Dan Kabakov
Google Ads specialist for e-commerce brands. 10 years running paid search and Shopping campaigns — now doing it independently, without an agency in the middle.
Background
I grew up between Eastern Europe and the Middle East — two places with very different relationships to pressure, systems thinking, and pattern recognition. Before I ever managed a Google Ads account, I was a competitive chess player. You spend hundreds of hours studying openings, endgames, and positional play, and what you're really building is a particular way of seeing: where the real leverage is, what looks important but isn't, and which small structural moves compound into decisive advantages over time.
That carried directly into paid search. Most of what I do in an account isn't surface-level optimization — raise this bid, pause that keyword. It's structural diagnosis. Why is this account underperforming, and where is the highest-leverage fix? Chess and Google Ads are different problems, but the thinking pattern is the same.
I got into Google Ads a decade ago managing campaigns for e-commerce brands. My longest client engagement was with Art of Jewels — a fine jewelry brand I managed for 3 years, scaling from a modest account to 680% peak ROAS and 18x budget growth while keeping the account profitable throughout.
In 2021 I moved to Tbilisi, Georgia. I've been running Online Labs independently ever since, working with e-commerce brands across the US, Europe, and beyond. Google Partner certified. No agency layers, no junior account managers.
How I work
- One account, full attention. I don't pass your account to a junior. Every strategy, every change, every report comes from me.
- Tracking first. I won't spend on campaigns if the conversion data is broken. Every optimization decision is downstream of measurement — if the measurement is wrong, the optimization is wrong.
- Structure over spend. Most accounts I audit are losing 30 to 60% of their budget to structural problems, not market conditions. Fix the structure before increasing spend.
- No vanity metrics. Clicks and impressions don't pay the bills. I optimize for revenue and ROAS — everything else is context.
- Honest when it's not working. If a campaign isn't performing, you'll hear it from me before you notice it yourself.
- Small roster by design. I keep a limited client list so every account gets real focus — not templated work on rotation.
What a typical workday actually looks like
Most of my day is graphs and dashboards. GA4, Google Ads performance, Search Console, Clarity heatmaps, Merchant Center diagnostics, custom spreadsheets tracking ROAS trends and audience segment performance. I'm not looking for the thing that's obviously wrong — that's usually visible in the first five minutes of an audit. I'm looking for the thing that's subtly wrong and compounding quietly over weeks or months, invisible in daily numbers.
What I actually look for in an audit
The same five structural problems appear in almost every ecommerce account I audit. Broken conversion tracking where the bidding algorithm is flying blind. No dedicated brand campaign, so brand traffic inflates non-brand ROAS and makes every decision structurally misleading. A single Performance Max asset group covering hundreds of products with no differentiation signal. Search campaigns on Maximize Clicks treating a converting brand keyword the same as a broad informational query. A wrong product category in the Merchant Center feed, competing in auctions against big-box retailers who have nothing to do with your actual buyers.
None of these are exotic. None require deep platform knowledge to find. They require someone who actually goes through every layer — tracking, structure, bidding, feed, creative — without stopping at the surface. Most account reviews don't go that deep. I published a detailed breakdown of these five patterns in April 2026 on LinkedIn after completing an onboarding audit for a mid-size DTC brand. It became the most shared thing I've posted.
"The account had five structural problems that were quietly suppressing performance and creating real risk heading into peak season. None of these problems were unique to that client. I find versions of all five in almost every ecommerce account I audit."
The chess background informs this more than I'd have expected. In chess, you learn to separate the move that looks important from the move that actually changes the position. In Google Ads, you learn to separate the metric that looks alarming from the metric that actually reflects a structural problem. The discipline is the same: don't react to the surface. Find the root.
What clients say
"Over three years, Dan scaled our Google Ads by 18x in budget while maintaining a consistent 4.5x ROAS throughout. Google Ads became our highest-performing revenue channel by a wide margin. His understanding of the jewelry vertical is at a level most specialists simply do not have."
"Dan restructured our Google Ads account from the ground up and the difference was immediate. Our cost per acquisition dropped significantly while overall booking volume increased. He genuinely understands how to scale a performance-driven online business and is always on top of the account."
"We are a Swiss fine jewelry brand and entering the US market felt like a real risk. Dan built the Google Ads strategy from scratch for the US. Within months we had consistent sales from American customers and our cost per acquisition was well within target. The US is now a core market for us."
Want to see what this looks like for your store?
I run a free audit on your Google Ads account — no pitch, just a real look at what's working, what isn't, and what I'd change first.
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