Search demand is bought daily.
Right now, rivals are buying yours.

Conversion plumbing

• Enhanced Conversions — hashed first-party email/phone passed on purchase; recovers conversions browsers drop. Implemented via gtag or SFCC tag layer.
• Primary conversion: Purchase (Google Ads tag, order-value with cart contents). Secondary (observation): Add to Cart, Begin Checkout, Email signup.
• GA4 linked, not double-counted: GA4 key events imported for audience building only; the Ads tag remains the bidding conversion source.
• Consent Mode v2 — required for EEA/UK traffic and future-proofing; behavioral modeling fills consent gaps.

UTM taxonomy & dedup rules

One taxonomy across Google, Meta and Klaviyo (see Email module):

utm_source=google
utm_medium=cpc
utm_campaign=sdr_search_nonbrand_polos
utm_content=rsa_icon115
utm_term={keyword}

• Dedup: transaction ID passed on every purchase tag — one order, one conversion, regardless of tag count.
• Attribution: data-driven attribution in Ads; MER (blended) is the executive scoreboard so platform-reported ROAS can never overclaim (see Analyze).
• Audit first: current tag health is unknown from outside — account + GTM audit on access, week 1.

KPI stack — blended first

Brand-defense ROAS will always look heroic — it captures demand the brand already owns. It is reported separately so it can never subsidize the non-brand story. That honesty is the whole point of the split.

Golf runs on a calendar. So should the budget.

Flighting tied to the majors — the moments the brand's own ad copy already targets ("Augusta rewards those who study it," "Summer Championship"). Semrush, Jul 2026

Query mining cadence

• Weekly (weeks 1–6): full search-term review; converting queries promoted to exact; waste → negatives.
• Bi-weekly (week 7+): N-gram analysis to catch pattern-level waste ("cheap", "womens", non-US intents).
• PMax search-term insights reviewed weekly; brand exclusions verified monthly.

Kill / scale thresholds Illustrative

• Kill: keyword spends 2× target CPA with zero conversions → pause; ad group at <0.5× target ROAS over 14 days → rebuild or cut.
• Scale: ad group beats target ROAS over 14 days with ≥80% impression share headroom → +20% budget steps.
• Thresholds are set against the real target CPA/AOV once account data is in hand — these are placeholders, not promises.

Budget reallocation rules

• Brand defense is capped at lost-IS <5% — it never absorbs growth budget.
• Winner-take-more: monthly, bottom-decile spend moves to the top-performing non-brand ad group.
• Seasonal override: majors-week flights pre-committed in the calendar, not improvised.