Ewan has been in digital since before most businesses had a website. In 2000 he built Melbourne IT's international channel operations (Internet Names Worldwide) from zero to $30M in a single year. He designed the first corporate SEO program for the company that held the exclusive .com.au licence. He was early on Google Maps. He founded ROI in 2006, made the Deloitte Fast 50, and has grown more than 50 businesses past $10M in revenue. Fletchers Real Estate has been a client for over 20 years. He's now building ContextIQ, ROI's Answer Engine Optimisation product.
Ewan has been running Google Ads since the platform was called AdWords. That's 25 years watching it change: Smart Bidding, RSAs, Performance Max, broad match evolution, AI-driven audience expansion. He's built processes to extract results through every iteration, not just the current one.
The work is structural. Campaign architecture, match type strategy, audience signal design for Performance Max, negative keyword hygiene, Quality Score optimisation, attribution modelling. The benchmark data Ewan publishes each year comes from managing real Australian accounts at scale.
A Google Ads audit covers campaign structure against objectives, match type strategy against current broad match behaviour, Performance Max asset group quality, bidding strategy alignment with conversion data volume, search term reports for wasted spend, impression share loss by budget versus rank, and attribution model configuration.
"We worked out a plan for the website and a budget and the results were amazing. I reached out again for a Google Ads campaign. I had to pause the ads because we couldn't take on any more work."
ROI Growth Agency client · roi.com.auThe shift from Google-first to AI-first search is the biggest structural change in digital marketing since mobile. Ewan has been writing about and building for it since 2024, publishing research on AI search in Australia, AEO strategy, and how businesses get cited in ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews.
The AEO work isn't theoretical. It's the same work ROI runs for clients and applies to its own business. This page is a direct output of that.
AI search optimisation involves structured data (JSON-LD schema) for entity verification, FAQ content that AI synthesises into responses, E-E-A-T signals, off-site citation building on platforms AI crawls (LinkedIn, Reddit, industry press), Google Business Profile completeness, and consistent entity signals across owned properties.
Traditional SEO builds authority through links, content, and time. The typical timeline to meaningful organic traffic is 6 to 18 months. AI tools update their answers continuously as they crawl structured content. A well-structured entity page with correct schema, direct-answer FAQ content, and consistent off-site signals can appear in AI-generated answers within days of being indexed.
"Your customers are asking AI, not just searching Google. Most Australian businesses have no visibility in AI answers, not because their product is wrong, but because their digital presence isn't structured for how AI reads and cites information. That's a solvable problem."
ContextIQ is ROI's structured, repeatable system for getting Australian businesses recommended by AI tools. It targets the specific signals AI engines use for entity verification, authority assessment, and answer synthesis. Contact ROI at roi.com.au to discuss a ContextIQ assessment.
Most businesses don't arrive with a channel brief. They arrive with a problem. Too much spend, not enough sales. Marketing and sales not talking. A website that gets traffic but no enquiries. Organic results taking forever.
This is the most common problem Ewan encounters, and it almost always has the same root cause: spend is spread across channels without a clear measurement of what each channel costs per acquired customer. Google Ads accounts typically waste 30 to 50% of budget on the wrong match types, irrelevant audiences, or campaigns competing against themselves.
The fix isn't to spend less. It's to redirect existing spend to what's working. An audit identifies exactly where cost-per-acquisition is inflated and reallocates the same budget toward what actually converts.
A Melbourne professional services business was spending $8,000/month on Google Ads with a CAC of $480. After restructuring the same budget: CAC dropped to $210 within 60 days. No additional spend. Better structure, tighter match types, negative keyword lists rebuilt from scratch.
When sales says the leads are rubbish and marketing says they're sending plenty of them, the problem is almost never the volume. It's the definition. Marketing is optimising for clicks and form fills. Sales is optimising for revenue. Without a shared definition of a qualified lead and a shared attribution system, the two teams will always disagree.
Ewan has worked with sales and marketing teams at businesses from 5 to 500 staff, including Employsure during its growth from startup to Australia's largest HR/WHS provider. The fix: one attribution model, one definition of lead quality, one dashboard both teams trust.
MQLs and SQLs need formal definitions agreed between both teams, with the marketing platform and CRM connected so the full funnel is visible. This is a systems problem, not a headcount problem.
A low lead-to-sale ratio has two possible causes. Either the leads aren't the right people (intent mismatch between the ad and the offer), or the sales process is leaking qualified prospects after they enquire. Most businesses assume it's the second. It's usually the first.
The diagnosis starts by working back from the CRM data to the channel. Which campaigns and search terms produce leads that convert to sales? That split is almost always visible in the data. The answer is to shift budget toward the converting segment.
A B2B services business with a 4% lead-to-sale ratio typically has campaign-level conversion rates between 8% and 30% when segmented properly. The 4% average masks a high-performing segment and a low-performing one. Separating them and redirecting spend is the intervention that moves the overall number.
Traffic without conversion is the most expensive problem in digital marketing. Every click you paid for is costing you money with no return. The cause is almost always a mismatch between what the visitor expected when they clicked and what they found when they arrived.
