Performance Max campaigns contribute a substantial share of Three’s Google Ads investment. Zenith UK identified over 20% of this spend was allocated to underperforming video and display channels, raising concerns over the quality and suitability of placements their ads were shown alongside.

With limited optimisation levers available in Google Ads, Zenith UK turned to Squared.io. Powered by AI, it assessed the quality and brand suitability of ad placements, automatically excluding those categorised as high risk. As a result, key metrics improved:

The opportunity

After reviewing Three’s Performance Max channel delivery, Zenith UK identified that although video and display accounted for over 20% of spend, the revenue they contributed was much lower. Alongside mitigating concerns about brand safety and suitability on these channels, the team sought to improve the return on ad spend by reviewing and eliminating low quality ad placements. While Google provided basic data for ad placements, it lacked deeper insight into placement suitability or performance – making manual review slow, inconsistent, and unscalable across multiple accounts serving ads on 100,000s of unique placements.

The solution

Zenith UK utilised Squared.io to evaluate the placements Three were serving ads on. Using generative AI, Squared.io analyse the quality and brand suitability of individual placements, assigning a risk score alongside detailed insights and rationale - giving the team immediate visibility into the placements most likely to be driving poor performance or those posing a threat to Three’s brand perception. Going one step further, Zenith UK leveraged Squared.io’s automation to exclude placements that the platform had categorised as high risk, enabling them to continually reduce spend on low-quality traffic while protecting Three’s brand.

The results

In the first month alone, Squared.io excluded 20,000 placements that were categorised as high risk across the Three accounts. This not only reduced ongoing exposure to unsuitable content but helped improve campaign performance. Comparing results before and after Zenith UK automated the exclusions, Three saw a 122% improvement in ROAS and 26% reduction in CPA across video and display spend, alongside a 67% uplift in revenue – demonstrating the significant impact of optimising placement quality at scale.

• Display & video revenue: +67%

• Display & video ROAS: +122%

• Display & video CPA: -26%