How to leverage Google Display Ads and Performance Max for 4.4x ROAS in cross-border e-commerce?
The international e-commerce market is expected to grow by 10.4% in 2025, 0.7 percentage points higher than in 2024, revealing the strong momentum of continued expansion in the cross-border e-commerce sector. However, with market growth comes a more competitive environment, and consumer behavior is undergoing significant changes - increased price sensitivity, increased demand for omni-channel shopping, and reduced brand loyalty are all bringing new challenges to retail brands. At this critical juncture, the combination of Google Display Ads and Performance Max is becoming a strategic weapon for many international brands to break through the growth bottleneck. From L'Oréal Vietnam's amazing achievement of a 4.4-fold increase in ROAS to Italian men's shoe brand Duca di Morrone's 192% performance growth during the holiday season, these success stories all confirm how AI-driven advertising technology can reshape the customer acquisition model of cross-border e-commerce. This article will deeply analyze the practical application of these innovative advertising strategies to help retail brands grasp deterministic growth in a changing market.
I. Cross-border e-commerce market trends and retail brand challenges
1.1 Forecast of international e-commerce market growth and competition in 2025
After experiencing explosive growth during the pandemic, the global e-commerce market will continue to maintain a steady upward trajectory in 2025. The expected growth rate of 10.4% means that the market size will further expand, but it also marks that competition has entered a white-hot stage. Brands are not only facing pressure from competitors, but also need to cope with structural changes in consumer behavior patterns. Data shows that 70% of consumers shop online more frequently than before the pandemic, and this habit has made digital channels a must-win for brands. In this context, if retail brands want to stand out, they must establish a more accurate customer insight system and use technical means to achieve real-time matching of marketing information and consumer needs. The introduction of Google Display Ads technology just provides brands with a solution to this challenge, enabling advertising to dynamically adapt to rapidly changing market demands.
1.2 Changes in consumer behavior: increased price sensitivity and omni-channel shopping needs
In the current economic environment, consumers are showing unprecedented price sensitivity and rational shopping tendencies. According to a market survey in the UK, 45% of consumers regard promotions as the most important message that brands should convey, while 41% focus on the quality of the product itself. This value-oriented consumer psychology requires brands to more clearly convey price advantages and product differentiation value in marketing communications. At the same time, omni-channel shopping has become the new normal, and consumers expect a seamless experience across different touchpoints such as websites, mobile applications, and physical stores. Take Natura Cosmetics as an example. This traditional direct-selling brand successfully transformed into an omni-channel model during the epidemic. Through the integration of e-commerce and applications in the Latin American market, it finally achieved a sales performance of 213% in the Argentine market. This proves that adapting to changes in consumer behavior is not only a necessary move, but also can bring substantial business breakthroughs.
II. The strategic value of Google Display Ads × Maximized Performance Ads
2.1 Integrate multi-channel traffic: search/display/Discover/Gmail/maps
The most significant strategic value of Maximized Performance Ads lies in its unparalleled channel integration capabilities. Traditional advertising requires separate management of different channels such as search ads and display ads, which is not only labor-intensive but also difficult to achieve cross-channel synergy. However, a single campaign for maximizing advertising can cover all Google resources, including the search network, Google Display Ads, Discover information flow, Gmail ads, and Google Maps business archives. This integration brings two major advantages: on the one hand, the AI system can automatically allocate budgets to the best performing channels based on real-time performance; on the other hand, consumers can get a consistent message experience no matter which channel they contact the brand through. Italian sports brand Scicon Sports has created a 167% revenue growth in the new Nordic market with this advantage. The brand tests the market response of multiple countries through a single campaign at the same time, greatly simplifying the complexity of cross-border expansion.
2.2 AI-driven dynamic advertising combination and audience targeting technology
The core competitiveness of maximizing advertising comes from Google Display Ads technology. The system can not only automatically combine the best advertising materials, but also deeply analyze the audience's behavior patterns to discover high-value customer groups that are difficult to identify with traditional methods. This technology is particularly suitable for solving the problem of "appropriate consumers and appropriate information are always changing" in the current market. AI algorithms continuously learn which ad combinations are most effective for which audiences and dynamically adjust delivery strategies. For example, for price-sensitive consumers, the system may prioritize promotional messages; while for quality-oriented customers, it will emphasize product craftsmanship and materials. Duca di Morrone's experience has proven that this dynamic optimization can bring amazing results - with a 30% increase in advertising spending, the brand's ROAS doubled and sales increased by 192%. AI technology transforms advertising from a static operation to a continuously evolving intelligent system.
