
Michael McBride
Founder & CEO, Atelier Commerce

Michael McBride
Founder & CEO, Atelier Commerce
We did not just keep the lights on after the handover. We rebuilt the account around how people actually shop for dog chews, cut the spend that was not earning, and roughly doubled the return on the same kind of budget
We did not just keep the lights on after the handover. We rebuilt the account around how people actually shop for dog chews, cut the spend that was not earning, and roughly doubled the return on the same kind of budget

The Challenge
Bully Sticks Direct came to Atelier Commerce mid-flight: a live, spending paid search account inherited from a previous agency, in a category that punishes any inefficiency.
A brutal, high-competition category. Bully sticks is not a quiet niche. The head term draws tens of thousands of searches a month, carries the maximum competition index, and commands click costs that routinely run several dollars and spike higher at the brand and bulk end. Big-box marketplaces and a dozen direct competitors bid against the same queries, and demand is sharply seasonal, peaking hard in the Q4 gifting window. There is no room for a sloppy account here. An inherited structure built for spend, not efficiency. The account we took over relied on broad Performance Max campaigns segmented only by order value, with brand and acquisition demand blended together. Cost per conversion was high and surface metrics were moving in the wrong direction even as spend grew. The structure was capturing demand, but it was not concentrating on the budget where it earned the most. An underdeveloped second channel. Microsoft Ads (Bing) was live but thin, returning well below its potential on a lower-competition surface where the same buyers shop. The brief: take over the account cleanly, find and stop the waste, rebuild the architecture around real product lines and buyer intent, and lift both channels to a return that reflects the brand's strong economics, all without blowing up the budget.
The Challenge
Bully Sticks Direct came to Atelier Commerce mid-flight: a live, spending paid search account inherited from a previous agency, in a category that punishes any inefficiency.
A brutal, high-competition category. Bully sticks is not a quiet niche. The head term draws tens of thousands of searches a month, carries the maximum competition index, and commands click costs that routinely run several dollars and spike higher at the brand and bulk end. Big-box marketplaces and a dozen direct competitors bid against the same queries, and demand is sharply seasonal, peaking hard in the Q4 gifting window. There is no room for a sloppy account here. An inherited structure built for spend, not efficiency. The account we took over relied on broad Performance Max campaigns segmented only by order value, with brand and acquisition demand blended together. Cost per conversion was high and surface metrics were moving in the wrong direction even as spend grew. The structure was capturing demand, but it was not concentrating on the budget where it earned the most. An underdeveloped second channel. Microsoft Ads (Bing) was live but thin, returning well below its potential on a lower-competition surface where the same buyers shop. The brief: take over the account cleanly, find and stop the waste, rebuild the architecture around real product lines and buyer intent, and lift both channels to a return that reflects the brand's strong economics, all without blowing up the budget.