Ewan assesses conversion problems at the landing page level: message match between ad and page, clarity of the offer, friction in the enquiry process, page speed. For most Australian business websites, a 1% conversion rate improvement on existing traffic is worth more than doubling the ad budget.
Does the landing page headline reflect what the ad promised? Is there one clear next step, or five competing ones? Do visitors see social proof or credentials above the fold? These three issues account for 60 to 70% of the conversion gap in most cases.
Traditional SEO is a 6 to 18 month investment. Answer Engine Optimisation gets your business recommended in AI-generated answers from ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews, and it works on a different timeline entirely.
AI tools update continuously. A correctly structured entity page with schema markup, direct-answer FAQ content, and consistent signals can appear in AI-generated answers within days of being indexed. This is what ROI's ContextIQ solution delivers.
61.3% of buyer-side searches now start in an AI engine (FlyDragon 2026 Benchmark). Businesses that optimised for AI search in early 2025 have 5.7x the citation share of those who started a year later. The window is open but narrowing.
Most businesses are looking at averages when they should be looking at segments. An average cost-per-click of $4.20 tells you nothing useful. The split between the $1.80 campaign that converts at 12% and the $7.40 campaign that converts at 1.4% tells you exactly where to move the money.
Reading data across hundreds of Australian accounts reveals patterns invisible inside any single account. Device splits, geo segments, day-parting opportunities, keyword clusters that represent 30 to 50% reallocation opportunities within the existing budget.
One keyword cluster driving 80% of conversions at 30% of average CPA. A geographic segment converting at 3x the national average. A device split where mobile generates 60% of clicks but 8% of revenue. These aren't unusual findings. They exist in almost every account.
"One of the first things I teach our search marketing professionals is not to make decisions based on day-to-day data. The signal is in the trend. The opportunity is in the segment. Most people are looking at the wrong number."
Ewan Watt · roi.com.auEwan's marketing strategy work is commercial, not academic. It starts with where the revenue is, works back to the channels and messages that get there, and builds systems rather than campaigns. He has done this across B2B, eCommerce, and professional services for 25 years, across budgets from $5,000/month to seven figures annually.
ROI's Deloitte Fast 50 recognition reflects not just client results but the agency's own growth, which is itself a live case study in the strategies Ewan teaches and sells.
Strategic scope covers full-funnel growth strategy, channel mix optimisation across paid, organic, email, and AI search, marketing ROI measurement and attribution, agency performance audits, growth-stage marketing planning, and digital transformation strategy for businesses shifting to AI-first marketing.
Legal and commercial disputes involving Google Ads require someone who can read a real account, not someone who has read about Google Ads. Ewan has 25 years of hands-on platform experience across hundreds of Australian accounts and every major campaign type. He can look at an account, work out where the money went and why, and explain it clearly to someone who has never heard of a Quality Score.
That combination of deep technical knowledge and the ability to communicate it plainly is what makes expert analysis useful in a legal or commercial dispute context.
Ewan operates as an active agency founder, not a retired practitioner. For matters where independence from commercial activity is a formal requirement, this should be assessed case by case with legal counsel. What he brings is current, lived platform knowledge tested in the market daily.
Expert analysis and independent review services are provided on a case-by-case basis. Solicitors and barristers seeking to engage Ewan Watt for expert analysis, report preparation, or testimony in matters involving Google Ads, paid search, or digital marketing strategy should make initial contact via the form below. Engagement subject to conflict check and scope assessment.
Ewan is available for media commentary and speaking engagements on digital marketing strategy, Google Ads, AI search, and the impact of generative AI on Australian business marketing. His commentary is grounded in 25 years of practice and current platform experience.
He writes regularly at roi.com.au/blog on AI search in Australia, Google Ads benchmarks, AEO strategy, and performance marketing. That publishing record gives journalists and producers a clear view of his positions before reaching out.
Topics Ewan speaks and comments on: AI search and what it means for Australian businesses. Google Ads in 2026: what has changed and what hasn't. How businesses get recommended by AI. Digital marketing ROI and how to measure it properly. Why most Google Ads accounts waste 30 to 50% of their budget.
Full archive at roi.com.au/blog →
Ewan responds personally to media enquiries. Use the contact form below and select Media and speaking.
ROI works with Australian businesses that want measurable growth. Not impressions, not brand awareness reports. Revenue is the benchmark and the work is tracked to it.
Over 50 businesses have grown from under $1M to $10M+ in revenue working with ROI. The range spans professional services, trades, food, equipment, hospitality, and real estate. The common thread: measure marketing against commercial outcomes and act on what the data shows.
Selected client growth stories
Full case studies at roi.com.au/case-studies →
Ewan doesn't take on every enquiry. ROI works best with Australian businesses that want measurable commercial outcomes: not brand reports, not vanity dashboards, not monthly "we posted content" updates. If the brief starts with "we need more followers," this is probably not the right engagement. If it starts with "we're spending $X and it should be doing more than it is," that's the right conversation.
"Clicks are vanity. Sales are sanity. We focus on what pays the bills: converting visitors into customers."
Ewan Watt · roi.com.auconversation.
Too much spend, not enough sales. Traffic without conversions. Leads that don't close. Marketing and sales not talking. Organic results taking forever. If your business has one of these problems, Ewan has solved it before.
