We Smashed Our PPC Targets… So Why Did the Client Fire Us? ft Chris Avery

Chris, co-founder of JudeLuxe, speaks about a client relationship that ended despite improving ROAS and contribution. Chris explains how that experience changed the agency’s approach: start with the business’s commercial needs, question inherited targets, and give Google Ads and AI the context needed to make useful decisions.

Key Topics:

• Chris recounts losing a client two months into an engagement, despite improved ROAS and contribution, because the agency had not understood the client’s need to clear seasonal stock and release cash.
• The agency had accepted an average ROAS target as the brief instead of asking what the target meant, what trade-offs were acceptable, or what the business needed from advertising.
• Chris describes the shift from a platform-focused, “button pushing” agency to a commercially engaged partner speaking with finance, merchandising, operations, and ecommerce teams.
• Campaign success should reflect the campaign’s purpose; YouTube and other upper-funnel activity may support branded search and shopping rather than deliver the strongest standalone ROAS.
• Ecommerce goals change with stock age, seasonality, discounting, and cash needs, so stale targets can send Google Ads the wrong signals.
• Chris calls product feeds a major, often neglected ecommerce lever: product titles and feed data help determine which searches products can appear for.
• AI can analyze data quickly but lacks business context; Chris cites an audit recommendation to raise a Knotts County campaign budget by about 500% despite limited demand.
• Agencies are paid for judgment: examine AI recommendations, test their assumptions, and retain human responsibility for decisions.
• Chris shares PPC account warning signs, including a chiropractor campaign targeting only “Guildford” on broad match and a product title repeating “Mustard” six times.
• His advice after a setback: understand why the mistake happened, learn from it, and “control what you can control.”

Chapters

00:00 Meet Chris: commercial thinking beyond Google Ads

04:11 The client loss behind the lesson

06:39 Why higher ROAS missed the stock and cash problem

10:35 Profit is not the whole commercial picture

14:10 Why channels need different success measures

18:28 Changing onboarding: question the objective

21:25 Talk to finance, merchandising, and operations

24:46 Targets must move with ecommerce conditions

27:50 Give Google Ads the right business context

31:21 How to respond when a client leaves

33:29 PPC horror stories and the product-feed blind spot

40:36 AI recommendations need human scrutiny

48:27 Moneyball and the numbers that help you win