Paid Search
Paid search that captures demand instead of competing for it.
Google Ads and Microsoft Advertising, built and run by senior strategists, measured against revenue rather than conversions.
Where this sits in the system
Paid Search
Paid search sits in the capture job, between the media that creates demand and the conversion architecture that turns it into revenue.
The specific failure, and the most common one we see: a search account optimized in isolation is a bidding exercise inside a fixed pool. Once the obvious waste is gone, efficiency gains stop, cost per acquisition rises structurally, and everyone concludes search is saturated. It is not saturated. Nothing upstream is making the pool bigger.
The problem
What actually goes wrong inside a search account.
One shared negative list means you are buying your own brand inside non-brand campaigns
When every campaign points at the same negative keyword list, brand queries leak into non-brand campaigns, and the cheap conversions they produce get counted as non-brand performance. The account looks like it is acquiring customers efficiently. It is partly re-buying people who already typed your name. Separating the two is not a structural preference. Until it is done, no non-brand cost per acquisition in the account is a real number, and every budget decision built on one is guesswork.
A conversion action pointed at the wrong event makes a campaign look excellent
A campaign optimizing toward a button click, a page view or an unfiltered form submission will report a low cost per acquisition and hit its target reliably, because the target is easy. Meanwhile the calls, qualified leads or purchases it produced sit uncounted somewhere else. This is not rare and it does not announce itself. It is the first thing we check, before touching a bid, because every optimization decision after it inherits the error.
What we do
What the work actually includes.
Structure and platforms
- • Account architecture rebuilt around intent rather than around the structure it was inherited with
- • Google Ads across search, Shopping, Performance Max and demand generation
- • Microsoft Advertising, including the audience and syndication differences that change how it should be run
- • Brand and non-brand separated permanently, in structure and in reporting
Bidding and signal
- • Bid strategy design, and the conversion signal quality it depends on
- • Conversion actions audited before they are optimized toward, so the target is the event that makes money
- • Budget allocation against marginal return rather than a blanket efficiency target
Governance and testing
- • Search query governance and negative keyword architecture, per campaign rather than one shared list
- • Landing page and offer testing, run with the conversion team rather than handed to them
How we run it
Run
Reviewed weekly. Changed when there is a reason.
Query reports, pacing, signal quality and competitive movement are reviewed every week. Monitoring runs continuously underneath that and surfaces what changed and what it cost, so the review starts from what moved rather than from a blank report.
A senior strategist approves every change, and every change carries a reason you can read months later. Accounts do not improve because someone touched them. They improve when someone can explain why they did.
Measure
Brand and non-brand are never one number.
Revenue or qualified pipeline, split brand and non-brand, always. Cost per acquisition read against a marginal-return curve rather than a fixed target, because the question is whether the next dollar is profitable, not whether the average one was. Impression share on the terms that matter rather than on all of them.
Scale
Search scales two ways, and only one of them is a search project.
Inside the channel, scale comes from better signal, better structure and more profitable volume at the margin. That work is real and it has a ceiling, and most accounts reach it in the first year. Outside the channel, scale comes from more demand entering the auction with your name attached, which is upper-funnel media.
A search-only program plateaus eventually no matter how well it is run, and knowing which of those two you are out of is the difference between a budget increase that works and one that does not.
How this works
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Readiness is engineered. So is the next stage of growth.
Public Safety & Industrial Equipment
Connected Capabilities
Media Planning & Buying
Nothing upstream makes the pool bigger without demand creation.
Conversion & Marketing Technology
A captured click still has to convert.
Measurement & Attribution
Revenue, not conversions, is the measure.
FAQ
Questions we get asked
What does a paid search agency do?
It builds and runs search advertising on Google and Microsoft: account structure, keywords and match types, ad copy, bid strategy, budget allocation and measurement. That much is common to everyone offering the service. What separates good from average is signal quality, query governance, and being willing to say when the channel is not the constraint, which happens more often than the industry admits.
Why should brand and non-brand search be measured separately?
Because they answer different questions. Branded search captures demand that already exists, so it converts well and tells you nothing about growth. Non-brand acquires new demand. Blended into one number, a program can look healthy while new customer acquisition is falling, and the blend usually gets worse over time because branded volume is the easier number to grow.
Does upper-funnel media reduce paid search costs?
Not usually cost per click. It can reduce cost per acquisition by increasing the volume of branded and high-intent search, which converts better than prospecting terms. The effect is only measurable if branded search is tracked separately before the media runs, which is why the tracking decision has to happen first. Retrofitted afterward, the lift is a story rather than a finding.
When is Performance Max the wrong choice?
When conversion signal is unreliable, when brand and non-brand cannot be separated, or when you need the account to answer a specific question. Performance Max is efficient at harvesting demand and poor at explaining itself. A low cost per acquisition inside it often reflects the inventory it happened to serve on rather than the audience it found, and accounts that move everything into it lose the ability to see what is working.
Send us the account.
You will work with the people who set the strategy.