Case Studies

O’Neill

Success with Paid Search

The Results

In April 2023, White Wave Sportswear, the official licensee of O’Neill Canada, launched a new program with the Rakuten Advertising Paid Search team. Through consistent optimization and the introduction of new strategies, the teams achieved remarkable results in less than a year. Together, we achieved:

+103%

increase in impressions

+85%

increase in clicks

+70%

boost in conversions

+140%

increase in budget from overall positive performance

About the Brands

White Wave Sportwear is the official licensee of O’Neill Canada, the original California surf, snow, and lifestyle brand. The California surd brand was founded in 1952 when a young man named Jack O’Neill took his unstoppable passion for surfing and used it to battle Mother Nature. O’Neill will always be committed to growing its reputation as one of the world’s leading youth lifestyle brands based on being the First Name in the water.

The Story

O’Neill had an already successful and thriving paid search program within the United States, so the sister brand, O’Neill Canada decided to leverage the expertise of Rakuten Advertising to grow the Canadian brand. They approached the Rakuten Advertising paid search team to expand their existing paid search strategy and bring the O’Neill brand front and center for Canadian shoppers.

The Rakuten Advertising Solution

The Rakuten Advertising team knew that existing strategies within the US could also find success within Canada, so the team pulled together optimization tools and features through our management platform partners within the paid search portfolio to expand the reach of the O’Neill brand in Canada. The team took O’Neill’s existing paid search program and optimized existing Brand Core and Standard Shopping campaigns.

We didn’t just optimize O’Neill’s campaigns but introduced new opportunities for the team to trial to prove the value of the channel, encouraging leadership to increase budgets to allow for further testing. Our Rakuten Advertising team introduced Non-Brand campaigns, tested campaigns in French-speaking CA regions through Google Partner’s exclusive International Growth Program, and implemented Performance Max campaigns.