SMMRX Google Ads Case Study — Display & Search with Dynamic Keyword Insertion

Executive Summary

SMMRX, a high-growth digital commerce brand, partnered with us to overhaul their Google Ads strategy. The goal was ambitious — scale global search traffic, drive checkout conversions, and reduce cost-per-acquisition (CPA) in an increasingly competitive auction landscape. By implementing dynamic keyword insertion (DKI), restructuring campaigns around intent-based ad groups, and deploying optimized bidding strategies tailored to each stage of the funnel, we delivered exceptional results: over 18,500 conversions and a 42% reduction in CPA across Google Display and Search campaigns.

This case study examines the full arc of the engagement — from diagnosing structural inefficiencies in the existing account to deploying advanced Google Ads tactics that unlocked sustained, profitable growth. Whether you are a marketing manager seeking a blueprint for scaling paid search or a business owner curious about the ROI of expert campaign management, the insights documented here offer a practical framework for transforming Google Ads performance.

Background & Account Overview

SMMRX operates in the global digital services and products space, catering to a diverse, international customer base. Prior to our engagement, the company had been running Google Ads campaigns with moderate success. However, as competition intensified and the cost of digital advertising rose across verticals, performance began plateauing. Conversion volumes stagnated, CPAs crept upward, and the account structure had grown unwieldy — with hundreds of loosely grouped keywords and display placements that lacked strategic targeting.

The account spanned both Google Search and Google Display Network (GDN) campaigns, but the two channels were operating in silos without a unified bidding or messaging strategy. Search campaigns relied on broad match keywords with minimal negative keyword management, resulting in significant wasted spend on irrelevant queries. Display campaigns targeted general interests and topics rather than high-intent, retargeting-driven segments. The result was a fragmented approach that diluted the impact of every pound spent.

The core objectives of the engagement were clear:

• Scale conversions — Increase the total number of completed transactions beyond the existing baseline of roughly 8,000 annual conversions.
• Reduce CPA by at least 30% — Improve efficiency across both Search and Display channels without sacrificing conversion quality.
• Capture global search demand — Expand into new geographies and non-English language queries using automated and semi-automated keyword expansion techniques.
• Optimise checkout conversion flow — Use Display retargeting and Search remarketing lists to re-engage users who abandoned at the cart or checkout stage.

With these objectives in mind, we conducted a full audit of the existing Google Ads account, including campaign structure, keyword taxonomy, ad copy relevance, audience targeting, conversion tracking setup, and bidding configuration. The audit revealed several critical gaps that would need to be addressed before any scaling could occur.

The Problem — Structural Inefficiencies & Rising Costs

A thorough diagnostic audit uncovered four primary problem areas that were suppressing SMMRX’s Google Ads performance. Each contributed directly to escalating CPAs and missed conversion opportunities.

1. Fragmented Campaign Structure

The account contained multiple campaigns that overlapped in both keyword targeting and geographic reach. For example, a “Brand — Global” campaign and a “Generic — Global” campaign both targeted the same broad set of countries with partially overlapping keyword lists. This created internal competition, driving up bids as the same auctions were cannibalised from two directions. Without a clear campaign hierarchy based on match type and intent, budget allocation was inefficient and reporting was misleading.

Furthermore, ad groups within each campaign were organised alphabetically rather than by search intent. High-intent transactional keywords (“buy [product] online”) were mixed in with low-intent informational queries (“what is [product]”). This forced broad ad copy that failed to speak directly to what each user was actually looking for, depressing click-through rates (CTR) and Quality Scores.

2. Inefficient Bidding Configuration

All campaigns were using manual CPC bidding with minimal bid adjustments for device, location, or time of day. While manual bidding gives granular control, in practice the account had no systematic process for adjusting bids based on performance data. High-performing keywords were bid at the same level as underperforming ones, and mobile traffic — which constituted over 60% of all clicks — was not being managed separately. This meant SMMRX was often overbidding on low-value queries and underbidding on high-converting segments.

The absence of automated bid strategies also meant that the account could not react in real time to changing auction dynamics. With competitors often adjusting their bids in response to promotions or seasonal trends, SMMRX’s static manual bids were consistently a step behind.

3. Missed Global Search Traffic

Despite having international targeting enabled, the account had not implemented any systematic strategy for capturing non-English search traffic. Keyword lists were exclusively in English, and ad copy was monolingual. This left a vast pool of global demand — particularly in emerging markets where English is not the primary language — completely untapped. Moreover, the account was not using dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) to make ads more relevant to the specific search terms that triggered them, resulting in generic ad copy that failed to differentiate SMMRX from competitors.

