How Perk Saved €1.4M with AI-Powered Search Optimization

B2B paid search is fiercely competitive. When multiple companies bid on the same keywords, the team that optimizes fastest captures more leads while competitors are still stuck in spreadsheets.

For Perk, a spend and travel management platform, a manual approach to keyword optimization was costing them. The paid search team spent hours each week downloading search term reports from Google and Microsoft Ads, copying data into Excel to analyze thousands of search queries, and clicking through clunky platform interfaces to find optimization opportunities.

This tedious process created two expensive problems. First, they were wasting budget on search terms that would never convert. Second, they were slow to spot and act on the searches that actually drove results. The team needed a faster way to turn their search data into decisions.

The Perk team overhauled its paid search optimization process by integrating Skai’s Search Term Analysis (STA) directly into its daily workflow. By moving away from manual Excel exports and fragmented data interfaces, the team established a faster time to insight on how to best edit and update keywords and negative search terms.

The team focused on three high-impact areas to refine their search footprint:

• Accelerated Negative Keyword Mining: The team used STA to rapidly identify irrelevant or underperforming search terms that were draining budget without contributing to core goals. This allowed them to cut waste significantly faster than was possible using native platform tools alone.
• Strategic Opportunity Analysis: The team proactively surfaced high-performing terms that weren’t yet explicitly targeted. By promoting these “hidden gems” to exact match or isolating them in custom ad groups, the team was able to maximize the value of every high-converting query.
• Thematic Performance Clustering: By grouping terms by theme, the team gained a bird’s-eye view of the account. This helped them spot negative trends—such as specific consumer intents that consistently failed to convert—that would have been missed in a standard flat list.

By integrating AI into their analysis process, the Perk team achieved a massive gain in operational efficiency. What used to require days of manual data deep dives was cut down to just a few hours of strategic action in Skai. This shift allowed the team to spend less time combing through data and more time driving performance growth within the first quarter of implementation.

Over twelve months, the Perk team eliminated €1.4 million in wasted search spend by negating inefficient terms identified through STA.

As Perk’s Sebas López Carnevali notes: “STA cuts through the noise. We’re not bogged down in Excel exports or a clunky UI — instead, we get a clear and actionable view of how users are interacting with us through search.”

This speedier workflow saves approximately 1.5 hours weekly (78 hours annually), freeing up valuable time that no longer needs to be spent on manual reporting tasks.

Perk (formerly TravelPerk) is the intelligent platform for travel and spend management, built to eliminate the hidden, manual tasks that drain productivity and morale – Perk calls these ‘Shadow Work’. By automating travel bookings, expenses, invoice processing and events, the platform gives teams back time to focus on real work, with real impact. Visit https://www.perk.com/