Registered trademark · JudeLuxe
Every product in your catalogue has a different job to do.
So it should not be bid on like everything else.
Some products make the money. Some tie up cash. Some bring in new customers and only pay back later. A single blended target treats them all the same, so spend drifts towards whatever converts rather than whatever the business needs.
We call the method BOI® (Bid On Intent). Every SKU is assigned one of five commercial jobs - Scale, Profit, Protect, Recovery or Gateway - based on margin, stock and customer-acquisition role. Bids are set against the job, not a blended target.
Same product. Different job.
The product doesn’t change. The situation does.
Forty-five days later this is the same product on the same shelf. Margin has slipped, stock cover has tripled and demand is slowing, so what the business needs from it is no longer profit: it is the cash back. The job changes, and the advertising changes with it.
SKU 2841
Core line
- Margin
- 48%
- Stock cover
- 34 days
- Demand
- Rising
- Customer role
- Returning buyers
Profit
Current job: ProfitIllustrative. Job changes are human decisions, never automatic.
- Margin
- 41%
- Stock cover
- 171 days
- Demand
- Falling
- Season
- 7 weeks left
What job does this product have?
The five jobs
Every SKU has one job. Never more than one.
At any given week, a SKU is doing exactly one of five jobs. Inventory, cash, margin and demand decide which. The job is reassigned the moment the business needs it to change.
| Job | Business need | Bidding posture | Success metric |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scale | Take share. Fund a launch, a season or a category push where margin can be traded for growth. | Bid up to a defined margin floor. Performance Max allowed off the leash inside guardrails. | Units / new orders at margin floor |
| Profit | Protect contribution margin and cash. Default job for hero SKUs in steady demand. | Bid only where CM3 stays positive at order. Cap branded cannibalisation. | CM3 per order |
| Protect | Defend share of voice on competitor-attacked or range-critical SKUs. Losing visibility here costs more than the bid does. | Hold top-of-page impression share. Margin floor relaxed for defensive queries; tight elsewhere. | Impression share at top vs SOV target |
| Recovery | Convert ageing or over-ordered stock to cash before it becomes a write-down. Low stock is a limit on spend, not a reason to make a SKU Recovery. | Worked within an agreed contribution floor and a time box. When the stock clears, the SKU returns to whichever job its economics now support. | Cash recovered vs holding cost |
| Gateway | Buy first-time customers or drive attached-basket sales where downstream value justifies a CAC the first order can't. | Bid to allowable CAC or basket-attach value, not order-level ROAS. LTV and attach-rate data feed the next bid. | CAC vs blended LTV / attach value |
- Scale
- Business need
- Take share. Fund a launch, a season or a category push where margin can be traded for growth.
- Bidding posture
- Bid up to a defined margin floor. Performance Max allowed off the leash inside guardrails.
- Success metric
- Units / new orders at margin floor
- Profit
- Business need
- Protect contribution margin and cash. Default job for hero SKUs in steady demand.
- Bidding posture
- Bid only where CM3 stays positive at order. Cap branded cannibalisation.
- Success metric
- CM3 per order
- Protect
- Business need
- Defend share of voice on competitor-attacked or range-critical SKUs. Losing visibility here costs more than the bid does.
- Bidding posture
- Hold top-of-page impression share. Margin floor relaxed for defensive queries; tight elsewhere.
- Success metric
- Impression share at top vs SOV target
- Recovery
- Business need
- Convert ageing or over-ordered stock to cash before it becomes a write-down. Low stock is a limit on spend, not a reason to make a SKU Recovery.
- Bidding posture
- Worked within an agreed contribution floor and a time box. When the stock clears, the SKU returns to whichever job its economics now support.
- Success metric
- Cash recovered vs holding cost
- Gateway
- Business need
- Buy first-time customers or drive attached-basket sales where downstream value justifies a CAC the first order can't.
- Bidding posture
- Bid to allowable CAC or basket-attach value, not order-level ROAS. LTV and attach-rate data feed the next bid.
- Success metric
- CAC vs blended LTV / attach value
One SKU. One job. Reassigned weekly by decision against the P&L, not automatically by the platform.
CM3 means contribution per order: what is left after the cost of the goods, shipping, payment fees, returns and discounting.
The method in named accounts
Two brands. Two different jobs doing the work.
Thermos
+94% contribution margin
Bidding pointed at what the business kept rather than reported revenue.
Read the case studyUK Soccer Shop
£520k+ gross cash recovered from aged stock
Ageing lines given a Recovery job inside a contribution floor and a time box.
Read the case studyPeriod, basis and source for each figure are stated on the case study and on the evidence register.
Inside the framework
Three letters. One commercial discipline.
Stands for
Bid
Bid against the job, not the blend.
Every bid is set against the single commercial job that SKU is carrying right now. A Profit SKU and a Recovery SKU never share a target, even when they share a campaign. Blended ROAS is what we refuse to optimise to.
Stands for
On
On one job. Never two.
