Finalists,RedditSandwiches,andWorldCupPrep

Some weeks you look back and think "that was a normal week." This was not one of those weeks.

Two award ceremonies. Six shortlists.

We found out we're finalists at the National Digital Awards for PPC Campaign of the Year. But it wasn't just the agency - our Operations Director, Jax, was shortlisted for Ops Director of the Year, and Hajni, our Senior PPC Specialist, was shortlisted for Emerging Talent Under 30. Both at the National Digital Awards. Proud doesn't quite cover it.

Then the European Search Awards dropped and we picked up five more shortlist nominations:

• Best Use of Search (Retail/Ecommerce, Small)
• Most Innovative Campaign (PPC, Small)
• Best PPC Campaign (Small)
• Best Use of Data (PPC, Small)
• Best PPC Agency

Eight shortlists across two ceremonies for a team our size. We're not treating it as validation that we've "made it." We're treating it as evidence that the POAS methodology and SKU-level approach actually stands up to scrutiny when the judges look under the bonnet.

A consulting piece with a big fashion brand

We've started a consulting engagement with a large fashion brand in Manchester. Their challenge is one we see repeatedly in apparel: wasted spend through fragmented sizing. When your feed treats every size variant as a separate product, budgets get diluted across SKUs that are fundamentally the same item. We're helping them restructure so ad spend maps to commercial intent, not feed bloat.

Two new clients signed

A supplements brand and a hobby-based brand both signed this week and will start in April. More to follow on both once we're through onboarding and have something worth writing about.

The Reddit and Channable sandwich

We spotted ourselves sandwiched between Reddit and Channable in the SERPs for "ecommerce Google Ads audit." That's a proper organic result sitting between a platform with 1.7 billion monthly users and a major feed management tool. No paid placement, no backlink scheme. Just content that matched the intent better than theirs did that day. We'll take it.

SOPs: refined, not templated

We took a couple of afternoons to run through our standard operating procedures. Refine and restructure. Every client has their own set of SOPs because a one-size-fits-all approach is exactly how you end up applying "best practice" to accounts that don't need best practice. They need right practice.

The POAS shift is real

Three new business calls this week, all with audit findings attached. There's a noticeable shift in the market away from ROAS towards POAS. Organisations are starting to realise that positive platform metrics don't always equate to positive business metrics. The phrase "our ROAS looks great but we're not making any money" came up in every single call.

Chris vs. LinkedIn (again)

Chris upset half of LinkedIn by claiming that full-service agencies are a scam. It was a clickbait headline, obviously. There are excellent full-service agencies out there. But the point stands: if you want genuine expertise in ecommerce PPC, you come to a specialist who spends all day inside the platform. Not someone who also does your TikTok, your PR, and your brand strategy between lunch and a Teams call. We fully back ourselves against anyone when it comes to eCom PPC.

2,150 product groups and a World Cup

We restructured one of our client's accounts ahead of the World Cup. 2,150 product groups added. That's not a typo. When a major sporting event drives demand spikes across specific product categories, you don't want a blanket Smart Shopping campaign deciding where your budget goes. You want granular control. So that's what we built.

Phew. What a week.

The day-to-day stuff

Alongside all of that, the bread-and-butter work never stops. Here's a snapshot of the actual work that went on this week across the team:

• Debugging why a client's product reviews weren't showing on Shopping ads despite being connected through their Shopify reviews app. Raised with Google support, resolved same day.
• Setting up a new Search campaign targeting competitor product pages for a wellness brand. Three hero SKUs, tightly themed ad groups, no wasted coverage.
• Building a new product feed and campaign from scratch for a client launching a new product category. Feed structure, campaign architecture, the lot.
• Running ad copy experiments for a subscription brand: testing urgency-based headlines around their monthly drop cutoff date, and split-testing homepage vs. a dedicated gifting landing page to see which converts better over 30 days.
• Launching a brand protection campaign for a client where competitors had started bidding on their brand terms. Target: absolute top of page, 100% of the time.
• Testing tCPA alongside tROAS on the same campaign type for a gifting-focused account. Different bidding strategies suit different intent levels, so we're letting the data decide.
• Fully optimising a product feed for a fragrance brand. 50ml range done, rest to follow.
• A client call where the feedback was essentially "everything's going well, but we can't handle any more sales." They've hired a new person and are training them up before we scale again. That's the kind of problem we like to create.
• Running a Spring Sale promotion across ads and promotion assets for a homeware brand. Live for ten days, coordinated across copy and extensions.
• New client contract signed, onboarding planned for May. More on that when we're live.

None of this is glamorous. But it's the work that actually moves the numbers.

Next week: half term edition

This coming week is half term, which means it's all hands on deck whilst simultaneously juggling childcare. If you've ever tried to explain a Performance Max asset group to a client whilst a six-year-old demands you watch them do a cartwheel for the 47th consecutive time, you'll understand the unique brand of chaos we're about to walk into.

Expect slightly delayed Slack responses. The strategy will still be sharp. The background noise will not.

One more thing…

Next week we've got a new Senior PPC Manager starting, and we're genuinely buzzing about it. We'll do a proper introduction next week, but the experience, enthusiasm, and ideas this person is going to bring will only cement JudeLuxe as a fantastic option for ecommerce PPC. Watch this space.

Chris