Compare Google Ads results
Different businesses. The same commercial mistakes.
Every ecommerce business is different. But after looking inside enough Google Ads accounts, the same problems appear surprisingly often.
- 01Strong products subsidise weak ones.
- 02Budget gets trapped in the wrong SKUs.
- 03ROAS looks healthy while contribution falls.
- 04Customer acquisition gets judged on the first order.
- 05Stock keeps ageing while Google continues optimising for revenue.
- 06Performance Max spends money nobody can properly explain.
The symptoms are different. The underlying problem is usually the same: Google Ads is optimising advertising metrics without enough understanding of what the business actually needs.
Below are some of the problems we've found, the decisions we made and what happened next.
Find the problem that looks familiar.
ROAS looks good. Profit doesn't.
A Google Ads account can hit its ROAS target and still produce disappointing commercial results.
Why? Because Google sees revenue. It doesn't inherently understand your product margin, returns, fulfilment costs, payment fees or wider customer economics.
What we typically find
- High-revenue products consuming budget despite weak contribution.
- Profitable products being constrained because their ROAS looks comparatively lower.
- Different margin profiles being managed towards one blended target.
- Returns making apparent performance materially better than reality.
What changes
- We calculate the economics underneath the revenue.
- Products are given commercially appropriate targets.
- Budget moves towards the products creating the strongest commercial return.
Seen in
The lesson
A better ROAS isn't necessarily a better business outcome.
Too much budget is going to the wrong products.
The problem isn't always how much you're spending. Sometimes it's what you're spending it on.
This becomes increasingly important as catalogues grow. Managing 100 products manually is possible. Managing 10,000, 100,000 or several million products individually isn't.
What we typically find
- Long-tail products consuming meaningful spend without creating enough return.
- High-performing SKUs constrained by campaign-level budgets.
- Products with completely different economics competing under the same target.
- Historic campaign structures determining investment instead of current commercial opportunity.
What changes
- Products are classified using their commercial characteristics: margin, stock, demand, sales velocity, customer economics, business priority.
- Each SKU is then given a defined commercial job and investment follows accordingly.
Seen in
Multi-brand retailer
£180k of spend reallocated away from commercially weak activity, resulting in a £320k annual P&L improvement.
UKSoccerShop
Millions of SKUs managed according to changing commercial priorities rather than one static advertising objective.
The lesson
Large catalogues don't primarily have a campaign-management problem. They have a capital-allocation problem.
Stock is ageing while Google keeps chasing revenue.
Advertising performance and inventory performance cannot be separated.
A product sitting in a warehouse has a financial cost. And in categories such as fashion, sport and seasonal retail, its value can deteriorate quickly. Yesterday's high-margin product can become tomorrow's clearance problem.
What we typically find
- Advertising targets ignoring stock age.
- Overstocked products receiving insufficient investment.
- Low-stock products continuing to consume aggressive budgets.
- Seasonal inventory being treated exactly like evergreen products.
- Advertising efficiency being protected while working capital remains trapped in stock.
What changes
- Stock becomes part of the advertising decision.
- Products can move between objectives as their inventory position changes.
- A SKU might begin the season focused on margin. Later it might move towards volume. Eventually its primary job might become cash recovery.
The lesson
Sometimes sacrificing advertising efficiency creates the better commercial outcome.
Customer acquisition is too expensive.
Not every new customer is equally valuable. And not every business should judge acquisition against the profitability of the first transaction.
The correct answer depends on what happens after that transaction.
What we typically find
- New and returning customers mixed together.
- Acquisition campaigns being judged using blended ROAS.
- First-order revenue being treated as customer value.
- Subscription and repeat-purchase behaviour excluded from bidding decisions.
- Businesses scaling acquisition without knowing their actual breakeven CAC.
What changes
- New-customer economics are separated from repeat demand.
- We establish what a customer is actually worth, then determine what the business can rationally afford to pay to acquire them.
Seen in
Wilsons Pet Food
+212% revenue, +112% contribution and +83% customer lifetime value by managing acquisition around longer-term customer economics.
Husk & Seed
+45% AOV and 2x contribution while customer acquisition cost remained flat.
The lesson
The cheapest customer isn't necessarily the best customer.
Performance Max is getting the credit for everything.
Performance Max can be extremely effective. It can also make mediocre performance look remarkably impressive when brand demand, remarketing and existing customers are bundled into one number.
The question isn't: should we use PMax? The better question is: what job should PMax be doing?
What we typically find
- Brand demand mixed with genuine acquisition.
- Existing customers inflating reported efficiency.
