We did a teardown on an 8-figure brand's Shopping Ads. Here's what we found

The other day, I did a teardown of Caraway, a big homeware brand.

We pulled up a popular item from their store to see how they were running their Google Ads.

But what we found was not what we thought we'd see…

Here’s what their Shopping Ads look like for that product:

Quick question…

If you were in the market for a ceramic pan, how likely would you be to click on that ad?

Now, when it comes to Shopping Ads, there are two non-negotiables:

1. Appealing: The ad needs to make the product look desirable enough to earn the click
2. Accurate: What the ad promises has to match the landing page (price, variant, shipping, etc.)

For the first part…

They’re showing a 2-star rating with 37 reviews.

That’s a CTR killer for Shopping Ads, because no one wants to buy a 2/5 product.

Especially when:

• Other brands have hundreds or thousands of reviews with higher ratings

• This is a prospecting search where people usually don’t know about the brand

It’s a shame because the problem isn’t that they don’t have reviews.

They have over 70K positive reviews on their website.

Their setup just doesn’t surface them properly.

And aside from this issue, the rest of the ad is quite decent.

Their image stands out against other listings with a white background.

The title includes the main search terms and highlights a few key features.

But none of that matters when the product is positioned as a bad purchase decision.

And that wasn’t the worst part…

When we clicked into the ad, here’s what showed up on the landing page:

The moment I landed on this site, I thought I clicked on the wrong ads.

The ad shows the black variant in both the image and the title…

But then, they send people to a landing page with the sage variant.

On top of that, the ad lists the price at $865, while the landing page shows $670.

Both of these issues practically invite users to bounce.

When that happens…

You’re not just wasting ad spend on confused traffic.

You’re also destroying your landing page experience score, which is a big factor in how Google ranks products.

Now, to be clear. I’m not here to trash the brand. I actually like their branding and their products.

And they’re clearly doing a lot of things right to reach this level.

But it got me thinking:

If a major brand is making mistakes like this on one of their best products…

How many other brands are doing the same thing?

And how much profit are they losing because of a suboptimal setup?

What I’m trying to say is…

Every Google Ads account we audit has “profit leaks” like these.

Sometimes, they’re small. A few percentage points lost in CTR or conversion rate.

But other times… the impact is much bigger.

We're talking about broken setups that:

• Tank your rankings

• Prevent top products from showing in high-value searches

• Burn through 4, 5 figures in wasted ad spend per month

Stack those issues together, and you’re looking at 6 figures in lost revenue per month.

In most cases, it’s not that the brand doesn’t care.

They just have no idea these problems exist.

They’re invisible until someone who knows what to look for actually digs under the hood.

So here’s what I’m doing…

We’re offering free account audits for ecommerce brands where we’ll give you:

• An in-depth review of your account to uncover weak spots that are silently wasting your budget and hidden revenue streams that you’re not capturing. 

• A personalized 90-day roadmap to put you in the best position to scale profitably.

We typically find 15-20+ issues per account. Even for brands already doing numbers like this one.

If you’re interested, grab a call with us here.

Jackson

Founder and CEO of Echelonn.

How we can help:

Get a free Google ads audit: For brands spending more than $20k/mo. or making over 1 million annually, we’ll identify the key bottlenecks in your account, and turn it into a free 90-day scaling plan. Click here.

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