POAS & commercial bidding
How do I calculate POAS for my Google Ads campaigns?
Why this matters
The maths is simple. The data plumbing is where most brands stall. Calculating POAS at account level is straightforward: take revenue, subtract COGS, returns and fulfilment, divide by spend. That gives you a directional number. Acting on it requires SKU-level data inside the bidding system.
The minimum dataset is: product cost (COGS) by SKU, return rate by SKU or category, fulfilment cost per order (or per item), discount load, and the revenue Google Ads attributes to each SKU. The first three usually live in your ecommerce platform or finance system; the last is in Google Ads or your feed.
Once you have that data, the practical implementation has three levels. Blended POAS: useful for board reporting but useless for bidding. Category POAS: better, lets you set different tROAS targets per category. SKU-level POAS: best, fed back into Google Ads via custom labels and PMax value rules so the bidder knows margin not just price.
A worked example: a brand with three categories. Scale (50% margin, 8% returns), Profit (30% margin, 15% returns), Recovery (15% margin, 25% returns): should run three different POAS targets. Forcing one blended target on all three under-spends on Scale and over-spends on Recovery.
How JudeLuxe approaches this
JudeLuxe builds the data pipeline as part of onboarding: COGS upload, return rate by SKU, custom labels for commercial role, value rules where appropriate. That lets PMax and Standard Shopping bid on something closer to true margin instead of gross revenue.
The POAS calculator gives you a quick scenario view; the full implementation is documented in the POAS vs MER vs ROAS pillar guide.
Related reading: POAS vs MER vs ROAS: pillar guide.
Related questions
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