images, descriptions, attributes, etc. duplicate your feed to target different search intents and show up for more queries. go to 'Store Quality' in merchant center and aim for “exceptional”. set up product reviews, seller ratings and promotions properly. 5. take advantage of changes in demand search volume and demand change throughout the year it could be seasonal, like hoodies in winter, or holidays and sales events like BFCM and Christmas. it could also be a growing trend, like right now, more people searching for ways to deal with burnout. spot these changes early and build campaigns around them. target relevant keywords, create ads and landing pages that match what people are looking for, and position your products around that demand. you can get a massive jump in revenue if you catch these changes at the right time. Google Ads is a whole different beast compared to a few years ago. and the brands that figure out these 5 things will have a massive advantage going forward.

@ ecom brands here’s every keyword type you should be running on Google Ads: INFORMATIONAL SEARCHES: > target people who have a problem your product can solve > examples: "how to lose weight after 50", "magnesium glycinate benefits" > huge search volume and cheaper CPCs but much harder to crack > send to advertorials or listicles with soft CTAs COMPARISON SEARCHES: > target shoppers comparing options or figuring out what to buy > examples: "best noise cancelling headphones", "top rated mattress 2026" > great for prospecting. works in pretty much any industry out there. > send to “top x products” pages that make your offer look like the best choice BRANDED TERMS: > target people searching your brand or product name > examples: "Nike", "Nike shoes”, "Air Force 1" > easiest money you’ll make on google > send to homepages for brand searches, category pages for a product category, product pages for specific items > should only take up a small part of your budget PRODUCT CATEGORY SEARCH > target buyers looking for a specific product type > examples: "buy iPhone 15 Pro", "standing desk online", "women’s dress" > high priority. get these running from day one > send to product pages that match the terms they search for COMPETITOR TERMS: > target people searching for your competitor's brand names > examples: “[competitor]”, "[competitor] alternative" > medium priority. test once your core campaigns are profitable > can work well if competitors have solid branded search volume & weak google setup > send to “us vs them” or “top products” pages that frame your brand as the better option start with branded and product category searches first. they give you the best roi and don’t require a complicated funnel to work. once that’s dialed, start layering in other types. you'll need dedicated landing pages for them, but the TAM is way bigger. and if you’re serious about scaling google ads, you gotta figure out how to make them work.

how we generated €11.7M in google ads revenue for a brand last Q4: (a breakdown of the full timeline of how we prepared, optimized, and scaled the account) the hardest part about scaling in Q4 is knowing when to push. increase budgets too early, and you risk spending a lot before demand picks up. wait too long, and you miss some of the biggest revenue opportunities of the year. you've also got a bunch of stuff to manage at once: - seasonal campaigns and creatives - promotional offers - bidding targets - budgets across different markets for this brand, we started getting everything ready well before Black Friday. by the time the big sales weeks came around, we had everything in place to scale. here are the 4 things we did that moved the needle the most: phase 1 (early to mid october): clean up the account before scaling first, we went through the campaigns to see where money was being wasted. that included: - adding negative keywords to cut irrelevant searches - pausing weaker campaigns - moving budgets to campaigns with more room to grow we also made a major change to our bidding strategy. a few weeks before Black Friday, we raised target ROAS across a lot of our prospecting campaigns. the goal was to improve efficiency before we started pushing budgets aggressively. now, we were in a much better position to start scaling. - - - phase 2 (late october): launch Black Friday campaigns in late October, we rolled out dedicated Black Friday Pre-Sale asset groups across our pmax campaigns. we did this across multiple countries, including the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. each asset group had around 45 assets, including: - Black Friday headlines and descriptions - square, landscape, and portrait images - YouTube videos - new audience signals we kept our existing evergreen asset groups running alongside these. this allowed us to introduce seasonal creatives without messing with what was already working around the same time, we launched a new pmax campaign for the holiday season. this had its own landing page, creatives, and search themes we wanted to pick up all that extra seasonal demand beyond our usual angles. and the account started picking up: week of October 20: €31.8k week of November 10: €116k a 3.65x increase in weekly conversion value in just 3 weeks. - - - phase 3 (pre bfcm): scale budgets and roll out new sale creatives once we saw how well the account was performing, we started increasing budgets across the campaigns. on November 10, we increased budgets by 20% across a large number of campaigns. this included pmax, Search, Shopping, and DSA across multiple countries. we also pushed out another round of Black Friday creatives. we continued to roll out separate asset groups for different phases of the event. each had a bunch of different headlines, descriptions, images, and videos. we also updated our Search ads with the latest Black Friday offers. so we had multiple things happening at once. - more budget going into the existing campaigns. - fresh seasonal creatives getting introduced into pmax. - updated offers running across Search and other placements. phase 4 (bfcm week and post bfcm): scale aggressively during BFCM as Black Friday got closer, we started pushing spend much harder. we already had the campaigns, offers, and creative assets in place. so the focus was on getting as much volume as we could while keeping the account profitable. between November 24 and 29, we made several rounds of budget increases. we doubled budgets across a large number of campaigns. the important thing to understand here is that your ROAS will often drop when you scale this aggressively. that's fine as long as the extra sales are bringing in enough profit. once the peak passed, we started pulling spend back. we also cleaned things up: - removed old asset groups - refreshed our cyber week creatives - adjusted budgets and bidding targets the week after Black Friday, we did another €203.9k in conversion value at 6.69x ROAS. and even in the second week of December, we were still doing over €160k. === by the end of Q4: €11.7M in google ads revenue €1.8M in ad spend 6.52x ROAS €7.76M more sales value than the previous year. our ROAS improved by 1.41x while spending roughly €1M more. the biggest lesson here is that your Black Friday results depend heavily on what you do in the weeks leading up to it. we spent October cleaning up the account, tightening bidding, launching seasonal campaigns, and getting our Black Friday assets ready. so when demand picked up, we were ready to spend a lot more and make the most of it.