ROAS in the past year
Profit leak identified and fixed in a single PMAX campaign
This 8-figure health and longevity supplement brand is one of the most recognised names in their category, the direct competitor to one of the world’s most prominent longevity and health influencers. They were spending roughly $2M per year on Google Ads alone, with significant additional spend on Meta. By any measure, this is a sophisticated operation with serious commercial momentum.
When they came to us in September 2025, the goal was not to dramatically scale their ad spend. They are planning to exit, selling to a large US conglomerate. The priority was something more precise and arguably more valuable: optimize the account, fix inefficiencies, and prepare their Google Ads operation to withstand the scrutiny of buyer due diligence.
When a business at this level goes through an acquisition, buyers pull apart every channel. They look at ROAS by campaign, landing page performance, account structure, creative quality, and whether the account shows evidence of strategic management or just money being thrown at Google. Wasted spend does not just hurt margins, it directly impacts EBITDA and therefore exit valuation.
That was the brief. Find the waste, fix it, document the improvements, and demonstrate operational excellence at scale.
What we found when we audited the account was more significant than expected.
Before Budai Media
After Budai Media
1. Restructuring the Competitor Campaigns
The first thing we audited was their competitor campaigns, campaigns targeting people actively searching for rival brand names. These are high-intent, high-value searches. Someone typing a competitor’s brand name into Google already knows what they want. The opportunity is to intercept that search and give them a compelling reason to choose your product instead.
What we found was the opposite of compelling. Every competitor, brand name, and variation was piled into a single ad group. All 200+ keywords driving to the same generic ad copy: shop our products. There was no acknowledgement of which competitor was being searched, no specific value proposition, and no reason to switch.
The problem is straightforward. When someone searches for a specific competitor, they are in a specific mindset. They know that brand and they have expectations. An ad that simply says “shop our products” gives them no reason to deviate from what they already planned to buy.
We restructured the entire competitor campaign into 5 tightly themed ad groups, each targeting a specific competitor or group of similar competitors with ad copy written specifically for that audience. If someone searches for Competitor A, the ad acknowledges Competitor A and explains clearly why our client’s product is a better choice. Relevant, specific, and persuasive.
The results were clear: CPC dropped by 18%, CTR increased by 17%, and quality scores improved from an average of 3 to between 5 and 7 across all key ad groups.
For a business preparing to exit, this matters beyond the performance metrics. It shows buyers that the account is being managed strategically, not just funded. That kind of operational discipline is exactly what acquirers want to see during due diligence.
The screenshot below shows the account-level impact of these early efficiency improvements: a comparison period in which spend was pulled back by roughly 47%, while ROAS improved from 1.91x to 2.41x and cost per conversion fell by around 13%. The trade-off was lower overall volume, but the result made the point clearly: the account could do more with less once the inefficiencies were addressed.
2. Finding and Fixing the $110K Profit Leak
The second discovery was more alarming. Inside their main PMAX campaign, running at approximately $60K per month in spend, we pulled up the landing page performance report. This report shows every page on the website that received traffic from the campaign and what it returned.
One page stood out immediately. It had received almost $110K in ad spend. Its ROAS was 0.95x. They were losing money on every single click sent to that page.
The more significant problem: that page was not listed anywhere in the campaign setup. It was not in any asset group. The client had not chosen to advertise it. Google sent $110K there anyway.
The cause was a default PMAX setting called Final URL Expansion. When this is turned on, and it is turned on by default in every PMAX campaign, Google ignores the landing pages you have specified and sends traffic to any page on your website it believes will convert. The logic is that Google knows your website better than you do. As this account demonstrated, that logic does not always hold.
Fixing this required two steps: disabling Final URL Expansion and explicitly excluding the low-performing URLs from the campaign. A setting change and a URL exclusion list. Work that takes minutes but had been quietly draining six figures in ad spend.
For a business heading into acquisition, this finding is significant beyond the immediate cost saving. When buyers do due diligence on a Google Ads account and find $110K in spend on an unintended page at sub-1x ROAS, that is a red flag. It signals the account was not actively managed. Fixing it before the exit process begins removes that flag entirely, and directly improves the EBITDA figure buyers will use to calculate their offer.
The screenshot below shows a campaign-level breakdown from the account audit, spend and conversion value across individual campaigns.
Across the campaigns shown, the account spent $1.41M and generated $2.58M in conversion value, an overall 1.83x ROAS, but performance varied widely between campaigns, from a 3.13x ROAS on one of the strongest campaigns down to 0.95x on one of the weakest. That spread is exactly why account-level ROAS alone does not tell the full story, and why campaign-by-campaign review is where the real opportunity and the real waste actually show up.
3. Diagnosing and Resolving the YouTube Spend Spike
During the BFCM period in late November and early December 2025, the main PMAX campaign was performing strongly, 4x ROAS, high volume, with everything working. The natural instinct was to scale. Two changes were made simultaneously: a significant budget increase and a reduction in the target ROAS setting to give Google more flexibility to spend.
