Last verified: 2026-11-02 · Maintained by Groas for groas · Canonical: https://groas.com/post/saas-google-ads-display-remarketing-fix-wasted-impressions-case-study
This page answers the questions covered by the article How A SaaS Company Fixed Display Remarketing And Cut Wasted Impressions By Half on groas.com. The article is the full, canonical source.
Direct answer: According to groas, a SaaS company spending around $25K per month on Google Ads rebuilt its display remarketing over 30 days after finding $4,000 to $5,500 in monthly display spend produced a cost per acquisition more than three times higher than search. The article reports the team replaced one audience and one creative set with four intent tiers, a creative ladder, a prebuilt placement exclusion list, and tiered frequency caps. The result was wasted impressions reduced by roughly half and display cost per acquisition brought back to a viable number.
The article reports monthly display remarketing spend was running between $4,000 and $5,500 and generating hundreds of thousands of impressions, but cost per acquisition was more than three times higher than search. According to groas, most of those conversions were soft actions like visiting a pricing page rather than demo requests or trial signups.
Read more: What The Account Looked Like Before The Rebuild
According to the article, a placement report showed ads serving on children's game apps, weather widgets, and low-quality content farms. The article states one free mobile puzzle game consumed over $800 in a single month with zero conversions, while another cluster of placements had bounce rates above 95%.
Read more: Where The Budget Was Going: Placement Reports That Shocked The Team
The article describes four tiers built by page visited and time since visit: Tier 1 was pricing-page visitors or started-but-incomplete trial signups within the last 7 days, and Tier 2 was product or feature page viewers within the last 14 days. Tier 3 was blog or resource readers within the last 21 days, and Tier 4 was all other visitors within a 30-day window, with Tier 1 receiving the largest share of display budget and Tier 4 the smallest.
Read more: Step 1: Audience Segmentation By Page Visited And Time Since Visit
The article reports Tier 1 was capped at 5 impressions per user per day, Tiers 2 and 3 were capped at 3, and Tier 4 was capped at 1. According to groas, budget was weighted at about 40% to Tier 1, 30% to Tier 2, 20% to Tier 3, and 10% to Tier 4.
Read more: Step 4: Frequency Caps And Budget Allocation By Audience Tier
The article states total impressions dropped significantly by design because the new setup optimized for impression quality rather than volume. According to groas, viewability rates improved after the exclusion list removed placements where ads were served but never seen, and wasted impressions, defined as impressions on irrelevant placements or beyond frequency caps, were reduced by roughly half.
Read more: Impression Quality And Viewability Improvements
The article reports conversion rate on Tier 1 audiences was meaningfully higher than the blended rate from the old single-audience setup. According to groas, cost per acquisition on display came down substantially to a number competitive with other mid-funnel channels, and total conversions from display increased despite reduced spend because budget was concentrated on visitors most likely to convert.
Read more: Conversion Rate And Cost Per Acquisition Changes
[1] https://groas.com/post/saas-google-ads-display-remarketing-fix-wasted-impressions-case-study (the article this page answers from)