Case study · Paid ads · Ecommerce · At Step Digital
$2.24M revenue. One year. Two channels.
A full-funnel Google and Meta rebuild for an Australian bedding brand, anonymised at the client’s request. Every number on this page comes from the account’s own reporting.
$2.24M
attributed revenue, 12 months
$514k
ad spend, 12 months
4.36x
revenue over spend
9,389
orders
The client
A premium bedding brand with real potential, and real problems.
A growing Australian homewares brand selling French flax linen quilt covers, washed cotton bedding and organic sheets. Three years of Meta history, a clearly defined customer, strong product. Weak account structure.
When I took the account over, the numbers told the story: Meta ROAS averaging 2x, Google pushing 85% of its budget through a single Performance Max campaign with a target ROAS of just 160%, and video assets serving to puzzle game apps with zero sales in six months.
The starting point
Six problems suppressing both channels.
No funnel separation on Meta
Cold prospecting and warm retargeting blended together, with no exclusions for past purchasers. Budget was being spent re-reaching people who had already bought.
Coupon codes killing conversions
Discount codes shown in ads weren't auto-applying at checkout. Customers were dropping off at the point of purchase, a fixable friction point costing real revenue.
PMax serving ads to puzzle game apps
Performance Max was pushing video ads to mobile gaming apps, YouTube and Gmail. Four videos, six months, zero sales.
Target ROAS set far too low
The PMax target sat at 160% while the account consistently hit 450 to 500%. Google was optimising for volume over quality and flooding the account with low-intent traffic.
Disapproved products and generic copy
The product feed had disapproved items cutting Shopping coverage, and ad headlines were generic enough to blend into every competitor's.
Creative running on empty
Static images and carousels only, an inconsistent visual identity, and no UGC or motion assets to build trust with cold audiences.
The approach
Fix the foundations, then scale what’s proven.
Meta
Restructure, reduce friction, test systematically.
- Removed the coupon codes entirely. The simplest change on the list, and checkout drop-off fell immediately.
- Rebuilt the account into a clean three-layer funnel: cold prospecting, warm retargeting split by recency (0-7, 8-30 and 31-60 days), and returning customers via the email platform sync.
- Excluded past purchasers from all cold prospecting, so the reported return stopped leaning on people who had already converted.
- Tested with ABO to find winning creative and audience combinations, then scaled the proven ones with CBO. Advantage+ Shopping was used as a scaling vehicle only, never for testing.
- Capped daily budget increases at 20% to protect learning-phase data, and paused any ad that hit twice the target cost per purchase without converting. No exceptions.
Fix the foundation, then scale with precision.
- Corrected the target ROAS to match what the account actually converts at, which improved traffic quality immediately.
- Removed all video assets from Performance Max, eliminating the spend leaking to YouTube, Gmail and mobile app placements.
- Audited the product feed and resolved the disapproved products, restoring Shopping coverage.
- Segmented asset groups by product category and rebuilt every headline and description around specific benefits instead of category filler.
- Layered customer lists and remarketing onto Search and Shopping, and scaled spend deliberately around EOFY, Black Friday and Christmas.
The results
Twelve months of sustained performance.
Structural and creative changes compounded across the year, with the strongest results in peak retail periods where the groundwork paid off most. The totals below cover the twelve-month reporting window; tracking ran for fifteen months, and the channel averages span all of it.
Combined, 12 months
$2,240,130
attributed revenue across Meta and Google
$513,906
total ad spend: $393,719 Meta, $120,187 Google
peak 15.8x in July
8.54x
average ROAS across the 15 months tracked
Meta
up 37% year on year
3.62x
average ROAS across the 15 months tracked
The same discipline applies at any budget: separate cold from warm, judge against revenue, cut what doesn’t convert, and scale only what’s proven. That’s the account I’d build for you too.