How Forthglade halved its brand CPC and reinvested the budget in growth

Forthglade makes natural wet food, dry food and treats for dogs. When we took over its Google Ads account, the brief was growth: reach more dog owners who don’t know Forthglade yet.

The easy route to growth is a bigger budget. We asked a different question first: is the existing budget already working as hard as it can?

Brand Search was running on Target Impression Share. Google’s bidding does exactly what you ask: it hits the visibility target you set. It doesn’t tell you whether that target is worth what it costs.

Half the price per click. More visible, not less.

Brand CPC fell 52%, from £0.90 to £0.44, and pure brand spend fell 46%, releasing £6.4k in seven weeks. Over the same period, Search Impression Share rose from 90.7% to 97.0%.

Pure brand terms, daily. CPC dropped the day bidding changed and stayed down, while impression share stopped dipping.

Same keyword, half the cost.

• “forthglade” [exact] CPC: £0.85 to £0.43, across more than 90% of brand clicks
• Top impression share: 89.2% to 94.4%
• Absolute top impression share: 88.0% to 90.0%
• Days below 90% impression share: 14 to 0

The full picture: £11.6k saved in seven weeks.

Brand traffic also moved from Performance Max into Search during this period, so Search Brand handled 36% more clicks. At the old CPCs, that brand traffic would have cost £30.2k. It cost £18.5k: £11.6k less in seven weeks, or around £87k a year if the run rate holds.

Estimate. Assumes the clicks that moved from PMax would have cost the previous Search CPC, calculated separately for pure brand and other brand terms to remove mix effects.

Budget redirected into growth.

• Search Generics: £9.1k delivered 376 conversions at a £24 CPA, including 223 new customers
• Brand Search: new customers grew from 34% to 49% of conversions once subscribers were excluded

What a year of savings could fund.

Reinvested in Generic Search at current performance (£24 CPA, 2.4x ROAS, 59% new customers):

Even if CPA rose 25% as spend scales, the volume-adjusted budget would still fund around 2,900 conversions and 1,700 new customers a year.

Illustrative, not a forecast. Assumes Generic Search can absorb the extra spend and that the conversions are incremental. Revenue is first-order conversion value only.

pure brand ad groups, 3 Aug to 20 Sep 2026 vs 15 Jun to 2 Aug 2026. Subscribers excluded from Brand Search from 30 Jul; brand excluded from PMax Treats (3 Aug) and PMax Dry (9 Sep), lifting Brand Search volume. CPC is measured on the same exact-match keyword in both periods and did not move after either exclusion. Annual figures are straight-line projections of the 49-day period. New customers as reported by Google Ads.