How We Drove $520K+ in Google Ads Revenue for PB Express Liquor

The Client

PB Express Liquor is a liquor store in San Diego, California that sells online and ships spirits, wine and craft beer to customers across the US. Our Google Ads for this liquor store turned $120K+ in ad spend into $520K+ in ad revenue.

The store carries allocated bourbon alongside its own single-barrel selects, barrels picked for PB Express. Its best-selling product through our campaigns was one of those, a store-picked single barrel of W.L. Weller Full Proof, with $36K+ in ad revenue on its own.

"$46,000+ in ad revenue in our first month. $91,000+ in December 2024."

The Challenge

• A large catalog of similar bottles. Hundreds of whiskeys, tequilas and wines, many at similar prices, all competing for the same budget.
• Alcohol is a restricted category. Google limits how alcohol can be advertised, and the store has to stay within each state's shipping rules.
• Allocated bottles sell out. The products people search for most are often the ones in shortest supply, so the ads have to move with the inventory.
• A crowded market. Every online liquor store bids on the same bourbon and tequila names.

What We Built

1. A Top-of-Funnel Performance Max Campaign

In June 2024 we launched a Performance Max campaign across the catalog, bid to maximize conversion value. It became the engine of the account, with $430K+ in ad revenue at about 4.7x.

2. Category Campaigns by Spirit

From August 2024 we split the catalog by spirit: Performance Max campaigns for tequila, whiskey, vodka, rum, gin, brandy and cognac, and Shopping campaigns for tequila, whiskey, vodka and rum, most of them on target ROAS. Each category got its own budget.

3. Seasonal and Search Campaigns

Around the 2024 holidays we added a Performance Max campaign for a single seasonal gin, and a whiskey Search campaign for buyers searching bottles by name, like "blanton's bourbon online" and "buffalo trace bourbon online".

4. Negatives and Assets

170+ campaign-level negative keywords, 69 asset groups, and product images, logos, sitelinks, callouts and price assets.

5. Daily Optimization via Ad Campaign Concierge™

Every campaign was reviewed daily through our proprietary Ad Campaign Concierge™ system: search-term mining, budget moved toward the categories and bottles that sold, and bids tuned to purchase value.

The Results

• $520K+ in ad revenue from $120K+ in ad spend, about 4x ROAS
• $500K+ in the first nine months, June 2024 to February 2025
• $180K+ in the 2024 holiday quarter, October to December
• 630+ different products sold through our campaigns

Every Month Above $40,000

From the first month, our campaigns brought in more than $40,000 in ad revenue every month through February 2025, and December 2024 more than doubled that with $91K+.

Key Takeaways

1. Start broad, then split by category. One catalog-wide Performance Max campaign found the demand. Category campaigns then gave tequila, whiskey and the rest their own budgets and targets.
2. Let the store's own picks sell. Store-selected single barrels are bottles no competitor has, and one of them was the top seller.
3. Bid on value. Maximize conversion value and target ROAS put the budget behind the bottles that bring in the most revenue, not just the most orders.
4. Google Ads for liquor stores peaks in Q4. Plan the budget for October to December; here it brought in $180K+.

About This Campaign

Google Ads for an online liquor store, built and optimized through our proprietary Ad Campaign Concierge™ system.

Industry: E-Commerce: Wine & Spirits Platforms: Google Ads (Performance Max, Shopping, Search) Location: San Diego, California (ships nationwide) Account Duration: June 2024 to October 2025. The engagement has ended.

Figures cover only the campaigns we built (the campaigns marked "LPA" in the account). Revenue is purchase conversion value from the store's two purchase conversion actions; store directions, calls and other local actions are excluded. All figures are approximate and rounded down, in US dollars.