Forwrd
GOT BAG • Case Study • Google Ads

A blackbox account transformed into a 27x generic revenue growth engine.

The results did not peak in year one. They compounded year on year — with ROAS improving as volume scaled and cost per conversion falling by more than half.

The numbers

Generic revenue grew more than 27x over two years, ROAS improved consistently as the account scaled and cost per conversion fell more than 50%.

0x generic revenue growth over two years
0% ROAS improvement year on year — efficiency rising as volume scales
0% cost per conversion from takeover to the most recent period

About GOT BAG

GOT BAG is a B Corp-certified sustainable travel brand and one of the most compelling purpose-driven consumer products in Europe. Founded in 2018, GOT BAG partners with fishermen and coastal communities in Indonesia to recover discarded ocean plastic, which is then cleaned, processed and woven into the high-performance fabric used to make their backpacks, bags and accessories. Every product is a direct act of ocean cleanup. With over one million people in their social community and a growing international presence, GOT BAG is not just a bag brand, it is a movement.

Core account truth

The account looked active. It was not built for incremental growth.

The account relied heavily on smart campaigns — a blackbox approach that offered little transparency, limited control and no real foundation for scaling. Generic revenue was in the low six figures. The brand had significantly more potential than the account was capturing.

How we helped GOT BAG grow

Replacing the blackbox strategy with a structured, transparent scaling approach was the prerequisite for everything that followed.

The story

GOT BAG came to us with a Google Ads account that was technically running but structurally limited. The account relied heavily on smart campaigns, a blackbox approach that offered little transparency, limited control and no real foundation for scaling. Generic revenue was in the low six figures. The brand had significantly more potential than the account was capturing.

We took over and rebuilt the account from the ground up, replacing the blackbox strategy with a structured, transparent scaling approach. Generic revenue grew more than 27x over two years, ROAS improved consistently as the account scaled and cost per conversion fell more than 50%. The results did not peak in year one, they compounded year on year.

The problem with smart campaigns

Smart campaigns automate targeting, bidding and placement decisions behind a single lever — budget — and optimise toward whatever conversion signal the algorithm finds most accessible. For a brand with strong existing awareness like GOT BAG, that usually means the algorithm gravitates toward branded demand: users who were already going to find the brand anyway.

The result is an account that looks like it is performing, with branded conversions at good CPAs, while systematically under-investing in the incremental opportunity. New customer acquisition through generic search, category-level campaigns and structured Shopping activity remains underfunded because the algorithm has no structure guiding it there.

The brand is not growing from Google Ads. It is cycling its existing audience through an automated system that takes credit for organic demand. Replacing this with a transparent, structured account was the prerequisite for everything that followed.

The two-engine philosophy

Our approach to GOT BAG's account was built around a clear strategic distinction between brand and generic activity — two engines with fundamentally different purposes, economics and success metrics.

When a user searches for “GOT BAG backpack”, they already know the brand. A brand campaign's job is simply to be there: to ensure that intent converts to a click and to do so at the lowest possible cost. The goal is efficiency — minimising CPC, minimising wasted spend on overbidding and redirecting every euro saved toward the campaigns that actually create new demand.

Generic campaigns are where new customers actually come from. Reaching people searching for “sustainable backpack”, “ocean plastic bag” or “waterproof travel bag”, converting category intent into brand discovery and doing so efficiently — that is incremental revenue.

Generic: scaled, structured and incrementally driven

Scaling generic effectively requires two complementary approaches working in parallel. Horizontal scaling expands coverage: new keywords, new campaign types, new product groups, new audience signals — widening the net to capture demand that the account was previously missing.

Vertical scaling deepens performance: reworking campaign structure, refining match types, improving feed quality, optimising bidding strategies and making the existing coverage more efficient. The most impactful accounts combine both, continuously, rather than defaulting to one at the expense of the other.

Focusing on what actually moves the needle, rather than the superficial optimisations that fill agency reports but do not drive results, is what made the difference for GOT BAG.

A three-year compounding story

The GOT BAG account tells a story that is rare in paid search: results that do not just hold at scale but improve over time. Each year built meaningfully on the last.

