From chaos to control across 6.43M SKUs - how BOI® and POAS rebuilt UK Soccer Shop's Google Ads
The campaign behind our European Search Awards 2026 Winner + Silver double. ROAS replaced with POAS as the optimisation target, inventory and contribution margin read straight off the P&L into the bid layer.
£520k+
Gross cash recovered from aged stock (45-day programme)
35%
Inventory turnover improvement
+£287k
P&L working capital freed
100%
Branded term protection
01
Problem
UKSoccerShop sells a catalogue where value decays on a fixture list. A player transfers, a season ends, and stock that was full margin last month is capital sitting in a warehouse.
The account was reported as healthy. What the business felt was cash tied up in shirts nobody would pay full price for, and counterfeit sellers taking branded demand it had paid to create.
02
Evidence
ROAS was being measured against gross revenue, so the account looked stable while the realisable margin on ageing stock fell away underneath it.
Stock age turned out to be the hidden variable. SKUs past 90 days were being bought at full-margin targets when their real commercial job was cash recovery, not profit.
Branded search was leaking. Counterfeit sellers were appearing against terms the brand itself had built.
03
Decision
Give each of the 6.43M SKUs a commercial job and bid against that job rather than one blended target, using the BOI® framework.
The campaign architecture for new releases was left intact. Stock-aware layers were added rather than rebuilding what already worked.
04
What changed
SKUs mapped by stock age, margin and competitive pressure, then segmented with custom labels.
Cash-recovery protocols built for aged stock, bidding against release of working capital rather than advertised margin.
Branded and defensive terms bid to hold position regardless of ROAS, closing the counterfeit leak.
Measurement moved to POAS so every decision was judged on what reached the P&L.
05
Result
£520k of cash recovered from aged stock across a 45-day recovery programme, a 35% improvement in inventory turnover, and £287k of working capital freed. Stock and cash figures are client-reported from their own finance data.
The work won Most Innovative Campaign (PPC: Small) at the European Search Awards 2026 and Silver in PPC Campaign Small.
06
What we learned
A profitable SKU and a profitable decision are not the same thing. When capital is trapped in stock, the right bid is the one that gets the cash back, even when it reports worse.
The Proprietary Method
What BOI® did differently
Every other agency was bidding on conversion value. We bid on commercial intent - assigning each SKU a job and a constraint pulled directly from the P&L.
01 · Scale SKUs
New-release shirts, in-season kits, high-margin replicas
Bid aggressively against full contribution margin. No stock-age penalty.
02 · Recovery SKUs
Aged stock 90+ days, departing players, last-season kits
Bid against cash-recovery value, not advertised margin. Better to release £520k of working capital than hold deadstock.
03 · Protect SKUs
Branded search, defensive terms, counterfeit-targeted queries
Bid to hold position regardless of ROAS. 100% branded-term protection from counterfeit sellers.
04 · Profit SKUs
High-margin lines unconstrained by stock or competition
Bid to a contribution-margin target, not a ROAS target. The CFO's number, not Google's.
Judges' citation
"A full system rebuild, replacing incremental optimisation with a POAS-led framework that reshaped how performance is measured and managed."
- European Search Awards 2026
Read more
About the BOI® framework →Recognition
Full awards record →"Highly recommended. Immediate uplift to a decade long campaign. Quickly improved ROAS after mess left by underperforming previous agency and now starting to scale the account. Highly dedicated team."
Simon Prestwell, Owner, UKSoccerShop
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