5.89x ROAS from shoppers who were browsing the competition

The problem

This is a heritage sneaker retailer going against StockX, GOAT, Foot Locker, and the DTC brand sites. The traditional move is to bid on competitor brand terms in Search. That costs $8 or more per click, produces low CTR, and often low conversion rates. The other gap was demographic: the brand had no active strategy to reach women's sneaker buyers, which is one of the fastest-growing segments in footwear ecommerce.

What we changed

We replaced keyword-level competitor bidding with audience-signal conquest through PMax. The competitor campaign uses rival brand URLs and keyword lists as custom audience segments. Google then finds those users across Shopping, YouTube, Display, and Discover at a fraction of the CPC. Separately, we launched a women's PMax with a gender-segmented feed and audience signals combining in-market footwear with women's fashion affinity. A Standard Shopping catch-all runs underneath both as a safety net and, more importantly, as a search-term intelligence layer. PMax does not give full search term reports. Shopping does. That data feeds the entire account.

The results

The competitor PMax hit 5.89x ROAS with 131 conversions at $33.65 CPA. That is 129% above the PMax platform average. The women's campaign scaled to 1.3 million impressions and 226 conversions at 5.46x ROAS in a market the brand had never actively pursued. Shopping held near 5x. Brand Search at 7.82x. Blended: $102.5K revenue on $19.4K spend at 5.27x, which is 43% above the industry median in a year where that median fell 10%.

Audience-signal conquest through PMax costs a fraction of keyword-level competitor bidding. And it converts at more than double the platform average.

Performance vs. 2025 benchmarks

Campaign breakdown

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