- Products with wildly different economics grouped together.
- Weak visibility over where budget is actually being allocated.
- PMax being used because Google recommends it rather than because the business needs it.
What changes
- PMax gets a defined role within the account.
- Products are segmented appropriately and brand controls are applied where necessary.
- Customer signals are used deliberately.
- Standard Shopping and Search remain where they provide greater control or clearer evidence.
The lesson
Performance Max is a buying tool. It isn't a commercial strategy.
Revenue is growing. Contribution isn't.
This is one of the most important warning signs in ecommerce. More sales should normally create more economic value. But growth can become increasingly expensive.
CPCs rise. Discounting increases. Customer acquisition gets harder. Product mix deteriorates. Returns grow. Eventually the business can find itself celebrating record revenue while wondering where the cash went.
What we typically find
- Advertising investment growing faster than contribution.
- Blended ROAS hiding deteriorating marginal returns.
- Revenue concentrated in lower-margin products.
- Aggressive acquisition without an agreed payback period.
- Growth targets disconnected from unit economics.
What changes
- We establish the commercial return required from incremental spend.
- Budget is then allowed to grow where the next pound can justify itself, not simply because last month's average ROAS looked acceptable.
The lesson
Scaling revenue and scaling profit are not the same job.
The account works. But nobody can explain why.
This one is dangerous. Performance looks acceptable. Revenue arrives. ROAS appears healthy. Nobody wants to touch anything.
But ask: why is this campaign receiving £40,000 instead of £20,000? Why is this SKU being pushed harder than that one? What happens if margin falls five points? Which products would you scale with another £50,000 tomorrow? And suddenly the room gets quieter.
What we typically find
- Budget allocation inherited from historical structures.
- Targets based on what the account previously achieved.
- Campaigns scaled because aggregate ROAS remains acceptable.
- Automated bidding making increasingly consequential decisions without sufficient commercial context.
What changes
- Every material advertising decision gets a commercial reason.
- What are we trying to achieve? Why does this product deserve the investment? What evidence supports it? What would cause us to change the decision?
The lesson
Automation should execute decisions. It shouldn't invent your commercial strategy.
Prioritisation
Which problem costs the most?
Not every leak deserves fixing first. That's important.
An account might have £3,000 of Search waste, £20,000 trapped in poor Shopping products, £50,000 of constrained profitable demand, and £200,000 of ageing stock approaching markdown. Technically, all four are problems. Commercially, they are nowhere near equal.
We prioritise by financial impact. Not by how satisfying the optimisation looks inside Google Ads.
How the problems compare
| Commercial problem | What usually causes it | What we change | What should improve |
|---|---|---|---|
| ROAS good, profit weak | Blended revenue targets | Product-level economics | Contribution |
| Wrong products consuming spend | Static campaign structure | SKU classification and allocation | POAS |
| Ageing inventory | Stock excluded from advertising decisions | Inventory-aware objectives | Cash recovery |
| Expensive acquisition | First-order/blended measurement | Customer economics | nCAC / payback |
| PMax opacity | Automation without defined roles | PMax guardrails and segmentation | Incrementality and control |
| Revenue up, contribution flat | Scaling average rather than marginal return | Profit-led allocation | Profitable growth |
| Unexplained budget allocation | Historic structures and platform automation | Commercial decision rules | Accountability |
One framework sits underneath all of them
Every SKU has a job.
BOI® is the framework JudeLuxe uses to translate commercial priorities into Google Ads decisions. Each product gets one primary job at a time.
Scale
Capture more profitable demand.
Profit
Maximise contribution.
Protect
Defend strategically important demand.
Gateway
Acquire commercially valuable customers.
Recovery
Turn inventory back into cash.
And those jobs aren't permanent. Margin changes. Stock changes. Demand changes. Customer economics change. So the job changes too.
The account adapts to the business. Not the other way around.
Compare the numbers. Then look at what caused them.
Big percentage improvements make nice case-study headlines. But the number isn't the interesting part. The decision behind it is.
Our case studies show where the money was going, why that was commercially wrong and what changed when Google Ads started reflecting the economics of the business.
Questions buyers ask before comparing agencies
Which one looks like your account?
You don't need another generic Google Ads audit telling you to add negative keywords and improve your ad strength.
You need to know:
- Where is the money going?
- Which products are receiving it?
- What are those products actually worth to the business?
- And where should the next £1 go instead?
Find out what your ROAS is hiding.
30 minutes. No generic sales deck. We'll talk about the account, the commercial problem and whether there's actually something worth fixing.