Advertising luxury products and services on Google requires a fundamentally different approach than standard PPC campaigns. When your average customer lifetime value runs into five or six figures, the rules change. You're not optimizing for volume — you're optimizing for quality. A single misplaced ad shown to the wrong audience doesn't just waste budget; it can actively damage brand perception. At Monaco Creative, we manage Google Ads campaigns for premium brands across the Côte d'Azur, and the strategies that work in this space are surprisingly counterintuitive to conventional PPC wisdom.
Campaign Structure for Luxury: Beyond Basic Organization
The foundation of any successful luxury Google Ads account is a campaign structure that separates intent levels and protects brand equity. Here is the structure we recommend:
Brand campaigns should be your first priority. Yes, you should bid on your own brand name — even if you rank organically for it. Competitors in the luxury space routinely bid on each other's brand terms, and losing a click to a competitor when someone searches specifically for your brand is the most expensive mistake you can make. Brand campaigns typically deliver a click-through rate (CTR) of 30-50% and a cost per click (CPC) under €1, making them the most efficient campaigns in your account.
Non-branded campaigns target prospects who are searching for your products or services but don't know your brand yet. These are more expensive — expect CPCs of €5-25 for luxury keywords — but they're where growth happens. Structure these by product category or service type, with tightly themed ad groups of 10-20 keywords each.
Competitor campaigns can be highly effective in luxury markets, where brand switching happens less frequently but carries higher value. Bid on competitor brand names with ads that highlight your differentiators. Be careful with ad copy — you cannot use a competitor's trademarked name in your ad text, but you can absolutely bid on their keywords.
Discovery and prospecting campaigns use broader targeting to reach potential customers earlier in their journey. Performance Max campaigns and Display campaigns fall here. Budget allocation should follow a 20/50/20/10 split across these four campaign types, adjusting based on performance data after the first 90 days.
Targeting High-Net-Worth Individuals
Google provides several powerful targeting mechanisms for reaching affluent audiences. The key is layering them strategically rather than relying on any single signal.
Household income targeting allows you to bid more aggressively — or exclusively — on users in the top income brackets. In Google Ads, you can target the top 10%, top 20%, or top 30% of household income for a given geographic area. For luxury campaigns, we recommend bidding 50-100% more for the top 10% tier and excluding the bottom 50% entirely. This alone can improve your return on ad spend (ROAS) by 40-60%.
Affinity audiences capture lifestyle and interest signals. Google offers pre-built affinity segments like "Luxury Shoppers," "Travel Buffs," "Foodies," and "Fashionistas." While these are broad, they provide a useful baseline when combined with other targeting layers. More powerful are custom affinity audiences built from URLs that your target audience frequents — think Robb Report, Architectural Digest, Yacht World, and Christie's.
Custom intent audiences are perhaps the most underutilized tool in luxury PPC. Build audiences based on the specific search terms your ideal customers use, such as "luxury villa côte d'azur," "private wealth management monaco," or "bespoke interior design." Unlike keywords, custom intent audiences allow you to reach these users across the Google Display Network, YouTube, and Discovery placements — not just Search.
Geographic targeting deserves special attention for luxury. Layer location targeting with the areas where your high-value customers live and travel: Monaco, Cannes, Saint-Tropez, Geneva, Zurich, London's Mayfair and Belgravia, Manhattan's Upper East Side. Add bid adjustments of +30-50% for these premium locations.
Ad Copy That Conveys Exclusivity Without Discounting
The single biggest mistake luxury brands make in Google Ads is using the same promotional language as mass-market advertisers. Words like "cheap," "discount," "deal," and "affordable" don't just fail to attract luxury buyers — they actively repel them. Your ad copy must communicate value, exclusivity, and authority.
Headlines should lead with brand prestige, craftsmanship, or exclusive access rather than price. Compare these two approaches:
Weak: "Luxury Watches - Up to 30% Off - Free Shipping"
Strong: "Handcrafted Swiss Timepieces | Limited Collection | Book a Private Viewing"
The strong version communicates exclusivity (limited collection), craftsmanship (handcrafted Swiss), and a premium experience (private viewing) without mentioning price at all. Here are principles for luxury ad copy:
- Use sensory and experiential language — "experience," "discover," "curated," "bespoke," "artisan"
- Emphasize scarcity and exclusivity — "limited edition," "by appointment only," "private collection," "members only"
- Highlight provenance and heritage — "since 1892," "Monaco-based," "third-generation craftsmen"
- Focus on the transformation, not the transaction — sell the lifestyle, not the product
- Use ad extensions strategically — sitelinks to "Our Heritage," "Private Consultations," "Client Stories" rather than "Sale Items" or "Clearance"
A/B test relentlessly, but test within the luxury framework. Don't test discounting against non-discounting — test different emotional angles: heritage vs. innovation, exclusivity vs. community, craftsmanship vs. design.