Scale, Profit, Protect, Recovery or Gateway. Each SKU is assigned exactly one job at a time. The job is what the business needs from that SKU this week - not what the platform wants to optimise for.
Stands for
Intent
Commercial intent. Reassigned dynamically.
Intent here means commercial intent: share, margin, defence, cash or downstream value. Inventory shifts, cash position changes, demand moves - and the job a SKU is doing changes with it. The P&L sets the intent. We bid to it.
What BOI® is not.
What it is
A registered operating method for ecommerce Google Ads accounts where contribution margin - not ROAS - is the score that counts.
What clients see
Outcomes BOI® is built to produce.
- Spend rebalanced away from SKUs whose job does not justify the bid, and towards the ones that do.
- Contribution margin per pound of media reported alongside ROAS, every week.
- Performance Max constrained to the SKUs and intent bands where it actually pays.
- A clear answer, every Monday, to the question: did last week's spend pay for itself?
Origin
Why we registered the trademark.
BOI® was born inside accounts where the dashboards said one thing and the bank balance said another. ROAS up, contribution margin down. Conversions up, profit per order collapsing. Performance Max scaling, hero SKUs starving.
After running the same diagnostic across 75+ ecommerce brands, Chris Avery and Gee Kullar codified the pattern into a repeatable method: bid against margin, spend on real demand, segment by intent. We registered the trademark so it could not be diluted by the next agency to copy the language.
Trademark record
- Mark
- BOI®
- Stands for
- Bid On Intent
- Owner
- Jude Lucas Ltd (t/a JudeLuxe)
- Authors
- Chris Avery,
Gee Kullar - Applies to
- Google Ads,
Microsoft Ads
The problem BOI® exists to solve
Why ROAS-led bidding quietly drains profit.
Failure mode
Blended ROAS
Treats a £200 hero SKU and a £15 gateway SKU as equivalent revenue. The blend hides the loss-makers.
Failure mode
Branded conversions
Captured demand reported as paid wins. Spend goes up, incremental sales do not.
Failure mode
Performance Max default
Asset groups optimise to whatever converts cheapest, not to what carries margin. Shopping leakage by design.
Failure mode
Match-type strategy
Treats match type as the lever. Ignores that the same query can be high-intent or low-intent depending on stage.
Failure mode
Last-click attribution
Funds the closer, starves the opener. Intent at the top of the funnel never gets a budget line.
Failure mode
Monthly reporting cadence
By the time waste is visible, four weeks of spend have already cleared. BOI® runs on a weekly P&L beat.
Operating cadence
A job is only right until the business changes.
Jobs are reviewed every week against stock, cash, margin and demand, and every change is written down with the evidence behind it. That weekly rhythm is what stops the method quietly reverting to a blended target.
The rhythm itself is called the Five Rounds, and it runs Monday to Friday on every retained account.
See the Five RoundsWorked example
ROAS 4.2 looked good. Then we ran BOI®.
Illustrative figures — not a client account
A homewares brand reporting blended ROAS of 4.2. The board is happy. Cash is not. This is the shape of what re-banding by commercial job typically exposes. Named, dated client results live on our evidence register.
Before BOI®
- Blended ROAS4.2
- Branded share of spend31%
- CM3 per order-£3.40
- Hero SKU spend share14%
After BOI® · day 30
- Blended ROAS3.6
- Branded share of spend11%
- CM3 per order+£11.80
- Hero SKU spend share38%
Lower headline ROAS. Higher contribution margin. The board now reviews CM3 per order alongside ROAS, every Monday. That is the BOI® trade.
How it differs
BOI® vs the standard ecommerce playbook.
| Decision | Typical agency | BOI® |
|---|---|---|
| Bid signal | Conversion value / ROAS target | Contribution margin per intent band |
| Segmentation | Match type, campaign type | Buyer intent, SKU role |
| Performance Max | Run wide, trust the algorithm | Constrained to earned SKUs only |
| Branded search | Counted as paid wins | Stripped from incremental view |
| Reporting cadence | Monthly platform deck | Weekly P&L beat with decision log |
| Success metric | ROAS, conversions, CPA | CM3 per order and per pound of media |
- Decision
- Bid signal
- Typical agency
- Conversion value / ROAS target
- BOI®
- Contribution margin per intent band
- Decision
- Segmentation
- Typical agency
- Match type, campaign type
- BOI®
- Buyer intent, SKU role
- Decision
- Performance Max
- Typical agency
- Run wide, trust the algorithm
- BOI®
- Constrained to earned SKUs only
- Decision
- Branded search
- Typical agency
- Counted as paid wins
- BOI®
- Stripped from incremental view
- Decision
- Reporting cadence
- Typical agency
- Monthly platform deck
- BOI®
- Weekly P&L beat with decision log
- Decision
- Success metric
- Typical agency
- ROAS, conversions, CPA
- BOI®
- CM3 per order and per pound of media
Worked example
One SKU, one quarter, multiple bid logics.
