Who else wants to dominate CEE markets with Google Ads AI tools?
In 2025, marketers like Michael Benjamin, Intuit UK’s Marketing Director, are proving that AI-driven advertising strategies can significantly boost conversion rates while reducing costs. Despite initial skepticism, Intuit’s QuickBooks achieved a 45% year-over-year increase in customer acquisitions during peak search ad seasons by leveraging value-based bidding and broad match strategies. Meanwhile, brands like B&Q are doubling down on video assets to engage diverse audiences through AI-powered algorithms. This shift isn’t just about technology—it’s about redefining business models. Companies like Travelstart, Jéroliès, and Smartwool are embracing data-driven transformations, restructuring their organizations, and adopting AI-powered tools like Google Ads automation to stay competitive. As sustainability and personalization become key consumer demands, businesses must rethink their strategies—whether it’s selling refurbished products or optimizing ad spend for maximum ROI.
I. Data thinking revolution: the core driving force of corporate transformation
1. Data thinking definition and market trend analysis
In today's rapidly changing business environment, data thinking has become a key capability for corporate survival and development. Data thinking is not just about collecting and analyzing data analysis, but also about an organizational culture that integrates data insights into the decision-making process. The case of Travelstart perfectly illustrates how this change in thinking can bring about substantial changes. Faced with the huge business opportunity of the African tourism market, which is expected to reach US$33 billion by 2029, Travelstart realized that the traditional performance indicators centered on booking volume could no longer meet business needs. This awakening prompted them to redefine the standard of success, from simply pursuing "how many bookings" to focusing on "how much value". Behind this change in thinking is a keen insight into market trends - the African tourism market is showing new consumption patterns such as cultural heritage tourism, local vacations and long-term accommodation. The data that the average length of stay of South African tourists has increased from 7.8 days to 10.6 days has further strengthened their determination to re-evaluate their marketing strategy.
2. Digital challenges faced by traditional companies
Jelonice's transformation process reveals the typical challenges of traditional companies embracing digitalization. In 2015, when most people believed that the e-commerce dividend had disappeared, Jelonice went against the trend and fully shrunk its physical channels and turned to online. Behind this seemingly risky decision is a clear recognition of the serious lack of data. In the early stage of transformation, Jelonis faced three major pain points: the lack of data support for Google Ads led to difficulties in resource allocation, the brand image-oriented material strategy encountered bottlenecks, and the data analysis profession was marginalized in the organizational structure. These challenges essentially point to the same core problem - the company has not yet established a systematic data mindset. It is particularly noteworthy that when the creative team and the digital team are in a vertical subordinate relationship, data analysis is difficult to play its due value. This organizational design defect will directly affect the quality of decision-making.
II. Case analysis of corporate organizational structure reshaping
1. Travelstart's strategic transformation from quantity to value
Travelstart's transformation process shows us a complete strategic evolution framework. Faced with the particularity of the South African aviation market - the small number of airlines leads to high ticket prices, and the traditional strategy centered on booking volume has obvious limitations. Their breakthrough began with two key discoveries: the TCPA bidding strategy cannot reflect the actual commercial value of each booking, and the unsustainability of simply increasing the bid amount. This understanding prompted Travelstart to implement a value-based bidding system in Google Ads, combined with two innovative applications: automated ad templates and Floodlight value tracking. The special feature of automated templates is that they can integrate real-time flight data, historical search patterns and seasonal trends to achieve dynamic optimization of advertising content. For example, for high-search routes such as "Johannesburg to Cape Town", the system can automatically adjust the advertising content to reflect price fluctuations, and the difference between off-season and peak season from 909 rand to 599 rand can be presented in real time. This data-driven strategy enabled Travelstart to achieve an outstanding result of 12% increase in ROI and 27% annual revenue growth during the peak tourist season in South Africa (August-October).
2. Jelonis Department Reorganization and Data Culture Establishment
Jelonis's organizational change provides a classic example of the transformation from physical retail to digital native. Their transformation began with a bold decision-to shrink 1,400 physical channels and focus on the development of official websites and apps. This "burn the boats" transformation requires strong data support, and Google Ads is its key pillar. The transformation of Jelloness is reflected in three aspects: technically, it has shifted from manual click bidding to a fully automated strategy to stabilize ROAS fluctuations; in terms of content, it has broken through traditional beauty image advertising and adopted a data-supported "quasi-live" short video format to achieve a 17% increase in single video performance; organizationally, it has separated the creative and digital departments to establish a new relationship of professional division of labor and collaborative cooperation. It is particularly noteworthy that when the digital team is no longer affiliated with the creative department, data analysis has gained the strategic position it deserves. This structural adjustment has brought amazing results-the revenue in the first year of digitalization reached 3.77 times that of the previous year, and it has increased by 10 times compared with 2014, which was mainly offline. Jelloness's success proves that the design of the organizational structure must match the data-driven strategy to release the maximum value.
III. Topkee's Google Ads solution
Topkee provides a one-stop online advertising service based on Google Ads, focusing on improving the efficiency of potential customer development and sales performance growth for enterprises. Our service framework covers the entire advertising life cycle management from pre-evaluation to post-optimization, and we can provide corresponding professional solutions regardless of the size of the customer. In the actual service process, we first perform a comprehensive website evaluation and analysis, use the latest scoring tools to diagnose the website SEO structure, and produce a detailed report including content detection, technical issues and optimization suggestions to ensure that the website foundation meets the search engine optimization standards and establish a high-conversion landing page for subsequent advertising.
On the technical level, TTO tools are used to achieve efficient account management. The system supports centralized management of multiple advertising accounts, including core functions such as account opening application, budget association and permission setting. Through tag ID association technology, cross-channel data tracking can be achieved, and events can be automatically synchronized to the advertising background according to conversion goals, greatly reducing the error rate of manual operations. In terms of tracking mechanism, the TM system we developed is more flexible than traditional UTM parameters. It can customize tracking rules based on 12 dimensions such as advertising source, media type, and activity name, and generate exclusive tracking links with TMID, so that customers can accurately grasp the conversion path and effectiveness contribution of each channel.
In the strategic planning stage, our professional team will produce theme proposals that meet business characteristics based on industry analysis and competitor research. We use keyword research tools to mine high-value search phrases, combine smart bidding strategies with matching type optimization, and ensure that ads reach precise audiences. In terms of creative production, we integrate AI-assisted tools and professional design teams to optimize text materials and visual elements simultaneously, increasing the average click-through rate of ads by more than 1.5 times the industry standard. In response to user re-interaction needs, we use the behavioral data analysis function of the TTO system to identify high-value user groups and implement targeted remarketing. Data shows that the conversion efficiency of personalized ads is 70% higher than that of conventional ads.
Conclusion:
From Travelstart's 27% revenue growth to Jelonis's 10-fold revenue jump, these success stories together depict the blueprint for corporate transformation in the data-driven era. Whether it is dynamic pricing in the tourism industry, content optimization in the retail industry, or audience stratification for outdoor brands, Google Ads has proven itself to be not only a customer acquisition tool, but also a strategic platform for companies to build a data culture. In this era of rapid changes in consumer behavior, only companies that can organically combine smart technology, organizational change, and cultural transformation can continue to maintain their competitive advantage. We encourage business leaders who are planning digital transformation to draw inspiration from these cases and, if necessary, seek the help of professional consultants to tailor data strategies to suit their industry and market conditions. Remember, transformation is not only a technological upgrade, but also a comprehensive innovation from thinking to organization. Now is the best time to start.