Our client is one of the UK’s top menswear retailers with over 150 shops throughout the UK as well as online. 

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Previously the ecommerce team had hoped to move away from standard shopping campaigns to the much more automated Performance Max campaigns, however their transition hadn’t been smooth and the results weren’t what they had hoped for. They were not afraid to test and learn, and were keen to ensure that they were working with the latest technological rollouts from Google. They were keen to focus on incrementality, therefore wanted to do:

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1. An A/B test of Performance Max campaigns vs Standard Shopping campaigns to determine whether Performance Max would truly give them better results or not. 
2. Both campaigns would be set up with brand negative keywords (so they wouldn’t bid on their own brand).

During a three month period, we:

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• Ran 50/50 traffic experiments over 12 weeks comparing Standard Shopping campaigns (excluding brand keywords) vs PMax campaigns (excluding brand keywords)
• Structured campaigns following a product-led approach and separated products across three categories - full price items, outlet items and custom-made items - each with tailored imagery and messaging. This allowed us to amend budgets and ROAS targets by campaign for optimum efficiency and highest return
• Separate to this A/B test, we ran another Standard Shopping campaign that was capturing brand terms, in order to have visibility for branded searches in shopping results (which Standard Shopping had previously captured)
• Expanded use of Audience signals and deployed a broad mix of in-market, affinity, site visitors and competitor segments  

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We reviewed each campaign multiple times a week, updating the clients with results on weekly calls and adjusting ROAS targets accordingly.

By using best practices, our PMax campaigns significantly outperformed our Standard Shopping campaigns and drove an impressive 50% increase in revenue during Q4 compared to the previous year, while efficiency was boosted by 24%. 

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PMax success was not limited to a single campaign type. The implementation of PMax campaigns unlocked growth opportunities throughout the entire account, with a 37% raise in overall revenue in Q4 compared to last year, as well as a 44% increase in ROAS.