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Clients and Results
”Launching a startup airline comes with big challenges, especially in growth and marketing. Partnering with Search Machines was the best decision we made. Their expert team and ATLAS software helped us scale efficiently with multilingual ads reaching markets as far as Brazil and Canada. Thanks to their paid search expertise, Arajet has already experienced 40% growth in revenue year on year
Tania MancillaVP of Marketing, Arajet
One controlled change revealed 49.6% incremental demand in a mature travel account
In the next three minutes, we’ll walk through a test of AI Max that surfaced demand a large travel brand had never accessed before, while outperforming its ROAS target. Nearly half of the queries were net-new, and most weren’t in English.
The account and the constraint
The account operates in the US vacation rental market and spends high six figures per month on search.
The objective was simple to state: grow revenue while holding a fixed ROAS target.
In practice, the constraint was tight. The account was already mature. Keyword coverage was broad. Smart Bidding was stable. ROAS targets were consistently met.
Growth still existed, but it came with tradeoffs. Each marginal gain required more effort, and each change carried downside risk.
Why AI Max was treated cautiously
AI Max was grouped internally with other broad, automated Google products.
The concerns were familiar:
Limited control
Opaque query expansion
A tendency to trade efficiency for reach
In an account where baseline performance was already strong, those risks were amplified. Even small inefficiencies would show up quickly. Any claim of incrementality would need to be proven, not assumed.
The real question wasn’t whether AI Max could spend.
It was whether it could access demand the account had never reached before.
How the test was structed
Instead of introducing AI Max into core campaigns, it was isolated on two large secondary campaigns.
This constraint was intentional.
It allowed the test to answer a single question clearly: was AI Max exploring new demand, or redistributing existing demand?
The answer surfaced quickly.
Across the test period, 49.6% of the search terms AI Max purchased had never appeared anywhere in the account before.
As those queries were reviewed, a second pattern emerged.
Most of the incremental demand wasn’t English.
Only 32% of the terms were English.
The remaining 68% appeared in other languages, including Arabic, Russian, and Chinese.
Manual review showed these weren’t fringe or low-intent searches. They were direct translations of high-intent English queries the account already knew converted.
The result
Over a one-month test window:
- 49.6% of search terms were incremental
- The ROAS target was 145%
- AI Max delivered 179% ROAS
- CPCs were around 16% cheaper
- Conversion rate was roughly 5% lower than existing keyword campaigns
Performance varied by language. Arabic and German outperformed. French underperformed.
That variation mattered less than the aggregate outcome. Demand scaled without degrading the commercial constraint the account was built around.
This outcome wasn’t accidental, and it wasn’t guaranteed.
AI Max requires constraints.
In other accounts, unconstrained deployments have produced very different results. In one case, AI Max expanded aggressively into irrelevant territory, serving ads for sexual health clinic searches in a transport account.
Here, the difference was isolation and review.
AI Max was allowed to explore, but not to roam.
Where do you want to take this next?
If you’d like to explore further:
– Our case studies show how similar tests have played out in other accounts.
– Our services section explains how we approach accounts.
– Or schedule a free strategy session to talk through your specific context.
