A home and garden retailer was profitable on Google Shopping (4x ROAS) but left margin on the table. We restructured campaigns by profit tier, overhauled product feed data, and shifted from revenue maximisation to profit maximisation - delivering 12x ROAS and 338% increase in profit per ad pound.
Shopping ROAS (from 4x)
Revenue Growth
Top 260 SKUs ROAS
Monthly Waste Eliminated
The Challenge
The business was profitable at 3.1x ROAS, but profitability masked inefficiency. The previous agency optimised for revenue volume, not profit - bidding aggressively on all products equally. Low-margin products consumed 38% of ad spend for just 12% of profit, while high-margin bestsellers were underbid.
The product feed had data quality issues across 4,500 SKUs: inconsistent titles, missing GTINs (35% coverage gap), descriptions lacking key specs, and no margin awareness. Everything sat in one campaign with one bid strategy - no segmentation between high-margin bestsellers and low-margin slow-movers.
Our Strategy
Cleaned entire feed: GTIN coverage 65%→98%, standardised titles (brand, category, specs, size/colour), added custom labels for margin tier, seasonality, stock status, and bestseller flag. These labels became the foundation for campaign logic.
Restructured from one campaign to three: Premium (40%+ margin, aggressive bidding), Standard (20-40% margin, moderate bidding), Volume (under 20% margin, excluded or minimal bids). Forced Google to prioritise profitable sales.
Separate ROAS targets per margin tier: Premium 12x, Standard 6x, Volume 2.5x or excluded. Google's machine learning optimised within each tier for profit, not revenue.
Eliminated overlap between Shopping and Search campaigns. Shopping excluded unqualified searches (how-to, competitors, reviews); Search excluded Shopping-heavy keywords - reducing wasted cross-campaign spend.
Created supplemental feed with promotional pricing, loyalty discounts, and stock status. Real-time data enabled dynamic bid adjustments: low-stock products bid higher (scarcity), bestsellers bid naturally high, seasonal items adjusted pre/post-season.
The Results
Over 8 months: ROAS improved 256% (4x to 12x). Revenue up 110% while ad spend increased only 16%. Top 260 SKUs scaled to 18.2x ROAS. 585 low-margin SKUs excluded, saving £3,640/month. £1.6M annual Shopping revenue now focused on profit, not volume. Cost per profitable conversion dropped 86%.
Shopping ROAS (from 4x)
Revenue Growth
Top 260 SKUs ROAS
Monthly Waste Eliminated
Key Takeaways
High ROAS can hide inefficient margin mix. A £1 sale at 8% margin is not the same as a £1 sale at 40% margin. Margin-aware bidding is the breakthrough.
A poor feed limits Google's ability to show products to the right audience. We spent 20% of time on feed, but it drove 60% of the ROAS gain.
One campaign bidding on 4,500 products equally is inefficient. Segmenting by margin tier forces spending on profit, not revenue.
We didn't optimise 450 low-margin SKUs - we excluded them. That freed budget for bestsellers. Sometimes growth is about cutting, not adding.
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Took over an account running at 3.9x ROAS with £3.9K/month spend. Within two months we hit 8.87x ROAS at £13.8K/month.
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