When Ogie took over Bathroom Mountain's Google Ads account, he inherited a mess. The account was cluttered with over-granular SKAGs, outdated campaign structures, and the remnants of multiple previous media buyers who'd each implemented their own "best practices."
Bathroom Mountain was a top UK bathroom retailer operating in what everyone knew was a stagnant market. Home improvement had plateaued. Competitors were fighting over the same limited demand. Their in-house team hit a ceiling and couldn't figure out how to break through.
Ogie's job: rebuild the account and find growth where others saw only stagnation.
Fast forward through several years of working together, and Bathroom Mountain achieved consistent multi-year growth in a market that wasn't growing. They scaled profitably while competitors struggled. They captured market share without burning margin.
But here's what makes Ogie's approach different from every other media buying case study you'll read: he didn't achieve this through clever campaign tactics, sophisticated bidding strategies, or creative testing breakthroughs.
He achieved it by understanding something most media buyers miss entirely: success in media buying is 80% business fundamentals and 20% tactics.
This is the complete story of how Ogie scaled Bathroom Mountain - including the controversial belief that product quality and pricing matter more than anything you'll ever do inside Google Ads, and the exact framework he uses to combine smart bidding with human logic.
The 80/20 Philosophy That Changes Everything
Before we get to the Bathroom Mountain rebuild, you need to understand Ogie's core philosophy - because it's radically different from how most media buyers think about their work.
"Product quality, pricing, and customer service determine long-term success more than campaign tricks."
This isn't what you'll hear at marketing conferences. Nobody's selling a course on "improve your product quality to scale ads." The industry obsesses over campaign structure, bidding strategies, and optimization techniques because that's what media buyers can control.
But Ogie learned something during his time at Google and through managing $68M+ in ad spend: media buying amplifies strong businesses but cannot save weak ones.
"Many media buyers overemphasize campaign structure - SKAGs, smart versus manual bidding - when the real leverage lies in competitive pricing, social proof, and backend fulfillment."
"I had a client whose performance dropped because competitors doubled their ad intensity and undercut prices by 30-40%."
This is where most media buyers would panic and start changing everything in the account. Lower ROAS targets to stay competitive. Increase budgets to fight for impression share. Test new creative angles. Restructure campaigns. Try desperately to "fix" the ROAS through optimization.
Ogie did the opposite.
"Instead of pushing spend to try to fix ROAS, we pulled back on that product category, preserving profitability and reallocating budget to better-performing categories."
He recognized something critical: when competitors are willing to lose money to gain market share, the right move isn't to join them in a race to the bottom. It's to step back, maintain profitability, and wait for market conditions to change.
"Months later, when competitors burned through margin or stock, we were able to re-enter aggressively and profitably."
The 20% (campaign tactics) couldn't overcome the 80% (competitive pricing dynamics). So instead of wasting budget fighting an unwinnable battle, Ogie focused on the fundamentals: maintain margin, reallocate to profitable categories, wait for competitors to exhaust themselves.
The Bathroom Mountain Rebuild
When Ogie started working with Bathroom Mountain, the account structure was a disaster…
"They had a previously cluttered account with over-granular SKAGs and old structures."
The previous media buyers had followed conventional wisdom. They'd created Single Keyword Ad Groups (SKAGs) for precise control. They'd separated everything into tiny campaign segments. They'd probably attended conferences and implemented "best practices" they'd learned.
But the result was an account that couldn't scale. Too many moving parts. Too much manual management required. Campaign budgets spread so thin that nothing could exit learning phases. The algorithm didn't have enough data in any individual campaign to optimize effectively.
Ogie's first move wasn't to optimize within the existing structure. It was to rebuild the foundation entirely.
This philosophy - automation with boundaries - would become central to Ogie's entire approach.
The more important part of the Bathroom Mountain story isn't what Ogie did in Google Ads. It's what Bathroom Mountain did in their business.
"The company sourced products efficiently, which gave our campaigns room to scale aggressively."
Here's the 80/20 principle in action:
Bathroom Mountain had competitive pricing because of efficient sourcing. They had good margins because of operational excellence. They had strong customer service because they'd built proper backend systems.
Ogie's media buying didn't create those advantages. But it amplified them.
"The result was multi-year growth in a stagnant market. This proves how strong backend fundamentals amplify media buying when you have the right structure."
Think about this: the bathroom fixture market wasn't growing. Competitors had access to the same Google Ads platform. They could see Bathroom Mountain's ads in the auction. They could copy strategies.
But they couldn't copy efficient sourcing. They couldn't instantly match operational excellence. They couldn't replicate years of customer service reputation building.
