Commercially Led PPC
ROAS without context isn't strategy.
Commercially led PPC for DTC brands. We run Google Ads against profit and cash flow, not one blended ROAS target stamped across the whole catalogue. The P&L sets the goal. The platform follows.
The argument
A 1x ROAS isn't always a bad thing.
We know how that reads. Of course a 1x ROAS is bad. Except it depends entirely on context, and context is the thing a single target throws away.
A 1x ROAS on a product you launched last week might be a problem. A 1x ROAS on stock that has sat in your warehouse for 12 months is a completely different conversation.
That stock is not just "inventory". It is cash you cannot use. It is storage cost, damage risk and obsolescence risk. It is capital ageing quietly on a shelf while everyone pretends the spreadsheet still looks fine.
"We can't sell that at 1x ROAS." Compared to what?
- Compared to letting it sit for another six months?
- Compared to paying more storage to protect stock that isn't moving?
- Compared to discounting it harder later, once it's worth less?
- Compared to writing it off completely?
Sometimes the "bad" ROAS is the commercially sensible decision.
Four different jobs
Every product is doing a different job.
So why are they being held to the same number? A single target across the catalogue strips away context, and context is where the profit lives.
New product
No data, no reviews, no momentum. It needs room and budget to find its feet before it can perform.
Hero product
Your proven earner. It needs protecting and a margin-aware target, not aggression that erodes the thing already working.
Clearance line
End of season or end of life. The job is units out the door at controlled margin, not a good-looking return.
Ageing stock
Capital trapped on a shelf. The job is freeing the cash, even at a return that would look like failure anywhere else.
The cost of a single target
What a blended ROAS target quietly breaks.
One number across the catalogue feels tidy on a report. Underneath, it is doing four different kinds of damage at once. You only see it when you split the account by commercial job and look at where the profit actually sits.
Hero products quietly underspent
Your best earners get throttled because the blended target is dragged down by weaker SKUs. The account looks 'efficient' on paper while you leave volume and profit on the table.
Loss-makers protected by the average
Margin-negative SKUs ride free inside a blended ROAS that hides them. Spend keeps flowing into products that lose money on every order because the average still looks acceptable.
New products starved before they learn
Fresh launches get judged against a mature blended target on day one. The algorithm never collects enough signal, the SKU is paused, and the catalogue stagnates.
Ageing stock left to rot
Slow movers never get the aggressive bidding they need to clear, because the blended target won't allow a 'bad' ROAS on any single SKU. Cash stays trapped in the warehouse.
Myth / reality
Four myths that keep accounts stuck on blended ROAS.
Myth
Higher ROAS is always better.
Reality
Higher ROAS often means under-spending on profitable demand. The right ROAS is the one that maximises absolute profit at acceptable cash risk, not the biggest ratio.
Myth
Smart Bidding handles this on its own.
Reality
Smart Bidding optimises towards the conversion value you feed it. If that value is revenue, you get revenue. If it's profit, you get profit. The feed is upstream of every algorithm.
Myth
Margin data is too messy to bid on.
Reality
Approximate margin beats no margin every time. A daily SKU-level margin export, even rounded, transforms what Smart Bidding optimises towards within two weeks.
Myth
We tried POAS, it didn't work.
Reality
Usually it was POAS bolted onto a blended structure with no SKU jobs and no stock signal. POAS alone is a number. POAS inside a commercial structure is a system.
How we run it
Commercially led PPC, by design.
ROAS without context is not strategy. So we don't manage to it. We run POAS, profit on ad spend, at SKU level, and bid each product against the job it is actually doing that week through our BOI® (Bid On Intent) method.
We don't manufacture margin. The profit was always in your catalogue. We make sure the spend lines up with it instead of fighting it.
Profit, not revenue
Targets set from contribution margin, not a vanity return.
SKU-level control
The account is steered product by product, not as one blended blur.
Feed-first
Product feed quality is the root lever. We fix it before we scale it.
Bid On Intent
One commercial job per SKU, reassigned as stock and demand move.
What feeds the bid
Six commercial signals, not one platform metric.
ROAS sees revenue. Commercial-first PPC sees the P&L. These are the signals we wire into the bid so the spend lines up with the part of the business that actually pays the wages.
Contribution margin per SKU
Revenue minus COGS, returns, payment fees, fulfilment and ad cost. The real number a finance director cares about.
Stock cover and ageing
Weeks of cover at current velocity, plus how long each unit has sat. Drives whether a SKU should scale, protect, clear or recover.
New vs returning customer mix
Acquisition cost priced separately from repeat demand so you stop overpaying for sales you would have got anyway.
Net of returns
Gross checkout ROAS lies in sectors with 20%+ return rates. We bid on net sales, not boxes that come straight back.
Payment terms and cash cycles
When the cash actually lands, not when the order is placed. Growth that doesn't quietly wreck working capital.
Promo cannibalisation
Bids built on true margin after discounts, codes and stacked offers, not headline AOV the platform sees first.
Four moves
From blended ROAS to commercially led bidding.
Map the catalogue
Every SKU gets a margin, a stock position, a velocity and a commercial job. Nothing gets bid on until it has a role.
Set targets per job
Scale, Profit, Protect, Recovery, Gateway. Each role gets its own POAS target. No single blended number gets stamped across the catalogue.
Restructure the account
Campaigns and asset groups are rebuilt around commercial jobs, not platform defaults. The structure mirrors the P&L.
Reassign weekly
Stock and demand move. A hero becomes a clearance line. A new product graduates to scale. We update the roles before the platform misreads them.
How we fix it
Four failures, four repairs.