4. Weak Checkout Conversion Recovery

The checkout abandonment rate was running above the industry average of 70%. Users would add items to their cart or reach the checkout page, only to leave without completing the purchase. Existing remarketing campaigns were running with static, generic creative and no sense of urgency or incentive. There was no segmentation between users who had browsed a product page, added to cart, or started checkout — meaning all audiences received the same message at the same frequency.

Additionally, the Search campaigns were not leveraging remarketing lists for search ads (RLSA). Users who had previously visited the site but left were being treated as new visitors when they returned via Search, missing the opportunity to bid more aggressively for known high-intent visitors and thus recapture lost conversions.

The Solution — DKI, Optimised Bidding & Campaign Restructure

We designed a three-pillar solution architecture to address each of the problems identified in the audit. The pillars were: (1) campaign structure overhaul with intent-based segmentation, (2) dynamic keyword insertion (DKI) for hyper-relevant ad copy, and (3) optimised bidding strategies powered by both automation and data-driven manual controls. Each pillar was implemented in a phased rollout to minimise disruption to existing performance.

Pillar 1: Intent-Based Campaign Restructure

The first and most foundational change was a complete restructuring of the account. We replaced the overlapping, alphabetically-organised campaign architecture with a clean, intent-based hierarchy. The new structure was built around four core campaign types:

• Brand Campaigns: Exact and phrase match variants of SMMRX’s branded terms. These campaigns were given a separate budget and a conservative bidding strategy to protect brand term efficiency while ensuring maximum impression share.
• Non-Brand Transactional Campaigns: High-intent keywords indicating purchase readiness (e.g., “buy [product]”, “[product] price”, “[product] discount”). These campaigns were structured by product category, with tightly themed ad groups containing no more than 10–15 keywords each. This allowed us to write ad copy that directly matched the searcher’s intent.
• Non-Brand Informational Campaigns: Keywords related to research and comparison (e.g., “[product] vs [competitor]”, “best [product]”, “[product] review”). These campaigns served as a top-of-funnel entry point, with separate bidding parameters to reflect the lower conversion intent.
• Display & Discovery Campaigns: GDN campaigns segmented by audience type — prospecting (in-market and custom intent audiences), retargeting (site visitors, cart abandoners, checkout abandoners), and lookalike (high-value customer lookalikes).

Within each campaign, ad groups were tightly themed with semantically related keywords. We strictly enforced the rule of one unique selling proposition per ad group, ensuring that ad copy, landing pages, and keyword themes were fully aligned. This alignment alone improved average Quality Score from 4.8 to 7.2 across the account within the first six weeks.

Pillar 2: Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) Implementation

Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) was the centrepiece of our ad copy optimisation strategy. DKI is a Google Ads feature that automatically inserts the user’s search term into the ad headline or description, making the ad appear more relevant and personalised. When a user searches for “affordable running shoes,” for example, an ad with DKI will display a headline like “Buy Affordable Running Shoes — SMMRX” rather than the generic “Shop Footwear Online — SMMRX.”

The implementation involved several stages:

1. Keyword theme mapping: We grouped keywords into tightly themed ad groups where all keywords shared a common root phrase. This prevented DKI from inserting awkward or grammatically incorrect text. For example, all “buy [product]” variants were kept together, while “[product] reviews” were isolated in a separate ad group.
2. Ad copy with DKI parameter: We wrote headline templates using the {keyword:default} parameter, with a carefully chosen default text that would display if the search term was too long or triggered by a close variant outside the theme. For example: {keyword:Shop SMMRX Products}.
3. Ad group-level landing page alignment: Every ad group was assigned a dedicated landing page that matched the keyword theme. For DKI to be effective, the post-click experience must reinforce the promise made in the ad. If the headline says “Buy Affordable Running Shoes,” the landing page must prominently feature running shoes and a clear path to purchase.
4. Negative keyword pruning: We implemented a rigorous negative keyword management process, adding irrelevant search terms at both the campaign and ad group levels on a weekly basis. This ensured that DKI never inserted a term unrelated to SMMRX’s offerings.
5. Testing and iteration: We ran A/B experiments comparing DKI-enabled ads against static ads within the same ad groups. DKI consistently outperformed static copy, delivering a 23% higher CTR and a 19% higher conversion rate across the account.

Beyond the headline, we also used DKI in the description lines (where character limits permitted) and in GDN responsive display ads via dynamic customiser feeds. This created a consistent, personalised experience for users whether they arrived via Search or Display, and it dramatically improved the relevance scoring that Google’s auction algorithm uses to determine ad rank.