The media buying was the amplifier. The business fundamentals were the signal. You can't amplify a weak signal and expect great results.
Smart Bidding + Manual Control
With the foundation rebuilt and strong business fundamentals in place, Ogie implemented the tactical layer: combining Google's algorithmic learning with human-imposed boundaries.
Most media buyers think they must choose between smart bidding (trusting the algorithm completely) or manual bidding (controlling everything manually). Smart bidding advocates say manual control is outdated. Manual advocates say algorithms waste your money. Ogie proved both camps are wrong.
"Use automation wisely by combining smart bidding with CPC caps. Smart bidding alone lets Google optimize for their revenue, not yours. Manual bidding alone doesn't have the learning power of the algorithm."
Here's how this works: Ogie applies smart bidding strategies (Target ROAS, Target CPA, Maximize Conversions) to leverage the algorithm's ability to process millions of auction-time signals. But he adds CPC caps to prevent the algorithm from overspending in ways that destroy profitability.
"For brand campaigns, I set CPC caps 50% below average CPC to cut waste while maintaining 95% impression share."
You're bidding on your own brand terms, where you should win most auctions easily. But without CPC caps, smart bidding will sometimes bid $5 or $10 for clicks you could have won at $0.50. By setting CPC caps at 50% below average, you're telling the algorithm: "Win these auctions efficiently. Don't overpay just because you can."
"This approach has delivered up to 200% increase in ROAS on branded terms with no traffic loss."
200% ROAS improvement. Same traffic volume. Just by preventing algorithmic overspending on auctions you should win cheaply.
For Bathroom Mountain, this philosophy extended across the entire account structure. Smart bidding on shopping campaigns, but with proper segmentation so the algorithm optimized within logical product categories. Automated bidding on search campaigns, but with CPC caps preventing waste on expensive, low-converting terms.
The Account Structure That Enables Scale
Ogie's rebuild followed three structural principles:
- Segment campaigns logically by product category - not around tactical keyword groupings. When campaigns align with business categories, you can make strategic decisions about budget allocation. If bathtubs are more profitable than faucets this quarter, shift budget at the campaign level. Over-granular structures with 47 different microscopic campaigns prevent this kind of strategic thinking.
- Second, align spend reporting with backend sales data. Connect what Google Ads reports to what actually happens in the business - actual revenue, margin, customer lifetime value. Google might report a 5:1 ROAS, but if that's all coming from low-margin products, the business isn't actually profitable. Bathroom Mountain's efficient sourcing meant Ogie knew exactly which product categories had strong margins.
- Maintain negative keyword discipline for strategic traffic shaping. If someone searches "DIY bathroom installation tutorial," they're not a customer - they're a researcher. That click wastes money and pollutes the algorithm's learning data. Negative keywords keep campaigns focused on commercial intent, which improves both efficiency and algorithmic learning quality.
Staying Calm Under Volatility
Every media buyer has experienced this: You check the account Monday morning and performance is down 30%. Your stomach drops. You start looking for what broke. You consider pausing campaigns, changing bids, restructuring everything.
"Inexperienced media buyers often overreact by changing ROAS targets, pausing campaigns, or flooding negatives, which harms long-term learning."
Ogie's approach:
slow down and diagnose systematically.
When performance dips for Bathroom Mountain, he investigates in order:
- Did competitor intensity change? (Check Auction Insights)
- Did product pricing or availability change?
- Did seasonal factors shift demand?
- Did the algorithm enter a learning phase?
Only after systematic diagnosis does he make changes. And those changes are strategic, not reactive. When Victoria Plum, a major UK competitor, went bankrupt, Ogie saw this immediately in Auction Insights data. Instead of waiting for the algorithm to slowly adjust, he made strategic bid increases to capture that newly available traffic.
The result: Bathroom Mountain gained significant market share during a period when their largest competitor imploded.
Daily fluctuations are normal. Weekly fluctuations are normal. Only investigate when trends persist 5-7+ days. Diagnose systematically before making changes. Document everything, especially platform errors.
N-Gram Analysis: Finding Hidden Patterns
One of Ogie's most powerful optimization techniques is something most media buyers have never heard of: N-gram analysis.
Standard search term reports show you individual queries people searched. You can see "bathroom faucets chrome" and "modern bathroom faucets" and "bathroom faucet repair" as separate searches.
But what if you want to understand which words or phrases within those searches actually drive performance? What if "chrome" is the problem word that attracts researchers, not buyers? What if "modern" is the golden word that predicts high conversion rates?