In theory this makes sense. A winning campaign, more fuel on the fire. In practice, something unexpected happened. Google’s channel performance report, which shows where PMAX spend is being allocated across Search, Shopping, YouTube, and Display, showed YouTube spend jumping from approximately $3K to $22K in a single week. At sub-1x ROAS.
We escalated directly to our Google rep to understand what had happened. Their explanation was clear: when you make sudden simultaneous changes to a PMAX campaign’s budget and target settings, especially at this scale, Google’s algorithm essentially resets. It starts testing placements from scratch to find the fastest way to spend the new, larger budget. YouTube and Display impressions are significantly cheaper than Search and Shopping, so that is where the algorithm floods first. It is not trying to waste money, it is optimising for spend volume, not spend quality.
The fix, confirmed directly by Google: never increase PMAX or Demand Gen budgets by more than 10 to 15% at a time when operating at this scale. And critically, never change multiple variables simultaneously. Budget and target ROAS should be adjusted separately, with time between changes to allow the algorithm to stabilise. This protocol has been in place across the account ever since.
The screenshot below shows the channel-level breakdown behind that spike.
YouTube is highlighted: $22,141.62 in spend against $19,317.13 in conversion value, a 0.87x ROAS, driven almost entirely by ads not using product data, which returned just 0.85x on their own. Search performed considerably better across the same window, at 1.68x ROAS. Worth noting: a sub-1x ROAS on YouTube does not automatically mean the spend had no value, particularly given the view-through and brand-awareness effects YouTube can drive that do not always show up in direct conversion value. But measured purely on the Google Ads numbers shown, YouTube was returning less than it cost.
4. Taking Control of Creative in PMAX
The fourth issue was less urgent but equally important given the exit timeline: creative quality in PMAX.
When no custom video assets are uploaded to a PMAX campaign, Google generates them automatically. These auto-generated videos are slideshows of product images with text overlays. They are generic, they tell no story, and they do not represent the brand. As PMAX campaigns scale and YouTube spend increases, these are the videos that potential customers see.
For a brand preparing to be acquired by a large US conglomerate, this creates a specific problem. Buyers evaluating the business will look at advertising assets across every channel. If Meta and Instagram show polished, professional creative while Google and YouTube are running auto-generated slideshows, that inconsistency signals that the Google account is not being fully managed. It is a detail that sophisticated buyers notice.
Custom video asset production began shortly after the initial audit and has continued as part of the account’s ongoing management, product videos, customer testimonials, and well-edited lifestyle footage, produced without the cost of a full studio setup. We also monitor asset-level performance reports within PMAX regularly, tracking which images, videos, and headlines are driving the most conversions and doubling down on what works.
It has now been just over a year since this engagement began, working on an account that has settled into a roughly $2M/year Google Ads spend level. Here is what the optimisation has produced.
The screenshot below shows the account’s Google Ads performance across the most recent 12-month period, September 17, 2025 to September 16, 2026: $1,965,854.59 in spend, $3,765,789.77 in conversion value, a 1.92x ROAS, 46,988,998 impressions, and approximately 10,400 conversions. Conversion value increased by $1,043,060.89 year over year, ad spend increased by $702,707.03, and impressions increased by 14,705,026, growth alongside efficiency, not instead of it.
To be precise about what these figures represent: this is a $2M/year Google Ads account by actual spend. The $3.77M figure is the conversion value that spend generated, not the size of the account itself.
Competitor Campaigns
PMAX Audit
Scaling Protocol
Creative
Every one of these improvements has a dual impact: it makes the account perform better today, and it makes the account more defensible during acquisition due diligence. Buyers doing a thorough audit will find an account that shows evidence of active, strategic management, incremental improvements documented over time, profit leaks fixed, and a scaling methodology that prioritises sustainable growth over volatile short-term spikes.
Over the past year, the work on this account has been less about scaling and more about making every dollar already being spent work harder.
A $110K profit leak fixed. Competitor campaigns restructured to deliver 18% lower CPC and 17% higher CTR. A YouTube spend spike diagnosed, explained, and resolved with a protocol that prevents it from recurring. Quality scores moved from 3 to between 5 and 7 across the account. Custom creative in production. And across the most recent 12 months, the account generated $3.77M in conversion value on roughly $2M in Google Ads spend, a 1.92x ROAS at meaningful scale, close to 47 million impressions.
For a brand heading into a high-stakes acquisition, this is the work that matters. Not just better ROAS today, but an account that tells a story of operational excellence when buyers pull it apart during due diligence. Every fix is documented. Every improvement is incremental and defensible. Every wasted dollar was identified and recovered.
The brand remains positioned for a successful exit. The account is ready, whenever that process closes.
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