For each failure a blended ROAS target creates, there is a specific commercial repair. Same account, same spend, same catalogue. Different structure, different signal, different result.
Hero products quietly underspent
Before
Dragged down by the blended target. Throttled at the moment they should scale.
After
Promoted into a Scale role with their own POAS floor and budget headroom.
The repair
Isolated into a hero campaign, bid against contribution margin, impression share monitored daily so the platform stops cooling the bid when the average dips.
Loss-makers protected by the average
Before
Margin-negative SKUs hiding inside a healthy blended ROAS, bleeding spend every order.
After
Identified, repriced, repackaged or excluded from paid demand entirely.
The repair
Margin file cross-checked against spend. Negative-contribution SKUs moved to a Protect or Gateway role, capped, or pulled from the feed until the unit economics make sense.
New products starved before they learn
Before
Judged against a mature blended target on day one. Paused before Smart Bidding gets signal.
After
Given a learning window with a softer POAS target tied to a launch budget envelope.
The repair
Assigned a Learn role for 4 to 6 weeks. Conversion value seeded with margin estimates. Promoted to Scale or Protect once signal stabilises, retired if it doesn't.
Ageing stock left to rot
Before
Slow movers never get aggressive bids because the blended target won't tolerate a 'bad' ROAS.
After
Moved into a Recovery role with deliberately aggressive bids to free trapped cash.
The repair
Stock-age signal feeds the bid. Recovery SKUs get their own campaign with cash-recovery POAS targets, measured against the cost of storage and write-off, not platform vanity.
What it means for clients
The commercial outcomes, not the platform ones.
What changes once the account runs commercially, and what it specifically means for the person reading the P&L, the person running the channel and the person reporting to the board.
+£180k
Average annual profit lift
Across accounts switched from blended ROAS to BOI® in the last 12 months. Same spend, profit redirected.
For the founder
More cash in the bank without raising the ad budget.
For the ecom manager
A defensible answer when the board asks why spend is up.
For the marketing director
A KPI tied to the P&L, not a platform screenshot.
94%
Of clients see margin lift in Q1
Profit per pound of spend rises inside the first 90 days of restructuring around SKU jobs.
For the founder
Visible payback inside one quarter, not one financial year.
For the ecom manager
Faster feedback loop on what's actually working at SKU level.
For the marketing director
A clean before-and-after story to take into the next board meeting.
-22%
Wasted spend on loss-makers
Margin-negative SKUs typically eat 18-25% of paid spend inside a blended account. We surface it and stop it.
For the founder
Cash stops leaking into products that lose money on every order.
For the ecom manager
Catalogue decisions backed by spend data, not gut feel.
For the marketing director
A finance team that stops asking awkward questions about ROAS.
98%
Client retention
Brands stay because the reporting matches what their finance director already measures.
For the founder
An agency that speaks P&L, not platform.
For the ecom manager
Less time defending the channel internally, more time building it.
For the marketing director
A partner who shows up to board meetings, not just status calls.
ROAS vs POAS
The same account, two different stories.
ROAS is a ratio of revenue to spend. POAS is a ratio of profit to spend. One looks at the top of the funnel. The other looks at what lands in the bank. Most accounts post a respectable ROAS while their POAS quietly tells a different story.
Who this is for
Commercially led PPC fits a specific kind of brand.
It fits if
- You sell physical product with real cost of goods.
- £3M to £100M in annual revenue.
- Spending £10k+/month on Google Ads.
- A catalogue with mixed margins and mixed stock positions.
- A founder, ecom manager or marketing director who reads the P&L.
It doesn't fit if
- You sell services or digital-only products with no COGS.
- A single SKU catalogue. There are no jobs to assign.
- Revenue growth at any cost is the brief.
- Margin data sits in a head, not a system.
Deeper reading
The commercially led PPC library.
The BOI® (Bid On Intent) method
How we assign a commercial job to every SKU and bid against it.
ReadInventory is cash
Why slow stock is a cash problem before it's a marketing problem.
ReadPOAS, explained properly
Profit on ad spend as a system, not a metric to bolt on.
ReadThe SKU Jobs framework
Scale, Profit, Protect, Recovery, Gateway. Every product earns its role.
ReadFeed is profit control
Why the product feed is upstream of every bidding decision.
ReadBudgets as priorities
How to set budgets from the P&L, not from platform habit.
ReadFAQ
Questions we get asked.
Is a 1x ROAS bad?
Not always. A 1x ROAS on a product launched last week is usually a problem. A 1x ROAS on stock that has sat in the warehouse for 12 months can be the cheapest way to turn ageing inventory back into usable cash. ROAS only means something next to context: margin, stock age and what the alternative actually costs.
What is commercial-first PPC?
Managing Google Ads against profit and cash flow rather than a single blended ROAS target. Each SKU is bid against the commercial job it is doing right now: learning, defending, clearing or recovering cash. The P&L sets the target, not the platform.
What's the difference between ROAS and POAS?
ROAS measures revenue per pound of spend. POAS measures the profit after cost of goods. Two SKUs can post the same ROAS while one prints cash and the other loses money, because their margins differ. POAS reflects what actually lands in the bank.
Should I use one ROAS target across my whole catalogue?
No. A single target treats every product as identical when they are not. A new product needs room to learn, a hero needs protecting, a clearance line needs velocity and ageing stock needs cash recovery. One number cannot serve four jobs without quietly damaging at least one.
People also ask
Stop running a whole catalogue on one number.
See where your spend is landing at SKU level and whether the margin is there. The 9-point profit audit is free, and it tells you in plain numbers.