Ovis SportSports & Fitness
Cutting wasted spend without cutting growth
Ovis was spending across 4,000 converting and non-converting search terms with no negation discipline. Removing the waste funded the expansion.
Engagement: Advertising management · 8 months
Headline results
-28%
Wasted ad spend
Spend on zero-conversion terms
+37%
Ad-attributed sales
At flat total budget
3.4x
Return on ad spend
From 2.3x, trailing 90 days
Illustrative figures. This case study is demonstration content. Replace the brand, quote and every number here with verified, client-approved data before publishing — see src/content/case-studies.ts.
The challenge
What was actually wrong.
Ovis had never implemented a negation protocol. Roughly a quarter of spend was going to search terms that had never converted.
Total budget was capped by the board, so growth had to be funded from within the existing spend.
Background
The catalogue spanned accessories at $12 and equipment at $180 — a 15x range in price and a wide range in margin — all managed to a single efficiency target.
Broad-match campaigns had been left running for two years without search term review.
Strategy
What we decided to do — and in what order.
Define waste before removing it
We set a click and spend threshold per price band so negation decisions were made on sufficient data rather than on impatience.
Recycle rather than cut
Every dollar removed from a losing term was redeployed to a proven one in the same week, keeping total spend flat.
Tier by price and margin
Three efficiency targets replaced one, so accessories were no longer judged against equipment.
Harvest continuously
Converting broad-match terms were promoted to exact match weekly with dedicated budget.
Execution
The work, week by week.
- Audited 4,100 search terms across 24 months and classified each against the agreed threshold.
- Applied negations at campaign and ad-group level in weekly batches rather than in one sweep.
- Promoted 340 converting terms into exact-match campaigns with their own budgets.
- Applied placement multipliers based on measured placement performance per campaign.
- Introduced a weekly harvest-and-negate routine with a written change log.
Before vs after
The movement.
| Metric | Before | After | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spend on zero-conversion terms | 26% | 7% | Share of total spend |
| Efficiency targets in use | 1 | 3 | By price and margin tier |
| Exact-match campaigns | 12 | 61 | After harvesting |
| Total monthly budget | Capped | Unchanged | Growth funded from reallocation |
View the underlying data as a table
| Period | Indexed value |
|---|---|
| M1 | 26 |
| M3 | 19 |
| M5 | 12 |
| M7 | 9 |
| M8 | 7 |
Timeline
How it unfolded.
Weeks 1–3
Audit
24 months of search term data classified against agreed thresholds.
Weeks 4–9
Negate and harvest
Weekly negation batches; converting terms promoted to exact match.
Months 3–5
Tiering
Three efficiency targets implemented across the catalogue.
Months 6–8
Expansion
Reclaimed budget redeployed into proven terms and placements.
Key learnings
What we'd tell the next brand.
Most accounts can fund a year of growth from spend they are already wasting.
Negating in weekly batches rather than in one sweep keeps the effect readable and reversible.
A single efficiency target across a wide price range guarantees misallocation in both directions.
The budget never moved. The results did.
Placeholder attribution. Client names and quotes are published only with written permission.
Related case studies
All case studiesHealth & Wellness
Northstar Nutrition
Rebuilding a supplement catalogue around contribution margin
+126%
Revenue
-31%
TACoS
+24%
Conversion rate
Beauty & Personal Care
Mirabel Beauty
Building demand for a brand nobody was searching for
+64%
New-to-brand orders
+2.1x
Branded search volume
+29%
Conversion rate