III. In-depth analysis of successful retail brand cases
3.1 Duca di Morrone: The secret of 192% performance growth during the holiday sales season
The transformation story of Italian men's shoe brand Duca di Morrone is inspiring. This 100% Italian-made, three-year-old brand, which sells entirely through e-commerce, faced growth pressure during the peak holiday season. They chose to fully adopt maximum-performance advertising, set clear ROAS targets, and let the AI system automatically optimize all-channel delivery. The results are amazing: despite a 30% increase in advertising spending, ROAS doubled and sales soared 192%. Marketing Manager Silvia Sanna specifically pointed out: "Maximum-performance advertising saves time in creating and optimizing campaigns. It is an ideal solution for anyone who needs a tool that achieves the best results with minimal manual work." The brand plans to test the same strategy on higher-priced product lines next, which will verify the adaptability of maximum-performance advertising in different price segments. The success of Google Display Ads proves that even small and medium-sized brands with limited resources can compete with industry giants through AI advertising tools.
3.2 Scicon Sports: Advertising configuration with a 167% revenue explosion in the new Nordic market
The case of Italian sports brand Scicon Sports demonstrates the unique value of maximizing advertising in cross-border expansion. Faced with the market opportunities brought by the bicycle boom in the post-epidemic era, the brand needs to quickly test the market response of multiple countries. The traditional method requires setting up independent advertising campaigns for each country, which is time-consuming, labor-intensive and difficult to compare the results. Through a single maximizing advertising campaign, Scicon Sports can cover both mature markets such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, as well as emerging markets such as Northern Europe. The key is to provide rich creative materials for different product categories (sports glasses, bicycle bags, etc.) so that the AI system can adapt to local conditions. The results show that the ROAS of bicycle bag ads in the Danish market is far higher than the average, driving the country's revenue to grow by 167% year-on-year. Global Brand Manager Christian Pearce concluded: "These activities have consolidated our position in overseas markets and opened up emerging markets such as Northern Europe." This case highlights how Google Display Ads can reduce the cost and risk of cross-border testing.
IV. Topkee's Google Display Ads Solution
The Google Display Network (GDN) solution provided by Topkee is a comprehensive, data-driven digital marketing service system that focuses on helping companies achieve accurate customer contact and efficient conversion through Google's vast multimedia network. The solution integrates the entire process of services from advertising account management, creative production to performance analysis, and can reach more than 90% of Internet users worldwide, building a complete digital marketing ecosystem for customers.
At the advertising account management level, Topkee adopts systematic management tools and methodologies. Through the exclusive TTO platform, the entire process of advertising activities is automated, covering core links such as account review, account opening and recharge, conversion goal setting, and customer tracking. This centralized management model greatly improves collaborative efficiency while ensuring the integrity of data flow. For the production of advertising landing pages, the team uses Weber technology to quickly generate landing pages that are highly matched with advertising activities, emphasizing the consistency of action calls and the consistency of user experience, and realizing complete conversion tracking data feedback. In terms of audience positioning, through the TAG system to track and analyze user behavior data, establish a refined audience segmentation model, realize personalized content delivery, and effectively reduce customer acquisition costs.
Creative development is one of the core competitiveness of this solution. Topkee adopts a hybrid creation model of AI+manual, conducts in-depth business analysis from four directions of service characteristics, competitive advantages, value propositions and custom dimensions, and generates professional creative proposals. Use advanced AI technology to quickly produce text, picture and video creative prototypes, and then a professional design team will carry out fine processing to ensure that the content quality is highly consistent with the brand tone. Particularly worth mentioning is the application of the TM tracking system, which provides more detailed dimensional division than traditional UTM, and can customize tracking links according to factors such as themes, advertising sources, and media types to achieve creative level effectiveness monitoring and rapid optimization.
Conclusion:
From L'Oréal Vietnam's ROAS increase of 4.4 times to Duca di Morrone's 192% performance growth during the holiday season, these cases vividly demonstrate the transformative power of Google Display Ads and maximized performance advertising. Although the cross-border e-commerce market in 2023 is full of challenges, it also breeds unprecedented opportunities. If retail brands can make good use of AI-driven advertising technology, integrate multi-channel traffic, optimize creative materials, scientifically allocate budgets, and establish a data monitoring system, they will surely stand out from the competition. As Natura Cosmetics has proved, even traditional brands without a tech background can achieve digital transformation through these tools. Now is the best time to act, let us embrace this AI marketing revolution and start a new era of cross-border growth. For further professional consultation, please contact our team of digital advertising experts to jointly plan your brand's path to success.
