Michael McBride
Founder & CEO, Atelier Commerce
Michael McBride
Founder & CEO, Atelier Commerce
Scaling a mature account is not about spending more. It is about removing the constraints that cap what every dollar can do. We rebuilt the structure first, then let the budget grow into it.
Scaling a mature account is not about spending more. It is about removing the constraints that cap what every dollar can do. We rebuilt the structure first, then let the budget grow into it.
The Challenge
Moonglow came to Atelier Commerce with a meaningful scale already in place, but performance had begun to plateau. Paid media was active and core campaigns were generating results, yet the account structure was limiting further growth.
Google: A mature account at a ceiling. Performance was stable, but growth had stalled. A significant share of Performance Max conversions came from branded demand, which is finite and cannot support indefinite scale on its own. Meta: Spend was growing, results were not. The account had become overly dependent on a narrow set of creatives, a single hero product, and warm audience performance. That hero SKU delivered only average unit economics. Meta was serving ads repeatedly to people who already knew the brand, which is not scalable growth. The brief: unlock more performance without sacrificing efficiency. Remove the structural constraint, build a repeatable system for finding new winners, and shift from converting the same known audience to acquiring new customers.
The Challenge
Moonglow came to Atelier Commerce with a meaningful scale already in place, but performance had begun to plateau. Paid media was active and core campaigns were generating results, yet the account structure was limiting further growth.
Google: A mature account at a ceiling. Performance was stable, but growth had stalled. A significant share of Performance Max conversions came from branded demand, which is finite and cannot support indefinite scale on its own. Meta: Spend was growing, results were not. The account had become overly dependent on a narrow set of creatives, a single hero product, and warm audience performance. That hero SKU delivered only average unit economics. Meta was serving ads repeatedly to people who already knew the brand, which is not scalable growth. The brief: unlock more performance without sacrificing efficiency. Remove the structural constraint, build a repeatable system for finding new winners, and shift from converting the same known audience to acquiring new customers.
The System
Two channels, restructured around cleaner acquisition.
Google Ads: scale through account architecture. Eliminated inefficiencies. Paused underperformers, refined keyword coverage, and expanded negative keyword controls, redirecting budget into revenue-tied segments. Separated brand and acquisition. A dedicated Non-Brand Performance Max with branded traffic fully excluded, so incremental conversions came from new-to-brand audiences, then nurtured through Meta remarketing and email. Addressed PMax saturation. A second PMax campaign extended scale beyond the original ceiling at a lower cost per conversion. Category-based asset groups. Concentrated investment on the strongest categories and turned top performers into repeatable growth levers. New-market replication. Extended the winning structures into Canada. Meta Ads: turn "running the same ads" into a profitable growth system. Audience research and message framework across anniversary and wedding gifting, long-distance, memorial, self-gift, and other life events. Structured creative testing across messages, formats, and products, not just the one bestseller. This surfaced clear winners, including higher-priced SKUs that lifted average order value. Audience separation across prospecting, consideration, acquisition, and retention, with cold campaigns excluding site visitors so the system optimized for new-user acquisition. Full-funnel build: TOF introduces and converts, MOF re-engages with UGC, reviews, and social proof, BOF closes via dynamic remarketing. Scaling as expansion: more creative variations on winners, new audiences and placements, adjacent SKU expansion. One system, connected to the rest of the program. Google's new-to-brand pool feeds Meta remarketing and email lifecycle; the enriched product data and structured catalog from our SEO and AEO work makes shopping feeds cleaner; and the rebuilt, faster storefront from our CRO and Experience work means the traffic we buy converts when it lands.
The System
Two channels, restructured around cleaner acquisition.
Google Ads: scale through account architecture. Eliminated inefficiencies. Paused underperformers, refined keyword coverage, and expanded negative keyword controls, redirecting budget into revenue-tied segments. Separated brand and acquisition. A dedicated Non-Brand Performance Max with branded traffic fully excluded, so incremental conversions came from new-to-brand audiences, then nurtured through Meta remarketing and email. Addressed PMax saturation. A second PMax campaign extended scale beyond the original ceiling at a lower cost per conversion. Category-based asset groups. Concentrated investment on the strongest categories and turned top performers into repeatable growth levers. New-market replication. Extended the winning structures into Canada. Meta Ads: turn "running the same ads" into a profitable growth system. Audience research and message framework across anniversary and wedding gifting, long-distance, memorial, self-gift, and other life events. Structured creative testing across messages, formats, and products, not just the one bestseller. This surfaced clear winners, including higher-priced SKUs that lifted average order value. Audience separation across prospecting, consideration, acquisition, and retention, with cold campaigns excluding site visitors so the system optimized for new-user acquisition. Full-funnel build: TOF introduces and converts, MOF re-engages with UGC, reviews, and social proof, BOF closes via dynamic remarketing. Scaling as expansion: more creative variations on winners, new audiences and placements, adjacent SKU expansion. One system, connected to the rest of the program. Google's new-to-brand pool feeds Meta remarketing and email lifecycle; the enriched product data and structured catalog from our SEO and AEO work makes shopping feeds cleaner; and the rebuilt, faster storefront from our CRO and Experience work means the traffic we buy converts when it lands.
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.