Bidding Strategies and Budget Allocation for Luxury
Conventional PPC wisdom says to maximize conversions. In luxury, this advice can be dangerous. Maximize Conversions bidding will chase the cheapest conversions, which in luxury often means the least qualified leads — price-shoppers, researchers, and aspirational browsers who will never purchase.
Instead, consider these bidding approaches:
Target ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is the preferred strategy once you have sufficient conversion data (at least 15-30 conversions per month). Set your target ROAS based on realistic luxury benchmarks — typically 400-800% for e-commerce and 200-400% for lead generation, depending on your average order value and close rates. This tells Google's algorithm to find the customers most likely to generate revenue, not just the most likely to click.
Manual CPC with Enhanced CPC gives you the most control during the early stages of a campaign when conversion data is limited. Set bids based on keyword value and adjust based on performance. For high-intent luxury keywords, CPCs of €15-40 are common and can be very profitable when the average transaction value is €5,000+.
Target Impression Share is valuable for brand campaigns where you want to appear every time someone searches for your brand. Set a target of 90%+ impression share for brand terms — losing even 10% of brand searches to competitors is unacceptable in the luxury space.
Budget allocation should prioritize proven performers. A typical monthly budget distribution for a luxury account with a €10,000-20,000 monthly spend:
- Brand campaigns: 10-15% (high ROAS, low volume)
- Non-branded Search: 40-50% (primary growth engine)
- Remarketing: 20-25% (recapture long decision cycles)
- Competitor and Discovery: 15-20% (prospecting and market share)
Negative Keywords: Filtering Out Bargain Seekers
In luxury PPC, your negative keyword list is arguably more important than your keyword list. Every click from someone searching for "cheap," "budget," "discount," or "affordable" versions of your product is wasted spend that could be directed toward a qualified prospect.
Build a comprehensive negative keyword list that includes:
- Price-sensitive modifiers: cheap, affordable, budget, discount, deal, sale, clearance, free, low-cost, inexpensive, bargain, economical
- DIY and comparison modifiers: DIY, how to make, homemade, alternative to, knockoff, replica, dupe, fake, imitation
- Job-seeker terms: jobs, careers, salary, hiring, employment, internship (unless you're recruiting)
- Educational terms: definition, what is, meaning, wikipedia, tutorial (unless you're running TOFU campaigns)
- Competitor's lower-tier products: if you sell only premium, exclude terms for budget product lines
Review your search terms report weekly — not monthly. In luxury campaigns, even a few days of wasted spend on irrelevant queries can significantly impact your monthly ROAS. Set up automated rules to flag any search term with a CPC above €10 and no conversions for immediate review.
Remarketing for Long Luxury Purchase Cycles
Luxury purchases have significantly longer consideration periods than standard consumer goods. A prospect might visit your website six months before making a purchase. Standard 30-day remarketing windows miss the vast majority of these potential customers.
Extend your remarketing windows to 180-540 days for luxury products. Build segmented remarketing audiences based on engagement depth:
- Tier 1 (1-30 days): Recent visitors who viewed product pages or pricing — highest intent. Show ads with specific product imagery and a direct call to action like "Schedule a Private Consultation."
- Tier 2 (31-90 days): Mid-cycle visitors — nurture with brand storytelling, client testimonials, and behind-the-scenes content.
- Tier 3 (91-180 days): Long-cycle prospects — re-engage with new collection announcements, exclusive invitations, and seasonal campaigns.
- Tier 4 (181-540 days): Dormant prospects — low-frequency brand awareness to stay top of mind. Use lifestyle imagery rather than direct product ads.
Adjust bid levels by tier: Tier 1 gets 100% of target bids, Tier 2 gets 70%, Tier 3 gets 40%, and Tier 4 gets 20%. This ensures you're investing most heavily in the prospects closest to purchasing while maintaining visibility with longer-term prospects at minimal cost.
Performance Max campaigns deserve special mention for luxury remarketing. These AI-driven campaigns automatically place ads across Search, Display, YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and Maps. For luxury brands, provide the algorithm with high-quality creative assets — professional photography, polished video, compelling copy — and it will find optimal placements. Start with a test budget of 15-20% of your total spend and expand based on results.
At Monaco Creative, we specialize in paid media strategies for premium brands that protect brand equity while delivering measurable growth. If you're investing in Google Ads but not seeing returns that match your brand's positioning, let's have a conversation about how to align your advertising strategy with your audience's expectations.
