A budget allocation dilemma across Search, Display, YouTube, and Performance Max for a growing SaaS business.
NestlyPro is a SaaS platform that helps interior designers create client proposals, mood boards, and project timelines. The product costs ₹2,499/month per seat. Average customer stays for 14 months — making the lifetime value approximately ₹35,000 per customer. The company targets independent design studios and freelancers across Tier 1 and Tier 2 Indian cities.
NestlyPro has been running Google Ads for 8 months. The account is mature enough to have conversion history. The CMO has been given board approval to increase the monthly ad budget by ₹4,80,000 — a 40% increase. She must decide how to allocate it across the existing campaign mix. The target CPA is ₹9,000 (cost to acquire one paying customer).
She has pulled the last 30 days of campaign data and is now staring at her screen trying to figure out what is actually happening.
| Campaign | Type | Spend (₹) | Impressions | Clicks | Conversions | CPA (₹) | CVR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brand SearchBranded keywords — "NestlyPro", "Nestly login" | Search | 1,44,000 | 36,000 | 1,728 | 83 | 1,735 | 4.8% |
| Non-Brand Search"interior design software", "proposal tool for designers" | Search | 3,36,000 | 1,40,000 | 1,820 | 29 | 11,586 | 1.6% |
| Display — Design AudienceInterest: Interior design, Architecture; Placement: design blogs | Display | 1,44,000 | 9,20,000 | 552 | 4 | 36,000 | 0.7% |
| YouTube — ProspectingSkippable in-stream, affinity + custom intent, no VTC tracking | YouTube | 1,92,000 | 2,40,000 views | 192 | 2 | 96,000 | 1.0% |
| Performance MaxAll channels; asset groups: Proposal Templates, Project Mgmt | PMax | 3,84,000 | 4,80,000 | 2,880 | 78 | 4,923 | 2.7% |
| TOTAL | 12,00,000 | — | 7,172 | 196 | 6,122 | 2.7% | |
LTV data from CRM: Customers acquired through Non-Brand Search have an average LTV of ₹52,000 — nearly 2× the account average of ₹35,000. The assumption is that high-intent searchers have better product-market fit.
Target CPA: ₹9,000. At blended ₹6,122 today, the account looks healthy overall. But three of five campaigns are above target.
Before making the decision, the CMO dug a little deeper. She pulled four additional reports. Read them carefully.
Brand Search impression share has dropped from 91% to 68% since Performance Max launched 3 months ago. The lost IS isn't going to competitors — it's going to PMax itself, which appears to be bidding on branded queries internally and claiming the credit.
YouTube is only active in Mumbai, Pune, and Bangalore. In those cities, the Non-Brand Search CVR is 2.4%. In Delhi, Hyderabad, and Chennai — where YouTube is off — the Non-Brand Search CVR is 1.1%. The difference has held steady for 2 months.
Display touchpoints appear in 41% of all conversion paths when looking at multi-touch attribution in GA4 — despite Display being credited with only 4 last-click conversions. It frequently appears as a first or second touch before a Search click converts.
The PMax search terms report (limited visibility) shows that 34% of PMax clicks came from queries containing "NestlyPro", "Nestly app", or "Nestly login" — branded terms that Brand Search was already covering before PMax launched.
The CMO must decide how to invest the additional ₹4,80,000 per month. Her team has proposed four options. Each is defensible on paper. Not all of them are equally smart.
The board wants to see results within 60 days. The CMO cannot run a 6-month experiment. Whatever she chooses needs to show progress quickly — but also shouldn't sacrifice long-term account health for short-term numbers.