Pillar 3: Optimised Bidding Strategies

The bidding strategy overhaul combined the reliability of manual controls with the efficiency of automated smart bidding. We implemented a tiered approach based on campaign objective and stage in the customer journey:

Search: Target CPA with Portfolio Bid Strategies

For non-brand transactional campaigns, we deployed Target CPA bidding — a Google Ads Smart Bidding strategy that automatically sets bids to maximise conversions at a target cost-per-acquisition. We used portfolio bid strategies to group campaigns with similar conversion goals, giving the algorithm more conversion data to learn from and improving its accuracy. The initial target CPA was calibrated based on historical performance, then gradually reduced by 5% every two weeks as the algorithm demonstrated it could maintain volume at lower costs.

For brand campaigns, we used Enhanced CPC (ECPC) with manual bid caps to protect impression share while still allowing the algorithm to adjust bids for high-probability conversions. This conservative approach ensured that our brand terms remained cost-efficient while capturing every high-value click.

Display: Maximise Conversions with Audience Segmentation

For GDN campaigns, we used Maximise Conversions bidding — a fully automated strategy that spends the entire budget to drive as many conversions as possible. We layered this with audience segmentation: separate campaigns for prospecting (in-market audiences, custom intent), retargeting (all site visitors, product viewers, cart abandoners), and lookalike audiences. Each campaign had its own bid strategy, budget, and creative rotation, allowing us to allocate spend proportionally to the highest-ROI audiences.

The retargeting campaigns for checkout abandoners used a separate, higher Target CPA (reflecting the higher baseline conversion rate of users who had already started checkout) and included dynamic remarketing ads that displayed the exact products the user had considered. This personalised approach lifted conversion rates from display retargeting by over 40%.

RLSA & Global Expansion Tactics

To capture checkout abandonment traffic via search, we implemented Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA). We created separate RLSA lists for users who had abandoned the checkout funnel within the last 7 days, and applied a +50% bid adjustment to these audiences in our non-brand transactional campaigns. This allowed us to outbid competitors for users who had already demonstrated purchase intent, dramatically improving the checkout conversion rate.

For global search traffic capture, we expanded keyword coverage to include non-English translations of high-performing English keywords using Google’s multilingual keyword research tools. We created separate campaigns for our top five non-English markets (Arabic, Spanish, French, German, and Hindi) with locale-specific ad copy and DKI templates translated by native speakers. These campaigns were launched with a conservative budget ramp and Target CPA bidding, scaling as they proved profitable.

Results — 18.5K+ Conversions & -42% CPA Reduction

The combined effect of the campaign restructure, DKI implementation, and optimised bidding was transformative. Over the 12-month engagement period, SMMRX’s Google Ads account achieved the following results compared to the 12-month pre-engagement baseline:

Key Performance Metrics

• Total Conversions: 18,547 (up from 8,210 — a 126% increase)
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Reduced by 42%, from £24.80 to £14.38 on average across all campaigns
• Total Revenue Attributed: Increased by 158% year-over-year, with a ROAS (return on ad spend) improvement from 3.2x to 5.8x
• Click-Through Rate (CTR): Improved from 2.1% to 3.8% on Search and from 0.35% to 0.62% on Display
• Quality Score: Average account-level Quality Score rose from 4.8 to 7.2
• Checkout Conversion Rate: Improved by 31%, driven by the combination of RLSA, dynamic remarketing, and checkout-specific retargeting
• Global Traffic Share: Non-English traffic grew from 12% to 27% of total search clicks, with the Arabic and Spanish campaigns being the strongest performers
• Impression Share: Brand impression share increased from 78% to 96%; non-brand impression share rose from 45% to 61%

Campaign-Level Breakdown

Brand Search: 4,210 conversions at a CPA of £6.12. The conservative ECPC strategy preserved impression share while keeping costs extremely low. DKI was not used in brand campaigns to avoid inserting generic terms into brand-specific searches.

Non-Brand Transactional Search: 9,840 conversions at a CPA of £13.87. This was the biggest volume driver. DKI ad groups consistently outperformed static ad groups, and the stepwise Target CPA reductions were absorbed without sacrificing conversion volume.

Non-Brand Informational Search: 1,962 conversions at a CPA of £21.45. These campaigns operated as a top-of-funnel feeder, and their conversion rate improved over time as RLSA audiences were layered in.

Display Network: 2,535 conversions at a CPA of £18.62. Prospecting campaigns accounted for 40% of Display conversions, while retargeting and dynamic remarketing drove the remaining 60%. The checkout abandoner segment alone produced 780 conversions at a CPA of £11.90.

Month-by-Month Trajectory

The improvements were not instantaneous. In the first two months, as we restructured campaigns and implemented DKI, conversion volume actually dipped slightly (approximately 8%) due to the disruption of changing ad copy and keyword groupings. However, by month three, the account had stabilised and exceeded its pre-restructure conversion volume. From month four onwards, we saw a consistent upward trajectory in conversions and a steady downward trend in CPA, with the largest gains occurring after the DKI A/B tests concluded and the winning variants were rolled out across all high-volume ad groups.

