The Client
The Barrel Tap is an online liquor store that ships premium and hard-to-find spirits nationwide from a Shopify storefront. The catalog runs deep on allocated bourbon: Pappy Van Winkle, Blanton's, W. L. Weller, Colonel E.H. Taylor, Eagle Rare and Buffalo Trace. It also carries premium tequila, cognac and champagne, store-exclusive barrel picks, gift sets and custom bottle engraving.
Amil Hermiz reached out to us in the fall of 2020. The store was young and Google Ads had only started tracking revenue. We have run their Google Ads and Microsoft Ads ever since.
"$36,000 in our first December together. $1.15 million in December 2025."
The Growth, Year by Year
Every year since 2021 has been bigger than the one before it. In 2023 the account took off, and it has grown every year since:
- 2021: $502K in revenue from our ads
- 2022: $574K
- 2023: $2.17M, more than triple the year before
- 2024: $4.86M
- 2025: $6.71M
- 2026 so far: $4.93M from January to September, 20% ahead of the same nine months of 2025
Every Season Peaks Higher Than the Last
Online liquor is a holiday business. October through December is when the year is won, and each year's holiday season has climbed far above the last:
- December 2021: $88K
- December 2022: $177K
- December 2023: $466K
- December 2024: $783K
- December 2025: $1.15M, the first million-dollar month
The rest of the year kept rising too. A typical spring month grew from about $35K in 2021 to about $470K in 2025. In 2026, every month from May through August ran above the same month of 2025.
Six Years in One Line
Added up since October 2020, our Google Ads and Microsoft Ads have produced $19.8 million in revenue for The Barrel Tap:
That's $3.66M in ad spend returning $19.8M in revenue, a lifetime 5.4x return on ad spend, on an account that now spends about as much in a single December as it did in all of 2022.
What We Built
1. A Catch-All Engine, Plus a Campaign for Every Hero Bottle
The account runs on a Performance Max campaign for the whole catalog, a Shopping campaign and a Search campaign. Around them we built dedicated Performance Max campaigns for the bottles people search for by name: Pappy Van Winkle, Blanton's, Weller Antique 107, Weller Special Reserve, Colonel E.H. Taylor, Buffalo Trace, American whiskey and cognac. Each hero bottle gets its own budget, so a hot release never has to compete with the rest of the store.
2. Search That Captures Buyers, Not Browsers
Search covers general liquor, whiskey, vodka, cognac and brandy with both keyword and dynamic targeting. Every new idea runs as a side-by-side A/B test before it gets the budget, including a Dynamic Search Ads test that still runs today.
3. Microsoft Ads as a Second Engine
Microsoft Ads runs the same structure, imported and kept in sync weekly. It typically reaches an older, higher-income audience at a lower cost per click. In 2025 it added $1.52M in revenue on its own.
4. Budgets That Follow the Calendar
We plan every year around the liquor calendar. We hold spend steady through the slow spring months, build through the fall, and push hardest from October through December, when allocated releases and holiday gifting drive the biggest orders of the year. That rhythm is why each December lands higher than the last.
5. Daily Optimization via Ad Campaign Concierge™
Every campaign gets daily attention through our proprietary Ad Campaign Concierge™ system: search-term mining and negative keywords, product-level performance checks, new-product launches and budget shifts toward whatever is selling that week.
Key Takeaways
- Growth compounds over years, not months. Revenue from our ads grew every single year since 2021. Each season built on the data, the structure and the product knowledge from the one before.
- Give your hero products their own campaigns. Allocated bourbon behaves differently from the rest of a liquor catalog, so it gets its own budget and bidding.
- Plan for the fourth quarter all year. The holiday season is where an online liquor store makes its year. Structure, feed and budgets have to be ready before October, not during it.
- Don't skip Microsoft Ads. It's a smaller channel, but for The Barrel Tap it added millions in revenue that Google alone wouldn't have captured.
About This Campaign
This account is managed daily through Ad Campaign Concierge™, our proprietary optimization system for high-volume eCommerce advertising.
Industry: E-Commerce: Wine & Spirits Platforms: Google Ads (Performance Max, Shopping, Search), Microsoft Ads Location: United States (nationwide shipping) Account Duration: October 2020 to present (ongoing)
Revenue is conversion value as reported by Google Ads and Microsoft Ads. Microsoft Ads figures are included from September 2023, the earliest data Microsoft still keeps. August and September 2022 are excluded.