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Three residential home-services accounts · 2025 vs. 2026 performance 

In home services marketing, there’s often a disconnect between what the marketing report says and what the business actually feels. A paid search dashboard might report a strong cost per lead. But as a business owner, what you actually care about is booked jobs, revenue, and average ticket size. 

That gap is exactly why the results below are measured differently. Instead of relying on what an ad platform claims it delivered, these three case studies track performance against the field-service CRM (the customer relationship management software, like ServiceTitan, that home service companies use to track real bookings and completed jobs). In other words: real booked revenue, not just reported leads. 

The strategy behind all three accounts is called programmatic media — a method of buying digital advertising automatically, in real time, across multiple formats (banner ads, streaming TV commercials, and online video) based on data about who’s likely to need your service and when. Instead of manually placing ads on individual websites, programmatic platforms use audience data to show the right ad, to the right household, at the right moment — often before that household has even started actively searching for a provider. 

Here’s what that looked like in practice across three residential home service accounts. 

CASE ONE: Multi-Trade Home Service Brand · Major Texas Metro 

This residential home service company utilized ServiceTitan-backed reporting. In the first quarter of 2026, the business ran a 90-day flight (marketing-speak for a defined ad campaign period) of $42,782 in working media across cross-device display ads, advanced TV (also called CTV, or “connected TV” — think ads that run on streaming services like Hulu), and online video. The year before, the same channels were tested for just five weeks as a proof of concept. 

−56%  Blended CPA year over year  $152.81 → $66.95	+294%  Conversions YoY (639 total)	+201%  Impressions YoY (8.65M)
−96%  CRM audience CPA  $1,091 → $41	+23%  Brand search demand  $1.80M → $2.22M	+133%  Organic + direct revenue  $269K → $627K

What Actually Moved the Number 

• More time in the market made a difference. A five-week test became a full quarter — 2.5x the days produced 4x the conversions (real bookings) and a 56% better cost per acquisition. 

• Fixing the data connection was a big win. The customer-match audience — a group of ads targeted at households already in the business’s customer database — went from a $1,091 cost per acquisition to $41 — a 96% improvement, and the single largest efficiency gain between years. It came from repairing data flow and audience matching, not from spending more. 

• Letting each channel do its job. Display ads (website banner ads) took 48% of spend and returned 77% of conversions at a $42.05 cost per acquisition. CTV and online video built awareness and primed demand with 99.1% and 88.9% video completion respectively. 

• Offer-led creative outperformed brand messaging. Two banner ads promoting a specific service offer produced costs per acquisition of just $19 and $23 — more than 50% better than the general brand-awareness banner. 

The business result, not the media result 

• Blended average ticket (the average dollar amount per completed job, across all job types) rose 25%. Households that were retargeted with these ads didn’t just book more jobs — they booked bigger jobs. 

• Revenue in the targeted suburban footprint grew between 130% and 255% year over year. 

• Five of the seven delivery metrics tracked landed at or above home services industry benchmarks. 

Delivery vs. Home-Services Benchmarks 

Case one delivery, first quarter 2026, against published home-services and programmatic benchmark ranges. 

Metric	Benchmark range	Delivered
Display CTR	0.05% – 0.10%	0.077%
Display CPM	$2 – $8	$2.83
Display CPA	$50 – $150	$42.05
Advanced TV CPM	$20 – $35	$20.95
Advanced TV video completion	90% – 95%	99.1%
Online video completion	90% – 95%	88.9%
Blended CPA	$50 – $150	$66.95

 

CASE TWO: Multi Trade Home Services Brand· Houston + DFW Launch 

A national residential home-services brand launched programmatic advertising into two Texas metros — including Houston — in February 2026. The campaign was compared against eight similar metro areas where no programmatic advertising ran at all, referred to as the control basket. 

	Unmarketed control  (8 metros)	Media markets  (Houston + DFW)
Customer growth	+25%	+56%
Revenue growth	+41%	+84%

The Results 

• Both Texas markets reversed a two-year sales decline within the first few months of the campaign launching. 

• Those markets grew at roughly twice the rate of the unmarketed control markets, in both new customers and revenue. 

• Because the comparison markets weren’t running any campaign, this design answers the question every business owner naturally asks: “was the market just improving on its own, regardless of the ads?” Here, the answer is no — the difference was measurable and directly tied to the campaign. 

CASE THREE: Multi Trades Home Services Brand· Pacific Northwest 

This case looked at a paid search account audit conducted alongside a live programmatic media campaign in the first quarter of 2026. It’s included here because this pattern — programmatic media boosting paid search performance — shows up frequently in home service accounts that already have a mature, well-established search program. 

Programmatic created demand 

• Branded impressions rose 153% in the secondary metro, and direct-to-site visits rose 52%. 

• Display accounted for 32.6% of all site traffic. 

• Programmatic efficiency improved month over month: cost per acquisition fell from $401 to $286, and conversion rate per click rose from 1.73% to 4.00%. 

What This Means for Your Business 

Across all three case studies, a few clear lessons apply to any home service business considering programmatic advertising: 

• Judge the channel on booked revenue, not reported leads. That requires giving your marketing partner read access to your field-service platform (like ServiceTitan) from day one. Every result in this brief exists because the CRM data was actually connected to the ad platform — and case one’s biggest single efficiency gain came directly from fixing that data connection. 

• Expect results to show up in more than one place. Brand search volume, direct website traffic, and average ticket size all moved before the last-click report (the traditional, narrow way many platforms report “credit” for a conversion) ever reflected it. It’s important to agree on how success will be measured before a campaign launches, not after the first review meeting. 

• Reconcile every advertising dollar, including Local Services Ads (LSAs). In case three, a third of a million dollars in LSA spend was sitting completely outside the account everyone thought they were reviewing. Missing spend means an incomplete — and potentially misleading — picture of what’s actually working. 

• Give the campaign a full season. The five-week version of case one produced a cost per acquisition of $152.81. The full 90-day version produced $66.95. Programmatic media needs sustained time in market to build the audience data and awareness that make it efficient. 

• Make sure your business can handle the growth. Every account in this brief grew booked jobs and average ticket size. That only pays off if there are enough trucks and technicians available to actually run the calls that come in. 

Why This Matters for Your Business 

If you’re a home service business owner, the biggest takeaway isn’t just that programmatic media works — it’s that measuring it correctly is what proves it works. Without connecting your CRM data, giving a campaign enough time in market, and reconciling every dollar of ad spend, it’s nearly impossible to know whether a marketing strategy is actually driving revenue or just producing reports that look good. 

At The Barber Shop Marketing, we build and manage programmatic media strategies specifically for home service businesses — HVAC, plumbing, electrical, roofing, and beyond — and we measure success the same way these case studies do: against your real booked revenue, not platform-reported leads. From connecting your field-service CRM to fine-tuning creative and channel mix, we handle the strategy so you can focus on running the jobs that come in. 

Curious what programmatic media could do for your business? Contact The Barber Shop Marketing to talk through a strategy built around your actual revenue goals.