Published by Sue Johns-Chapman
Published Date 07.07.2026 
Being shortlisted as a finalist at the European Agency Awards 2025 in the Best PPC Campaign category is a tremendous achievement for Up Blue on the European stage. What’s more, we earned our place with a campaign that went against the grain, consistently overcoming obstacles along the way. We would like to share this story from our perspective. We reveal the behind-the-scenes details of our strategy and what really lies behind the numbers that caught the attention of the European jury.
Decisions and actions behind our shortlisted campaign
We entered the European Agency Awards with a Google Ads campaign carried out in early 2025 for the fishing store karpiowegraty.pl. Our goal was to generate PLN 1.4 million in revenue and maintain a ROAS exceeding 1500%. This was a very bold assumption, considering that the beginning of the year is the most difficult time for e-commerce in the fishing industry. Frozen water reservoirs make fishing impossible, and individual brands refrain from introducing new products. As a result, customer activity decreases significantly. According to Google Trends data, interest in fishing equipment in the first quarter can drop by as much as three times compared to the peak season.
“Instead of cutting budgets and waiting for the market to recover, we decided to test various solutions, carefully analyze the data, and gradually scale the most effective activities. In doing so, we went against popular opinion regarding seasonality. We were absolutely convinced that this period held undiscovered potential that only required the right strategic approach. This attitude not only paid off, but exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Dawid Hepner, BoM Representative & Performance Ads Expert.
In February and March 2025, we increased conversion value by 244% compared to the same period last year. We closed the entire first quarter with revenues exceeding PLN 2.5 million. In this way, we not only exceeded the results achieved by the client in the high season a year earlier, but also achieved the best sales result in the entire history of the store. During this time, the average ROAS was 1973%.
This success was possible thanks to precise campaign segmentation. We divided the extensive product range into a number of groups defined according to several criteria. We assigned individual product sets to different campaigns with carefully selected settings, including a well-thought-out display schedule. Automation and analytics also played a key role. We built a comprehensive dashboard in Looker Studio and integrated proprietary scripts with it. We then closely examined the results and used them as a basis for implementing further optimization measures.
What does being a finalist at the European Agency Awards mean to us?
Just having the opportunity to compete with renowned agencies from across Europe is a huge privilege for us. It gave us a chance to put our achievements into a broader context. We were able to compare our solutions with a wide variety of market scenarios and draw inspiration from them.
Being shortlisted is already a form of recognition that means a great deal to us. The success of our specialists and our client has been noticed at a European level, and simply being named a finalist tells us we are moving in the right direction. It strengthens our belief that we have achieved something truly unique, and it motivates us to keep raising the bar and setting even more ambitious goals. In the end, the trophy went to another agency, but reaching the final among the best in Europe is an achievement in itself – one we look back on with genuine pride.
Who are we?
The history of Up Blue dates back to 2012. It all started with two freelancers who joined forces to build an organization based on expert knowledge, high efficiency, and a partnership-based approach to customer relations. Over the next decade, we gradually expanded the group of companies we served and strengthened our team with new specialists. We also moved to larger office spaces several times, adapting our infrastructure to growing needs.
Today, Up Blue enjoys wide recognition and a high reputation on the Polish marketing agency market. We employ 25 outstanding specialists in various fields of digital marketing. We work in a modern 300-square-meter office. Throughout our history, we have supported over 2,000 companies, and we currently work with over 400. Our clients include both small businesses and large organizations with a wide scope of operations.
Our flagship product remains professional Google Ads campaign management. We are proud to hold the elite status of Google Partner Premium and Comparison Shopping Premium Partner. We also specialize in running effective Meta Ads, Microsoft Advertising, Allegro Ads, TikTok Ads, Amazon Ads and LinkedIn Ads campaigns. This allows us to offer our clients exposure across all key advertising channels. In 2026, we broadened our offering to include search engine optimization (SEO) and visibility in AI language models. Today we help our clients get found not only in traditional search results, but also in the answers generated by AI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Google’s AI Overviews – so their brand stays visible wherever customers now look for information.
Our holistic approach is also demonstrated by the emphasis we place on proper data management. We were the first marketing agency in Poland to receive the prestigious status of Platinum and Certified Cookiebot Partner. We take great care to ensure that CMP tools function properly on our clients’ websites, and if necessary, we carry out comprehensive implementation ourselves. Our work with data goes well beyond consent management. We also handle advanced measurement setups, including server-side tracking with server-side Google Tag Manager (sGTM), Google Tag Gateway, and offline conversion tracking. These solutions make measurement more accurate and more resilient to browser restrictions and the phase-out of third-party cookies, and they let us feed real sales data – including transactions finalised offline – back into the advertising systems. As a result, our campaigns meet the highest technical standards. This allows us to collect much more valuable data, which we use to continuously improve the effectiveness of our advertising activities.
What are our plans for the future?
“A year ago, Piotr Połczyński said that we would set ourselves more ambitious goals and pursue them with full determination. In 2026, we are already turning those words into results. At the national semKRK Awards 2026, Up Blue took third place in the Best Google Ads Campaign category (Najlepsza kampania Google Ads), finishing ahead of a Polish giant like PLL LOT (LOT Polish Airlines), which was shortlisted in the same category – a result that speaks for itself. This year we also started working intensively with artificial intelligence, both inside the campaigns we run and in the way our team works every day. AI has given us a real step change in efficiency: in the same amount of time, we now process more data, draw sharper conclusions, and deliver better results for our clients. Being a finalist at the European Agency Awards was one milestone on a much longer road, and we intend to keep raising the bar,” said Adrian Nowakowski, Deputy CEO at Up Blue.