That's what N-gram analysis reveals.
"I use an N-gram script from Brainlabs and Nils Rooijmans to break search terms into word combinations."
The script processes all your search terms and breaks them into component parts:
- Single words: "bathroom" "faucets" "chrome" "modern" "repair"
- Two-word combinations: "bathroom faucets" "faucets chrome" "modern bathroom"
- Three-word combinations: "modern bathroom faucets" "bathroom faucets chrome"
Then it shows you the performance of each combination across all your search terms.
"This helps identify top-performing keyword clusters to double down on and wasteful clusters to block via negatives."
Here's how this plays out: Maybe you're selling bathroom fixtures and "repair" appears in lots of search terms. "Bathroom faucet repair," "toilet repair parts," "shower repair kit."
Individual search term analysis might not flag these because they each have low volume. But N-gram analysis shows you that ANY search containing "repair" has 80% worse ROAS than searches without it.
That's actionable insight. Add "repair" as a negative keyword across campaigns, instantly improving efficiency.
"It's about understanding which word combinations within your search terms are actually driving performance versus just eating budget."
For Bathroom Mountain, this meant Ogie could identify which product descriptors attracted high-intent buyers versus researchers, which brand names in search terms predicted good conversion rates, and which modifier words indicated low-quality traffic to block.
The efficiency gains compound over time. Each round of N-gram analysis identifies a few more wasteful patterns to eliminate and a few more winning patterns to emphasize.
How Ogie Leverages AI
Managing Bathroom Mountain generated overwhelming data: hundreds of campaigns, thousands of ad groups, tens of thousands of keywords. Human analysis of this volume is impossible; subtle patterns hide in the noise.
Ogie's approach: export the data and let AI find the patterns. He uses AI in three specific ways:
Auction Data Analysis: Export 6 months of Auction Insights data, upload to ChatGPT, ask it to identify which competitors are growing/declining and when inflection points occurred.
Search Term Analysis: Export search term reports, feed to ChatGPT with instructions to identify common patterns in high-performing versus low-performing queries.
Copy Development: "I also use it to generate high-performing ad copy inspired by top competitors via Google Ads Transparency Center." The Transparency Center lets you see competitors' actual ads. Ogie analyzes what the best-performing competitors are running, feeds that to ChatGPT, and asks it to generate variations that incorporate winning elements while maintaining his client's voice.
"AI is incredibly powerful for spotting inefficiencies and patterns in large datasets that humans would miss."
How To Apply These Insights To Your Business
- Fix Business Fundamentals First
Before obsessing over campaign tactics, ensure your client has competitive pricing (or clear differentiation), efficient operations that support healthy margins, strong customer service and fulfillment, and quality products that generate positive reviews. You cannot out-optimize bad fundamentals. - Rebuild Account Structure Around Business Logic
Organize campaigns by product categories that align with how the business operates. Enable strategic budget allocation at the campaign level. Ensure reporting aligns with backend sales data, not just platform conversion tracking. - Combine Smart Bidding with Manual Boundaries
Use automated bidding strategies to leverage algorithmic learning, but implement CPC caps to prevent overspending. Start with brand campaigns: set CPC caps 50% below average CPC. Monitor impression share to ensure you're not losing traffic while cutting waste. - Use N-gram Analysis for Traffic Shaping
Implement the Brainlabs N-gram script or similar tool. Run analysis quarterly to identify word combinations that predict performance. Add wasteful word combinations as negative keywords. Emphasize winning word combinations in keyword expansion. - Maintain Calm Under Volatility
Daily fluctuations are normal. Only investigate when trends persist 5-7+ days. Diagnose systematically before making changes: competitors → product → algorithm → creative. Use Auction Insights to monitor competitor behavior and identify opportunities. - Leverage AI for Scale
Use AI to analyze large datasets you can't process manually. Export auction insights, search terms, and performance data. Ask AI to identify patterns, anomalies, and opportunities.
You can't out-media-buy a bad offer. Fix fundamentals first.
Most media buyers obsess over the 20% because it's what they control. They attend conferences about campaign structure. They debate smart versus manual bidding. They test ad copy variations.
Meanwhile, their client's pricing is uncompetitive, their fulfillment is slow, and product quality is mediocre. No amount of tactical brilliance overcomes fundamental weaknesses.
The media buyers who scale successfully—like Ogie's multi-year growth of Bathroom Mountain in a stagnant market—do so by ensuring business fundamentals are strong first, then building proper structure, then implementing systematic optimization.
For more, watch the full Q&A interview with Ogie here.
