The situation
Game Over is an escape-room venue in Calgary, and Keith came to us about a week before opening, having taken out a business loan and genuinely unsure the numbers would ever work.
He wanted a partner who understood both the escape-room business and how to make paid traffic return more than it costs. The brief was simple: prove the ads make money, then keep them making money month after month.
What we did
We ran managed, multi-channel acquisition on top of the existing franchise site, which we couldn't rebuild, but whose branding was strong enough to use to our advantage.
Escape-room SEO, Google Ads run as a portfolio, and Facebook and Instagram Ads for the top of the funnel. Budget shifts between Facebook and Google based on what's returning that month.
- Worked within the franchise website (no rebuild), using its strong branding and pointing every click at the booking system.
- Escape-room SEO, strengthened whenever organic dipped so the ads never carry the whole load.
- Google Ads run as a portfolio: brand search, PMax for Escape Room and Things To Do, plus seasonal asset groups rebuilt each month.
- Facebook and Instagram Ads for top-of-funnel and student targeting, budget moved between channels by return.
The results
- ~22X avgoverall account return, sustained across 15+ months (peaks near 28X)
- 42Xreturn on one Google campaign, in the owner's words
- Since 2024managed since March 2024, one location to two
Monthly Google Ads and Facebook Ads reports; older Dashthis data runs back to March 2024. Account ROAS averaged ~22X across the relationship, recently sliding toward 12X, worth watching.
The creative we ran
Real ads we designed and shipped for Game Over Calgary. The creative is ours, made before a dollar of media went out.
One of our two Google campaigns actually had a 42-time ROA. For everything we put in, it was multiplied by 42. For no pun intended, it's had a massive impact on our business.
This is the hardest, most quotable number we own, and it isn't a one-month fluke: the account held double-digit ROAS for a year while keeping cost per booking in single-digit dollars.