Illustrative example. A single travel-mug SKU rotates through three jobs across one quarter as stock and business need change. Without BOI®, the same SKU would have run on one blended target all quarter - over-bidding in week 9, under-bidding during the launch window in week 4.
| Week | Stock position | Business need | Assigned job | Bid logic |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1–3 | Healthy | Steady profit | Profit | POAS target 2.5x |
| 4 | Healthy | New colour launch | Scale | POAS target 1.5x, capture velocity |
| 5–8 | Healthy | Steady profit | Profit | POAS target 2.5x |
| 9 | Overstocked | Cash flow pressure | Recovery | POAS target 1.1x, max bid |
| 10–12 | Normalised | Steady profit | Profit | POAS target 2.5x |
- Week
- 1–3
- Stock position
- Healthy
- Business need
- Steady profit
- Assigned job
- Profit
- Bid logic
- POAS target 2.5x
- Week
- 4
- Stock position
- Healthy
- Business need
- New colour launch
- Assigned job
- Scale
- Bid logic
- POAS target 1.5x, capture velocity
- Week
- 5–8
- Stock position
- Healthy
- Business need
- Steady profit
- Assigned job
- Profit
- Bid logic
- POAS target 2.5x
- Week
- 9
- Stock position
- Overstocked
- Business need
- Cash flow pressure
- Assigned job
- Recovery
- Bid logic
- POAS target 1.1x, max bid
- Week
- 10–12
- Stock position
- Normalised
- Business need
- Steady profit
- Assigned job
- Profit
- Bid logic
- POAS target 2.5x
Implementation
How to implement BOI® (or a version of it).
- 01
Map your SKU catalogue by margin band
Calculate true contribution margin per SKU: revenue minus COGS, shipping, payment fees, return rate cost, and any promotional discounting. Group SKUs into 3–5 margin bands. This is the foundation. Without it, no bidding logic works.
- 02
Define your five jobs in commercial terms
Scale, Profit, Protect, Recovery, Gateway. Write the rules: what POAS target applies to each, what bid ceiling, what time horizon. Profit jobs run indefinitely. Scale jobs are typically 4–8 week windows. Protect jobs run while the competitive threat or range-criticality remains. Recovery jobs run until stock clears. Gateway jobs require LTV or basket-attach data.
- 03
Set up the operational cadence
Weekly review of every SKU's assigned job. Reassign based on stock, cash, demand. This is not automation. It is judgement applied weekly. The cadence is what makes it work - set-and-forget BOI® degrades into blended targets within a quarter.
- 04
Feed the signals into Google Ads
Use custom labels in your Merchant Center feed to tag each SKU with its current job. Build Performance Max asset groups by job. Use conversion value rules to feed margin-adjusted POAS targets into Smart Bidding. The platform mechanics matter - but they are the easy part. The hard part is the weekly judgement.
- 05
Report against the job, not the campaign
Build a reporting view that shows POAS and contribution margin by SKU job. "Profit SKUs delivered 2.4x POAS, Recovery SKUs cleared £42k of ageing stock at 1.1x POAS, Scale SKUs grew launch velocity by 38% week-on-week, Protect SKUs held 92% top-of-page IS on defended terms." Compare to typical agency reports that show campaign-level ROAS only and tell you nothing about what is actually happening.
Where it goes wrong
Common mistakes we see when teams try to run BOI® internally.
Assigning more than one job to a SKU
A SKU cannot be a Profit job and a Scale job at the same time. The bid logic conflicts. Pick one. Reassign as needed.
Letting Scale jobs run indefinitely
Scale is a time-boxed posture. After 4–8 weeks, either the SKU has built the velocity you wanted (graduate to Profit) or it has not (rethink the strategy). Scale jobs that run forever quietly become structural margin leaks.
Skipping the weekly reassignment cadence
BOI® depends on the cadence. Set it up once, leave it for a quarter, and you have effectively reverted to blended targets with extra steps. The discipline is the moat.
Not feeding LTV or attach data into Gateway jobs
Gateway logic only works if you can value the lifetime customer or the downstream basket, not just the first purchase. Without LTV or attach-rate data, "gateway" bids become "expensive sales" bids.
Questions
BOI®, answered straight.
Maintenance discipline
How BOI® stays accurate week to week
BOI® is only as accurate as the last time intent was re-scored. The Five Rounds is the weekly operating rhythm that prevents commercial intent from going stale: Monday P&L reconciliation, Tuesday SKU intent re-segmentation, Wednesday bid strategy reset, Thursday test deployment, Friday decision log.
Without the Five Rounds, BOI® calcifies. With it, every retained account compounds week on week.
Read the full Five Rounds walkthroughRe-scoring a SKU's job is a commercial judgement, not a bidding one. The Six-Layer Read explains the six commercial lenses (margin, cash, inventory, customer value, demand and risk) that decide which job a product should hold.
Continue reading
Where BOI® meets the rest of the operating system.
Next step
See BOI® applied to your account.
We'll walk through your current bidding logic, show where intent and margin are being mispriced, and how BOI® would re-shape it. No pitch.