How we cut wasted ad spend and nearly doubled ROAS
The premium car rental market in Los Angeles is one of the most competitive environments in e-commerce — cost per click can run extremely high, and competing for a customer landing at LAX feels like an endless bidding war. This case study shows how eliminating inefficient traffic and precise geo-targeting drove year-over-year revenue growth alongside a near doubling of campaign profitability.
Results that broke the plateau
Google Ads Revenue
Year-over-year growth (March vs. March), with a lower share of unprofitable traffic.
Google Ads Profitability
A jump from roughly 4.2× to 8.27× — nearly double the campaign profitability.
Meta Ads Transactions
Year-over-year growth in bookings (May vs. May) in a channel previously used purely for brand awareness.
Costly competition for customers at the airport
In the premium car rental industry, a common mistake is targeting ads at people already in the destination city or searching for a car directly at the airport. The result is fierce competition, rising bids, and shrinking margin. An audit of Falcon Car Rental's Google Ads account revealed two structural problems: part of the budget was going toward audience segments that generated high cost but never closed, due to internal business constraints — and broad, nationwide targeting was diluting ad potential instead of concentrating it.
Two pillars that changed the account's economics
A strategy built on two pillars: cutting traffic that was structurally incapable of converting, and shifting budget to where purchase intent was just beginning to form.
Pillar 1: Eliminating inefficient traffic (the 18-24 age segment)
The audit found that the youngest age group generated a disproportionately high cost at a very weak 1.53 ROAS. The cause was drop-off at the booking stage, driven by an additional insurance surcharge for drivers under 25 (a legal requirement in the US). Fully excluding this segment and shifting budget to the most profitable 25-44 age group cleared inefficient traffic from the account and lifted overall ROAS.
Pillar 2: 'Home city → Los Angeles' geo-targeting
We moved away from broad, nationwide targeting in favor of so-called wealth feeder markets (New York, Miami, Chicago) — places where affluent customers are still just planning their trip to Los Angeles. Reaching the customer and closing the booking before departure let us bypass the most expensive competition right at the LA airport.
The campaign's visual language
Aspirational shots of Los Angeles, iconic cars, and the target customer's lifestyle.
Numbers, not generalities
| Period | Revenue (index) | ROAS |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | baseline | ~4.2× |
| Year 2 | +74% | 8.27× |
| Period | Bookings | Revenue |
|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | baseline | baseline |
| Year 2 | +89% | +89% |
Social media campaigns stopped serving a purely brand-awareness role — video creative showcasing the LA lifestyle, run in the source-city markets, turned Meta Ads into a real sales channel.
Three takeaways for the premium segment
- 01
Eliminating inefficient segments lifts ROAS faster than increasing budget
Cutting a group with structural purchase barriers (like an added insurance surcharge) freed up budget for traffic that actually converts.
- 02
In travel and premium industries, it pays to reach customers before they travel, not at the destination
Capturing purchase intent in the home city lets you bypass the most expensive competition at the destination.
- 03
Growing your budget and growing your profitability are two different things
The key isn't simply spending more — it's better budget allocation grounded in an understanding of the client's business data.
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