The System
A paid search takeover and rebuild, structured around the catalog.
Clean takeover and audit. We assumed control of the Google Ads and Microsoft Ads accounts, mapped exactly where spend was going, and identified the generic, order-value-only Performance Max structure and the blended brand and acquisition demand as the core efficiency leaks. Themed Performance Max, built around the catalog. Instead of one broad high-value and one low-value campaign, we rebuilt Performance Max around the actual product lines that matter to buyers. This let budget, creative, and signals concentrate by product type, so each line could be read and optimized on its own merits rather than averaged into a generic pool. Brand separated and protected. We pulled Brand Search into its own lean campaign so we could defend the brand term cheaply against competitors bidding on it, and so acquisition performance was no longer flattered by brand conversions. Brand Search became the single most efficient line in the account. Demand Gen for the top of funnel. We added Demand Gen to reach cold, in-market dog owners at scale and feed the lower-funnel campaigns, a far better fit than the inherited display remarketing that had been doing little. Tightened acquisition and competitor layers. Dynamic Search and a disciplined competitor campaign rounded out coverage, kept efficient and capped so they supported rather than drained the account. Microsoft Ads rebuilt in parallel. We applied the same structural logic to Bing, treating it as a real channel rather than an afterthought. Return on ad spend there more than doubled on a lower-competition surface where acquisition costs are friendlier. Connected to the full ecosystem. Paid search does not work alone here. It feeds a BigCommerce store wired into a mature Klaviyo email and SMS program, a Smile loyalty engine, and a branded app. New paid customers enter a system designed to bring them back, which is what makes aggressive acquisition economically rational.
The System
A paid search takeover and rebuild, structured around the catalog.
Clean takeover and audit. We assumed control of the Google Ads and Microsoft Ads accounts, mapped exactly where spend was going, and identified the generic, order-value-only Performance Max structure and the blended brand and acquisition demand as the core efficiency leaks. Themed Performance Max, built around the catalog. Instead of one broad high-value and one low-value campaign, we rebuilt Performance Max around the actual product lines that matter to buyers. This let budget, creative, and signals concentrate by product type, so each line could be read and optimized on its own merits rather than averaged into a generic pool. Brand separated and protected. We pulled Brand Search into its own lean campaign so we could defend the brand term cheaply against competitors bidding on it, and so acquisition performance was no longer flattered by brand conversions. Brand Search became the single most efficient line in the account. Demand Gen for the top of funnel. We added Demand Gen to reach cold, in-market dog owners at scale and feed the lower-funnel campaigns, a far better fit than the inherited display remarketing that had been doing little. Tightened acquisition and competitor layers. Dynamic Search and a disciplined competitor campaign rounded out coverage, kept efficient and capped so they supported rather than drained the account. Microsoft Ads rebuilt in parallel. We applied the same structural logic to Bing, treating it as a real channel rather than an afterthought. Return on ad spend there more than doubled on a lower-competition surface where acquisition costs are friendlier. Connected to the full ecosystem. Paid search does not work alone here. It feeds a BigCommerce store wired into a mature Klaviyo email and SMS program, a Smile loyalty engine, and a branded app. New paid customers enter a system designed to bring them back, which is what makes aggressive acquisition economically rational.

Latest projects
Social Media Marketing
Alicia Adams Alpaca: Where nine in ten organic social visitors are meeting the brand for the very first time
Alicia Adams Alpaca runs organic social as top-of-funnel discovery, not bottom-funnel conversion. Nearly 90% of visitors it sends are first-timers, the brand's highest new-visitor rate of any channel, arriving curious after seeing a styled throw or editorial content, ready to look closer.

Social Media Marketing
Alicia Adams Alpaca: Where nine in ten organic social visitors are meeting the brand for the very first time
Alicia Adams Alpaca runs organic social as top-of-funnel discovery, not bottom-funnel conversion. Nearly 90% of visitors it sends are first-timers, the brand's highest new-visitor rate of any channel, arriving curious after seeing a styled throw or editorial content, ready to look closer.

Moonglow Jewelry: SEO & AEO, One Data Layer, Three Surfaces
We cleaned up a sprawling Shopify Plus catalog and enriched the product data behind it, structured for search engines and answer engines alike. The result: the blue link, the star-rating rich result, a seat in the AI Overview. Same data. Built to be found. Built to be cited.

Moonglow Jewelry: SEO & AEO, One Data Layer, Three Surfaces
We cleaned up a sprawling Shopify Plus catalog and enriched the product data behind it, structured for search engines and answer engines alike. The result: the blue link, the star-rating rich result, a seat in the AI Overview. Same data. Built to be found. Built to be cited.

Latest projects
Social Media Marketing
Alicia Adams Alpaca: Where nine in ten organic social visitors are meeting the brand for the very first time
Alicia Adams Alpaca runs organic social as top-of-funnel discovery, not bottom-funnel conversion. Nearly 90% of visitors it sends are first-timers, the brand's highest new-visitor rate of any channel, arriving curious after seeing a styled throw or editorial content, ready to look closer.

Moonglow Jewelry: SEO & AEO, One Data Layer, Three Surfaces
We cleaned up a sprawling Shopify Plus catalog and enriched the product data behind it, structured for search engines and answer engines alike. The result: the blue link, the star-rating rich result, a seat in the AI Overview. Same data. Built to be found. Built to be cited.

