Using Budget Allocation and Automations helped Square reach a 50% ROAS uplift + 40% CPC decrease

Square is a technology leader offering an integrated ecosystem of commerce and payment solutions to businesses globally and processing $210 billion annually. Despite its success, the app marketing team faced challenges in globalizing their strategy across new geographies and increasing visibility for their 5 point-of-sale (POS) apps while maintaining brand efficiency. Sara San Antonio, Senior Global Mobile Marketing Manager, oversees strategies across 8 geographies and 5 apps. Sara led the transition from a previous campaign management partner to SearchAds.com by MobileAction and shared their experience after the transition.

The challenge

Square faced challenges in several areas: reporting in multiple currencies, keyword optimization in various languages, and optimization against numerous touchpoints.
Sara described the reporting difficulties, “We have to report both in local currency and USD; this was a manual process where we had to use an exchange rate in order to give relevant reports to our stakeholders.” The complexity extended to keyword discovery, where there were inaccuracies in translation tools that impeded performance.

Sara added, “With our previous campaign management partner, we would have to use a translation plug-in, but this made it hard as it wouldn’t always be accurate, and it was difficult to then bulk sheet these keywords into our exact match ad groups.” She also highlighted the broader strategic challenges: “Like most companies, we want to have our cake and eat it too – we wanted to grow our events while retaining our Share of Voice (SoV) and ROAS, all without experiencing a drop in incrementality.”

The solution

Sara explained why they chose MobileAction by saying, “Knowing that MobileAction combined App Store Optimization (ASO), Apple Search Ads efforts, and was a certified Apple Search Ads partner it made sense to scope the platform.” In initial conversations, Square was impressed by the plethora of features coupled with competitive pricing. “The transition was easy and we quickly regained the crucial features that had been lost. The ability to integrate our ASO and Apple Search Ads strategies into one platform allowed us to cut costs by eliminating the need for separate contracts,” Sara noted.

One of the tools utilized by Square was SearchAds.com’s Budget Allocation. The tool enabled budget distribution across campaign types and refined budget management with the capability to set strict daily caps for smaller budget campaigns or flexible monthly caps. Critically, when MobileAction introduced algorithmic updates to the budget allocation model, there was no disruption to Square’s existing user interface – unlike their experiences with previous vendors. This was a significant factor in their decision to switch partners. “We were given a toggle to control which campaigns were impacted, ensuring that our current performance remained uninterrupted,” she explained.

Smart Bidding was implemented to add in goals for lower funnel events and optimize towards ROAS. The Automations tool also stood out for Square. The tool enabled optimization towards SoV, ROAS and multiple events. Automated actions were taken to discover new keywords, move performers to a probation account, and pause keywords that were spending but not performing.

The platform also offered advanced capabilities for analyzing and reporting campaign data. “A lot of manual processes to review performance, especially within keyword discovery, are no longer a guessing game,” said Sara and added, “Having a view that aggregates all of our accounts across various geos and lets us pick the currency view has been revolutionary. The ability to change from USD to local currency allows us to easily report to various stakeholders.”

MobileAction team’s support was also a highlight for Square. “The team is quick to make automations and suggest approaches for tests, including switchback incrementality testing. I constantly reach out with questions, theories, and bugs I find. The team takes it all in stride, even including their product team in calls with me and adding items to the roadmap based on my feedback. The whole team knows the product thoroughly across SearchAds.com and MobileAction, helping connect the dots with our ASO and paid teams,” Sara concluded.