The global campaigns followed a similar pattern. The first month of each non-English campaign was treated as a learning phase with manual bidding and limited budgets. Once sufficient conversion data had accumulated (typically 30–50 conversions per campaign), we switched to Target CPA bidding. The Spanish and Hindi campaigns achieved profitability fastest, reaching target CPA within three weeks of launch.

Key Takeaways & Lessons Learned

The SMMRX engagement offers several actionable insights for any business looking to scale Google Ads performance while reducing costs:

1. Structure Is the Foundation of Efficiency

No amount of clever bidding or ad copy optimisation can compensate for a poorly structured account. The single most impactful change we made was reorganising campaigns by intent and tightly theming ad groups. If your account has broad ad groups with 50+ unrelated keywords, or campaigns that overlap in targeting, fixing the structure should be your first priority. Every optimisation thereafter — DKI, bid strategies, audience targeting — builds on that structural clarity.

2. DKI Is a Force Multiplier When Implemented Correctly

Dynamic Keyword Insertion is one of the most underutilised features in Google Ads. Many advertisers avoid it out of fear that it will produce awkward headlines, but with proper keyword theme grouping and negative keyword management, those risks are easily mitigated. Our results showed a 23% CTR lift and a 19% conversion rate improvement from DKI-enabled ads. The key is discipline: one tightly themed ad group per DKI template, with a carefully chosen default fallback and weekly negative keyword audits.

3. Smart Bidding Works Best With Clean Conversion Data

Google’s Target CPA and Maximise Conversions algorithms are remarkably effective, but their performance depends entirely on the quality of the conversion data they receive. Before deploying smart bidding, we invested significant effort in cleaning up SMMRX’s conversion tracking — deduplicating conversions, setting proper attribution windows, excluding non-purchase micro-conversions (e.g., newsletter sign-ups that never led to a sale), and implementing Google Tag Manager for consistent cross-domain tracking. Without this foundation, the bid algorithms would have optimised toward the wrong signal.

4. Segment Audiences for Display Retargeting

Generic retargeting is a waste of budget. Users at different stages of the funnel respond to different messages and have different conversion probabilities. By segmenting our Display audiences into prospecting, site visitor, add-to-cart, checkout-started, and post-purchase, we were able to tailor creative, bids, and budgets to each group’s specific intent. The checkout-started segment, in particular, became one of the highest-ROI audiences in the account, producing conversions at an average CPA of £11.90.

5. Don’t Neglect Global Traffic

For many businesses, the easiest growth lever is expanding into international markets. English-language campaigns are often saturated and highly competitive. Translating keyword sets and ad copy into just three to five high-volume non-English languages opened up a significant new traffic source for SMMRX. Even with the added cost of translation and campaign management, the non-English campaigns consistently delivered CPAs that were within 10–15% of the English benchmarks, making them a worthwhile investment.

6. Checkout Recovery Deserves Its Own Strategy

Abandoned checkouts represent one of the most valuable audiences in any e-commerce or digital services account. These users have demonstrated the highest possible intent short of completing a purchase, yet many advertisers treat them the same as general site visitors. The combination of RLSA bid adjustments (+50%) for checkout abandoners, dedicated Display retargeting campaigns with dynamic creative, and urgency-driven ad copy (limited-time offers, low-stock alerts) produced a 31% improvement in checkout conversion rate for SMMRX.

Conclusion

The SMMRX Google Ads engagement stands as a compelling example of what is achievable when a structured, data-driven approach is applied to paid search and display advertising. By addressing the fundamental issues of campaign structure, ad relevance, and bidding efficiency, we transformed an account that was experiencing diminishing returns into a high-performing acquisition engine. The headline metrics — 18,500+ conversions and a 42% CPA reduction — are not outliers or lucky shots. They are the product of a repeatable methodology: audit the account, fix the structure, implement DKI with discipline, deploy automated bidding on a clean data foundation, and segment audiences by intent.

For businesses in the digital services or products space, the lessons from this case study are directly applicable. Whether you are managing your own Google Ads account or working with an agency, the principles of intent-based structuring, dynamic ad copy, and granular audience segmentation will consistently outperform broad-brush approaches. The competitive advantage in paid search today comes not from bigger budgets but from smarter architecture.

If you would like to discuss how these strategies could be applied to your own Google Ads account, please feel free to get in touch. We also invite you to explore our broader collection of case studies for more in-depth analyses of successful campaigns across search, social, and display — including our work with SMMJobz, CloudMatrix Technologies, Iqra Cadet Madrasha, and Dohar Malabis.