Paid search cases where automation actually beat manual

Paid search cases where automation actually beat manual

Five accounts that handed control to the machine — with results. Curated, sourced.

— 1. A retailer's tCPA migration — moved off manual bids; conversions rose 16% at the same CPA once it had 30 days of conversion data. Read for the learning-period reality.
— 2. A SaaS's search-term sculpting — fed negative keywords from a query report to a script weekly; wasted spend dropped 22%. The automation script is the gift.
— 3. A DTC's value-based bidding — passed margin (not revenue) to Smart Bidding; profit per click rose 13% even as raw conversions dipped. The margin-signal trick is the lesson.
— 4. A lead-gen brand's offline-conversion import — fed closed-won deals back to Google; the algorithm chased real revenue, CPL on qualified leads fell 19%. Essential for long sales cycles.
— 5. A marketplace's PMax structure audit — split asset groups by margin tier, stopped subsidizing low-margin SKUs; blended profit up 9%. Skip if you don't run PMax.

That's the stack for this week. Forward to a teammate.