In most accounts, ROAS declines as spend increases — the easiest conversions are captured first and incremental volume comes at progressively higher cost. At GOT BAG, ROAS improved as the account scaled, from 2.9x in year one to 3.4x in year two. That is the signature of an account built on genuine structural quality, not aggressive bidding or inflated attribution.

Cost per conversion tells the same story. From takeover to the most recent period, cost per conversion fell more than 50%, meaning the account is converting buyers at half the cost it was when we started, at a revenue base that is more than 27x larger.

Compounding campaign performance and revenue growth animation
Continuous test, filter and learn optimisation cycle animation

The results kept getting better

The GOT BAG story is not about a single optimisation or a launch that went well. It is about an account that was rebuilt on correct foundations and then evolved continuously — horizontal scaling adding new coverage, vertical scaling deepening efficiency and both compounding over time.

The results in year two are better than year one not despite the work done in year one, but because of it.

The results

A three-year compounding story.

Year Generic Revenue ROAS
Pre-takeover Low 6 figures — smart campaign baseline Baseline
Year 1 13x revenue growth — low 6 to mid 7 figures 2.9x
Year 2 +64% YoY — approaching high 7 figures 3.4x (+17% YoY)

The ROAS trajectory is as important as the revenue story. In most accounts, ROAS declines as spend increases. At GOT BAG, ROAS improved as the account scaled, from 2.9x in year one to 3.4x in year two. That is the signature of an account built on genuine structural quality, not aggressive bidding or inflated attribution.

Volume and efficiency moving in the same direction, over multiple years, is the clearest possible evidence of compounding structural improvement.

Key learnings

Long-term partnerships produce different results than short-term campaigns.

The GOT BAG story is not about a single optimisation or a launch that went well. It is about an account that was rebuilt on correct foundations and then evolved continuously — horizontal scaling adding new coverage, vertical scaling deepening efficiency and both compounding over time.

Brand efficiency is often the most overlooked lever in a paid search account.

Every euro saved on brand overbidding is a euro available for generic growth. The brands that scale fastest on Google Ads are often the ones that have the most disciplined approach to brand spend, treating it as a defensive necessity rather than a growth engine.

Blackbox strategies cap growth by design.

Smart campaigns and similar automated formats optimise for whatever the algorithm finds easiest. For a brand with existing awareness, that is almost always branded demand. Rebuilding with transparent structure and explicit campaign separation unlocks the incremental opportunity that automated formats systematically miss.

Coverage depth and structural quality compound together.

An account that is horizontally broad but structurally weak will plateau quickly. An account that is structurally excellent but narrowly covered will hit a ceiling on volume. The accounts that continue improving over multiple years are the ones that pursue both simultaneously, never treating the work as finished.

The result

27x generic revenue growth over two years. ROAS improved year on year as volume scaled. Cost per conversion halved.

A blackbox account transformed into a structured, transparent growth engine and a partnership that delivers better results in year three than it did in year one.

This is what a long-term agency relationship is supposed to look like. Not a launch, not a quick win, not a single metric that improves while others deteriorate. A compounding system, built correctly, that gets better the longer it runs.

Yann Durand
Ask me about a free audit

Meet Yann Durand

Co-founder of Forwrd. Google Ads, YouTube Ads and performance marketing specialist.

Hi, I'm Yann. I've spent the last 10+ years living and breathing Google Ads, YouTube and performance marketing — and honestly, I still love it.

I started out at a leading global agency in the UK after a first-class master's in digital marketing. Then I moved to the Netherlands to run Google Ads for Bestseller on brands like Jack & Jones, Vero Moda and Only, spending millions across 16 brands and 15 markets simultaneously.

The chapter that really changed things was Vienna. At waterdrop, I took non-brand Google Ads from €200k to €6M in revenue. That experience became the backbone of a system for D2C brands trying to scale with Search, Shopping and YouTube Ads.

After seeing the bad shape of most Google Ads accounts out there, I built Forwrd to go after the untapped potential most agencies leave behind. Where agencies stay on the surface, we go after the moves that actually shift revenue.

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If your growth problem is not just volume but quality, the answer is usually not more spend. It is a better structure, better signals, and better creative strategy.

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